Essay On Whiteness

To have white privilege is to have the dominant image and the overall construct of the world (Dyer, 9). Whites have the luxury of mass representation in the media whereas racial minorities are constantly under or misrepresented. White Privilege isn't the amenity of possessing a natural given superiority and advantage over others, it is a systemic empowerment that originated as an “unearned entitlement” and later developed to an “unearned advantage” (Dyer, 3). This “unearned advantage” is widely displayed throughout the media; there is a blatant disparity in the way people of color are represented in comparison to whites. Whiteness is widely normalized to the extent that it is encrypted into our society allowing white dominance and power

People of color are confined by the constructed characterizations of their race or religion whereas white people have the luxury of belonging to the human race, (Dyer, 4). There is a stark disparity in the way black victims (of police brutality) and white criminals are represented in the media. African Americans are twice as likely to be portrayed as perpetrators of crime even when they are the victims in comparison to whites. They are also more likely to have mug shots displayed on news programs than that of white offenders (Dixon, Azocar, and Casas, 499). The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal titled the story of a white professor who was guilty of killing three colleagues as “Ala. Suspect Brilliant, but social misfit” whereas AL.com titled the story of a shooting death of a 25-year-old black man in Alabama as “Montgomery’s latest homicide victim had history of narcotics abuse, tangles with the law” (Wing). Furthermore, Staten Island Advance titled the story of a man in New York who allegedly killed his parents as “Son in Staten Island was Brilliant, Athletic-but his Demons were the Death of His Parents,” whereas one of NBC news on the death of Trayvon Martin was titled “Trayvon Martin was Suspended Three Times from School” (Wing). This wording fuels the

During the 1890s, Jim Crow laws were working to disenfranchise the African American community and the pre-Civil War image of the “happy slave” was replaced by a more violent figure (Rhodes, 36). Black women were displayed as the “servant mammy and wicked Jezebel” (Rhodes, 37-38). In addition to being misrepresented as subjugated women, black women are represented as perpetuating “defective genes, irreparable crack damage, and a deviant lifestyle to their children.” (Roberts, 3) Furthermore, Black mothers have been framed as “welfare mothers who "breeds" babies in order to increase the size of her government check and to avoid having to work” (Logan, 134). Due to the racial isolation of the ghetto created federal policies, police furiously look in ghettos for drug offenses rather than looking in suburban areas for drugs making people of color more vulnerable targets in the War on Drugs. (Alexander, 124) Often times, news outlets will cover drug raids where the SWAT teams are invade apartment buildings because drug raids in white suburban would be “political suicide” as there would be way more news coverage on this than the everyday target of poor urban neighborhoods, this would also undermine the racist frame that African Americans use drugs more than whites (Alexander, 124). These frames have been constructed to legitimize the status quo “characterized by continuing oppression and