May 1, 2023
All racism is bad, but some racism is more racist than others.
The shooting of Ralph Yarl captured the attention of a media addicted to a false narrative.
The black teen was shot by a white homeowner in Kansas City, Missouri after Yarl, who was looking for the house at which his younger brothers were waiting to be picked up, accidentally knocked on the wrong door. The elderly white homeowner, Andrew Lester, opened the door and immediately fired, claiming that he believed the teen was trying to enter his house.
This case and several others that happened within days of it—including one in which a 20-year-old woman drove into a driveway in rural upstate New York with a group of friends and was shot dead by the homeowner while exiting the property—are covered extensively in mainstream media in light of “stand your ground” laws. The debate over when an individual should be legally justified to use a firearm in self-defense on his own property Is charged and complicated, though one would be hard-pressed to realize that from mainstream media discussion of it with respect to the Yarl case. Here, media attention has skewed heavily in the direction of criticism of such laws.
The case has been put forward as evidence of the rampant racism in American society and the unfathomable harm it produces for blacks in this country.
It should go without saying that if the Yarl shooting story holds up in the details that are currently being reported then the shooter should be held criminally responsible. As is always the case, we will have to wait until an investigation happens before we can know with any clarity what should be done in the way of response from the criminal justice system.
But we perhaps do well to spend a little time on a question the media will not present to us. What is the context within which reporting on the Yarl case is taking place?
No comments:
Post a Comment