Most Poor People are White. Most Criminals are White. BUT NOT ON TV.
In Rapid City the television crew is allowed to perch above a path where prisoners walk from one building to another. Nearly every night, adapting the television adage that ‘if it bleeds it leads,” inmates are captured by the media in handcuffs and leg irons shuffling from one building to another. The inmates in Rapid City are, for the most part, Native American and those in Albuquerque are mostly Hispanic. What subliminal message does this convey? To the white population, particularly the very young, it sends the message that all criminals are either Native American or Hispanic. To the Native American and Hispanic viewers it is a source of humiliation because it spotlights the criminal element within their race. At least one night of every week this is the message sent out to viewers in South Dakota and New Mexico and if you carry it a step further, you will see the same kind of reporting in the metropolitan cities of America only their focus is on African Americans. Although the vast majority of Native Americans, Hispanics and African Americans are not criminals, this does not translate as factual on the evening news. In fact, just the opposite message is conveyed. This “unconscious discrimination” is prevalent in the message conveyed by the advertising agencies where people living far from the racial demographics of the local communities usually create local ads. For example, two of the major colleges in South Dakota are advertising the benefits of attending school on their campuses. One commercial is a voice over by the retired anchorman of NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw. His ad, for his alma mater, the University of South Dakota, is a collage of photos showing graduates of USD. This ad has one thing in common with the ads by rival college South Dakota State University. All of the graduate achievers are white. In fact, the SDSU ad shows the achievers and asks the question, “What do these folks have in common?” The first thing that crossed my mind is “they are all white.” Now that is a shame because there have been many achievers of Native American extraction who are graduates of these fine institutions.
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