Is the value of your tribe inversely proportional to its numbers? When whites are suffer misfortune, such as being victims of violent crime, the newspaper headlines never announce their race. Even when the victims are black, we don’t always read about “black victims”, unless the article is about something that is perceived to impact blacks disproportionately (which is almost everything). The Associated Press has guidelines* on when to mention race or ethnicity:
This isn’t to say race is always irrelevant. In racially motivated crimes, such as the murder of James Byrd, race is an important element of the story. The AP Stylebook update explains other instances when it’s relevant:
- “In biographical and announcement stories that involve significant, groundbreaking or historic events, such as being elected U.S. president, named to the U.S. Supreme Court or other notable occurrences.”
- “When reporting a demonstration or disturbance involving race or such issues as civil rights or slavery.”
On the face of it, the ethnicity of people dying in road accidents does not seem to meet the above criteria. And yet Jeff Amy, of the Associated Press, writes:
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians was dealing Sunday with the devastating loss of five young siblings and an adult killed when their SUV plunged into a rain-swollen creek.
Neshoba County Sheriff Tommy Waddell said the victims appear to have drowned after their Dodge Durango left a county road 20 miles southeast of Philadelphia just after midnight Saturday.
“It’s always sad to hear of the death of a tribal member, but today our tribe experienced a great tragedy with the loss of six beautiful Choctaw souls. I cannot begin to imagine what the friends, relatives and loved ones are feeling,” Tribal Chief Phyliss J. Anderson said in a statement.
Personally, I think the victims’ tribal affiliation is relevant to the story. After all, what is a tribe if not an extended family or clan? If the tribe has enough solidarity to mourn the loss of its members, then the victims’ tribal membership should be mentioned. If a van carrying Yeshiva students crashed and burned, the Jewish identity of the victims would probably be mentioned as well. We’ve seen this with tragedies involving the Amish, even though they’re not a tribe, but a religious group.
The same could be said about blacks. Many, if not most, blacks have enough tribal identity to mourn the deaths or other blacks. But, when it comes to tribal identity and reporting, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? It seems fairly obvious to me that the corporate media is largely responsible for promoting black tribal (racial) consciousness. At the same time, it strongly discourages white racial consciousness.
In the past, American whites did have a racial consciousness. This was considered normal, even though whites still constituted a healthy majority in the U.S. But leftist institutions, such as the corporate media, have intentionally whittled away at this consciousness and replaced it with shame and guilt.
When it comes to reporting white victims, the roles between actual news and reporting have been reversed. It’s the reporting, or lack thereof, that has brought about (at least in part) the current status quo. When corporate bigwigs manipulate the reality on the ground – and then point to that reality as justification for their policies – something is wrong. It’s true that the masses have always been told, by the wealthy and powerful, how to think. But things should be different today. After all, we now have the internet and the means to disseminate all sorts of alternative viewpoints.
Who am I kidding? The internet is a powerful tool but not much more useful, when it comes to educating the masses, than books are useful for educating monkeys.
*The AP guidebook is not available for free online. The above source is, incidentally, a great illustration of the anti-white media bias and ignorance regarding race.
December 30, 2012 at 8:47 am
The affliction of minorities deserve special attention because they are, well, minorities, people more vulnerable than those of the majority. Or so many may believe. However, when the minorities become the majority, the former majority, if white, may still be treated with the indifference supposedly due to an invulnerable majority. Thus, in the Financial Times of London, in a story reporting on the minority status in London of what the FT refers to as “white British,” otherwise know as the English, they refer to the new majority as the majority minority. Thus even as they are ethnically cleansed from their own capital city, the English are not allowed the privilege of being called the minority. The manipulative intent seems evident.
December 30, 2012 at 11:38 am
corporate media is leftist!? I don’t get it.
December 30, 2012 at 12:02 pm
If they are leftist it is in some fuzzy sense that they espouse values that are associated with academic leftism, e.g. that everyone is the same and that nothing is anyone’s fault because the person might have had a bad childhood, and that race is but skin-deep and stuff. But surely leftism and corporatism, i.e. Big Money, must be antithetical!?
December 30, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Anti-white, anti-gun, pro-Democrat party, pro-immigration, pro-big-government, anti-property-rights. These are the norms in the corporate media. Though they sometimes present opposing views on some of these matters.
December 30, 2012 at 12:22 pm
I read Th. Dalrymple’s book “Spoilt rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality”, and he seems to be associated with conservatism. But he argues dialectically. That everything, if taken far enough, tends to become the very opposite of what was intended (sentimentality->brutality, political participation->mob rule and idiocracy) I think Engels said that? Also, why does Oprah run on (I dunno, Fox?) and not, say, Democracy Now! (I know American TV “networks” are different from European “channels”, but still, do you know what I mean?)
December 30, 2012 at 12:23 pm
forgot to say, I absolutely agree with him.
December 30, 2012 at 12:24 pm
I think Dalrymple is right. Well said.
December 30, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I think in this dichotomy, left vs. right and stuff, there is something which we’re all overlooking. The evil academic and political leftism must be a different beast altogehter from economic leftism which I think simply argues that noone should have to live under a bridge through no fault of their own and that an every-man-for-himself type society is bad. But then, I saw someone argue, that people’s readiness to uphold a social society with their taxes crucially depends on that society’s being homogenous. So, dialectics again…
December 30, 2012 at 12:28 pm
sorry, didn’t mean to create so many separate top-level comments. If you can, merge them, please
December 30, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Don’t worry about it; I don’t think there’s a way to merge them anyway.
December 30, 2012 at 9:47 pm
The media loves consumers, the 75-90 IQ range, that are disproportionately female or man boobed. Corporations that provide primary resources like Halliburton don’t care, since it’s out of their playing field. Service corporations that can get away with anything like Goldman Sachs just go along for the ride. Marketing corporations actively promote the idiocy because they benefit.
There isn’t much of a ground for opposition. Guns are a masculine product, thus something of a commodity that people just want or don’t. They aren’t a marketing sensitive good. The internet crowd that loves its Amazon and Drudge just wants the raw information, not an assessment of status or popularity in a product or belief.
It’s good to see Choctaw solidarity. Obama’s threats to make the Indian tribes accept descendents of former slaves as “members” reveal his real position towards them.
January 1, 2013 at 4:14 am
I take issue with the claim that the Amish are ‘not a tribe, but a religious group,’ as there is they are both an ethnic tribe and a religious group, as are Jews, and as Mormons were in the past.
This is one of your best articles, though. Thanks for writing. I’ve been a long time reader but this is my first post.
January 1, 2013 at 7:49 am
That thought, about the Amish, was lurking in the back of my mind when I wrote it.