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.