The verdict is in. The work continues.
Updated April 21, 2021, 11:41 a.m.
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Think back to 1965 debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr.
During that time, Buckleyâs major claim was that Black Americans were making too much of their plight and that the larger society (i.e., white America) was an easy and convenient target, and that furthermore, everyone experiences a measure of injustice.
Baldwin fired back and displayed with great mastery the convenient chimera that white America had constructed to shield itself and to obscure both the oppression and hypocrisy responsible for its success and what that success meant for the Black American status quo. The Moynihan Report of that same year was a prime example of that chimera.
When mass media exploded in the late 19th century, degrading images of Black Americans – as inferior, clownish and dangerous – saturated nearly every aspect of popular culture, from music to advertising.
The evolution of radio, film and television in the 20th century only amplified demeaning images, providing “proof” to white Americans of Black inferiority and a justification for denying them their rights.
Today, many of these same tired images persist and continue to feed baseless perceptions. A 2017 study showed that the news media continue to “inaccurately portray Black families as more poor, criminal and unstable than white families.”
When those malicious images first started to proliferate, Black Americans found an especially effective way to resist. They seized upon the camera to represent themselves, using photographs to depict who they really were. Seemingly a “magical instrument” for “the displaced and marginalized,” as critic bell hooks writes, the
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