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I& #39;ve been thinking about how the crack epidemic was portrayed by the media when I was growing up in the 80& #39;s in a very very white middle-class/upper-middle class suburb in the midwest, i.e. what I was ingesting about it.
I mostly remember scene after scene of kids in puffer jackets on the ground being arrested by police and/or emaciated black men/women with crack addictions sitting on a stoop obviously in a very bad way and bad point in their lives.
There was little context except the word & #39;poverty& #39; thrown around in unclear way. But implication was & #39;...well, they& #39;re kind of doing it to themselves.." & if it was more sympathetic there was underlying magnanimity to it (virtue signaling) that in retrospect is particularly gross
there was no context whatsoever, don& #39;t know if I ever ever heard the word "children" in relation to the 12, 13, 14 year old kids getting arrested--& I realize how grotesque this is--the implication _we_ (white people) tried to help but--sigh--look what _they_ (black people) do...
particularly--let me not hide from this--black me
sorry black men
OK so fast forward however many years I watch a fair amount of true crime, not a huge ton but a fair amount and I watch Cold Case shows
and I& #39;m thinking of the number of white guys I& #39;ve now seen who murdered, raped, stalked, kidnapped, beat their wives to death, conspired to abduct teenage girls to rape and torture them, burgled, stole, embezzled, defrauded, conned, ETC.
well, it& #39;s pretty remarkable
and I didn& #39;t even mention the serial killers, the complicit friends and police office, all the systems that didn& #39;t believe victims!
YAY. God, maybe I should stop watching these things.
anyway cold cases obviously take place in the past and plenty are from the 80& #39;s
and you just think...
Jesus where was the bad press?
for the white men?
I mean I& #39;m very likely preaching to the choir here
and true crime is a very specific lens to look through
but every once in a while you get struck by it, eh?
so the horrors of institutionalized racism, 80& #39;s style
I& #39;ll probably delete this thread because I could have put it better.
