Subtle racism via headlines

The words people choose have a huge impact. I think the post yesterday about truth in medical advising was one fine example. Here is another.

While the prior post about the baby sale was meant to draw a mild chuckle, this one is much more fueled by anger and disgust.

There is no question questions of immigration, access to entitlements, and so forth are causing a great deal of tension right now in all of North America. In order to actively minimize tensions therefore we should be focusing on what is a unifying factor, not what divides us.

For example, there are simply names in the first article referenced. You might (read "probably did) infer a few things regarding heritage from the name...but it is not a conscious decision on the part of the author to make race or nationality part of the story. It is just a story about possible criminal and stupid behavior or possible neighborly behavior.

Compare that to this:

"Mexican woman held for allegedly selling five-month-old baby"

It does not even get into the story before pointing our that "hey this Mexican piece of Mexican human trash who sells babies is a terrible Mexican person. Hey, did I mention she is Mexican?"
Okay, so I am extrapolating a bit...but the entire tone of the article is pretty fairly represented. Count the number of times it identifies someone as Mexican. Actually just twice. But it makes certain to mention everyone involved is Mexican. Because, you know, if they weren't Mexican they wouldn't have done this? Uh...okay.

Frankly, their nationality is not germane to the article. It is only there to stir up prejudices and anger. It is in itself almost inherently racist in nature and it makes the entire tone of the article, starting with the headline, into something dark and dirty. It repulses me.

There are still plenty of good journalists out there. The author of this piece...and/or the editor who alloed it to be framed this way...are not part of that sub-group. They are pretty much pot stirrers who accentuate, guide and exacerberate racsim.

If you watch media reports you will find a lot of this sort of thing. "pro-choice" and "anti-abortion" gives a psychological edge. "Radical Republicans" is a regular phrase...but you never see it about Democrats. The beat goes on. The words chosen continue to show the media biases, intentionally or not, and in some cases...such as the story above...it is quite blatant. Shameful.