Monday, May 3, 2010

What if we swapped races in the story?

Essayist Terrence Heath proposes a mental exercise. Take a prominent story in the news and change the race of the participants. In what ways does the story resonate differently? For example:

There was a recent march in Washington promoting gun ownership and Second Amendment rights. Most of the participants were white. How is the story different if they were mostly black? Mostly Muslim?

There were white health care reform protesters shouting racial slurs against black congressmen who had voted for it. What if the protesters were black and the congressmen white?

Most of the Tea Party protesters are white, very conservative, married, older than 45, and angry. They make up about 4% of the population, yet command a great amount of attention. What if they were black instead of white?

Terrence believes that in all three cases the media would pay a lot less attention. In the second and third scenarios I would agree. Terrence explains that blacks aren't allowed to be angry because that implies you have something to be angry about. Being angry means there is something in the culture to which you're entitled and you're not getting it. And blacks are supposedly not entitled to anything.

But I disagree that blacks or (especially) Muslims marching to protect second amendment rights would also be ignored. Such a rally would scare the living daylights out of many whites. They might form an insurrection against us.

No comments:

Post a Comment