This past Sunday I was watching a movie marathon on
television with my roommates. Throughout the four movies we watched, an Amber
alert interrupted the programing a total of six times. The Amber alert was for
a 2-year-old girl named Myra Lewis who had gone missing from Camden,
Mississippi the previous afternoon. The first time we saw the Amber alert I
didn’t question anything about it because I was worried for the young girl’s
safety. The second time the Amber alert came up I thought something was not
quite right. By the third time the Amber alert was announced, I finally
realized that the race of the child was not mentioned. Giving the Amber alert
announcer the benefit of the doubt, I just assumed that information about the
child was not available yet. The fourth time I heard the Amber alert, it
included the child’s race, and said that Myra Lewis was a “black girl with
black hair and black eyes.” The fifth and sixth times that I heard the Amber
alert, the announcer corrected himself and said that Myra Lewis was a “black
girl with black hair and brown eyes.”
I wondered if the child’s race was not mentioned at first
because it was not known, or because it was assumed that only an
African-American child would go missing from that area of Mississippi. We
mentioned this the first day of class, but you never hear about white-on-white
crime, or white-on-black crime, only black-on-black crime. Today, the news does
not typically differentiate race when discussing a crime unless it is
“black-on-black” crime or defies stereotypes. Is this similar to what was going
on with the amber alert for Myra Lewis?
I am not sure if this happens in Memphis, but I know that if
there is a very important news story or missing person’s case in Baltimore, the
news will interrupt the programing and show a live news story. I wonder if Myra
Lewis had been a white child from Germantown, would the news have interrupted
the programing with a live story or would have there just been the same alert
as there was for Myra Lewis? Have any of you noticed an unequal representation
of the races within news stories in your hometowns? Also, what do you think
about the fourth announcement of the amber alert mentioning that Myra Lewis had
“black eyes”? Do you find this statement stereotypical or racist?
The idea that inequality still exists in matter like these can be a very tender topic, but I do believe it still exists in some ways. The fact that Myra Lewis was presented via amber alert rather than over some news story raises a good point that I've never considered before. This makes me wonder, does the average person expect that an african american child is more likely to be abducted in Memphis than a caucasian child? If so, why is that? Possible reasons could be that the stereotype that is commonly associated with african americans in memphis is one of a 'lower class', or "dangerous', or any of the other stereotypes we know exists in this case. I can't help but think that these factors may have come in to play during a situation like you are describing here. Either way, the question of equality in this instance is not one that can be easily overlooked.
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