May 05, 2009

Indians stereotyped as criminals

Tim Giago:  Negative Native images in the newsYoung white minds watching the evening news night after night see these images of Native Americans in black and white jail uniforms, shackles binding their hands and legs, slowly shuffling from the jail cell to the court house and form an image of Native Americans that is illusionary in its depiction of Indians as criminals. They see these images every night and it slowly sinks into their malleable minds that all Indians are criminals.

It also creates an image of fear, loathing, and mistrust, an image of a race of people to be shunned or avoided. The Native American then becomes an object not only of fear, but an object to be ridiculed because, after all, why should they have any respect for a criminal?

The local daily newspaper has, more than once, published an article of a Native American achiever and right next to that article, a story about a vicious crime committed by a Native American. One story erases the other. The image of the achiever blends with the image of the criminal loser, and they become one. The story of the criminal supersedes that of the achiever.
The worst offender:The station most notorious for nightly visuals of Native Americans shackled hand and foot is the oldest station in Rapid City, KOTA-TV. KOTA is a subsidiary of Duhamel Broadcasting and in the past has had glimmers of objectivity when it came to its coverage of Native Americans. Helene Duhamel, the nightly news anchor and one of the family owners of the station should know better, but if one watched this station every night for one month these troubling, and I would go so far as to say racist, images would lead off the nightly news nearly 75 percent of the time. African Americans spoke up about this same treatment by television news years ago and did win many concessions.Comment:  That TV newscasts focus on crime and violence is well-known. "If it bleeds, it leads" is the industry mantra.

That this attitude perpetuates racial prejudice and stereotyping is also well-known. Here are some postings on the subject:

Off Balance:  Youth, Race & Crime in the NewsIn the experiments, audiences were chosen at random in a Los Angeles shopping mall to watch a news broadcast that contained a story with a close-up photo of an alleged murderer who was either a) African American or Hispanic; b) White or Asian; or c) no racial identity. A fourth control group saw a broadcast without a crime story. Researchers found that "a mere five-second exposure to a mug shot of African American and Hispanic youth offenders (in a 15-minute newscast) raises levels of fear among viewers, increases support for ‘get tough’ crime policies, and promotes racial stereotyping." While the stories with perpetrators of color increase fear among all viewers, White and Asian viewers have an increased desire for harsher punitive policies than African American or Hispanic audiences, who, the authors suggest, are reminded of injustice and prejudice by the crime stories. Thus, the authors argue, when mug shots of African Americans and Latinos are shown, local TV news crime stories expand the divide between racial groups. In a similar experiment, researchers found that students rated Black suspects as more guilty, deserving of punishment, more likely to commit future violence, and less likable than the White suspects, about whom they were given precisely the same information.

Survey research on racial stereotyping and crime helps explain the experimental findings. Researchers have found that when Blacks are placed in a violent context, Whites who hold stereotypical attitudes that consider African Americans generally violent (and lazy) were far more likely to believe that the Blacks were guilty and prone to violence. But the same people did not have the same reaction if Whites were the ones placed in the violent context.

Thus several researchers conclude that a discussion about crime in America is essentially a discussion about race. Evidence from a later study strongly supports that conclusion, as 60% of the people watching a news story without an image of a perpetrator falsely remembered seeing one, and in 70% of these cases they "remembered" the perpetrator as African American, even though they never saw him.
On local TV news, if it bleeds it (still) leads

In short, pictures of shackled Native prisoners serve roughly the same purpose that pictures of wild, savage Indians used to serve. They perpetuate the notion that "the others" (Indians, blacks, immigrants, gays, et al.) are out to get us (white Christian people). Therefore, we'd better increase the wealth and power of our masters so they can take care of us. Hence the Republican Party's emphasis: cut services to the poor, get tough on crime, eliminate constitutional rights, attack other countries before they attack us, and above all protect the military-industrial complex from the "little people."

For more on the subject, see America the Conservative and The Political Uses of Stereotyping.

Below:  What we fear will happen if we don't keep Indians on the reservation or in jail.

8 comments:

dmarks said...

"Hence the Republican Party's emphasis: cut services to the poor, get tough on crime, eliminate constitutional rights, attack other countries before they attack us, and above all protect the military-industrial complex from the "little people."

The so-called hardline Republican governor I am most familiar with steadily increased social services budgets throughout his 12 years. Social service spending also increased under President Bush. So much for the first one.

Tough on crime? I see the Dems emphasise this as much as Republicans (and the Dems get an often undeserved "soft on crime" repuation, imho).

Eliminate Constitutional rights? Well, Bush did sign McCain-Feingold (which guts the First Amendment), so I will give you that. But on the other side, you have a strong push to eliminate the Second Amendment (4 out of the 9 US Supreme Court Justices ruled in favor of nullifying it recently: the 4 considered to be Democratic/liberal).

Attack other countries before they attack us? You probably mean Iraq, which actually violated the cease-fire in many ways (including numerous military attacks on "us") before we finally retaliated. A good example of what you describe can instead be found during the Clinton administration. President Clinton was a Democrat, and he attacked another country (Serbia) without it having ever attacked us ever, in any way (nor did it even threaten to).

As for the last one, it is not very clear, but it does bring Robert Reich to mind.

dmarks said...

And back on topic: Injun Joe from "Tom Sawyer" comes to mind with this post.

Stephen said...

Oh man Rob's 'republicans evil, dems good' dualistic crap never fails to amuse me.

Melvin Martin said...

The Country's Most Racist Shithole

Giago is right on target for once regarding how Indian people, in the case of Pennington County jail inmates, are shown on Rapid City tv stations.

I do not know of anywhere else, even in jerkwater burgs like RC, where jail birds are displayed in such a graphic manner to local audiences.

In Rapid City, the tv stations in question are seemingly engaged in the active and aggressive dissemination of extremely negative imagery of Indian people by an almost daily depiction of Indians incarcerated for even minor offenses.

At the RC jail, the inmates are shackled together in a huge chain gang as they are led to their court hearings. The accused are shown in almost extreme close-ups as they exit one door to enter another as the camera then lingers for several moments on other Indians who are chained together.

Clearly, the intent here with this type of video footage is to cast Indian people in as bad a light as possible for local consumption. I, for one, truly believe that these tv atations are working hand-in-hand with the racist powers-that-be in Rapid City in the on-going campaign to racially oppress Indian people, and to render all Indians there as wholly undesirable and not worthy of living in the community.

dmarks said...

Melvin: Does any of this spill over into the web sites of the RC tv stations? Sounds horrendous

Melvin Martin said...

Dmarks: To answer your question, yes, various stories that cast Indians in an extremely bad light are often found on the stations' web sites.

Melvin

P.S. - I just submitted a mini-essay that expands upon this post as my comment here is "kinda crappy."

I hope Rob posts it in a timely manner while there is still this desperately needed focus on racism in Rapid City.

Have a kickass day!

Unknown said...
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aloha said...

My concern is the young indian boy who sees these images over and over again. The impact that these images have on the young is tragic and a the real crime!