Unit 12
A Case of "Severe Bias"
Patricia Raybon
1    This is who I am not. I am not a crack addict. I am not a welfare mother. I am not illiterate. I am not a prostitute. I have never been in jail. My children are not in gangs. My husband doesn’t beat me. My home is not a tenement. None of these things defines who I am, nor do they describe the other black people I’ve known and worked with and loved and befriended over these forty years of my life.
2    Nor does it describe most of black America, period.
3    Yet in the eyes of the American news media, this is what black America is: poor, criminal,
addicted, and dysfunctional. Indeed, media coverage of black America is so one-sided, so imbalanced that the most victimized and hurting segment of the black community － a small segment, at best － is presented not as the exception but as the norm. It is an insidious practice, all the uglier for its blatancy.
4    In recent months, I have observed a steady offering of media reports on crack babies, gang warfare, violent youth, poverty, and homelessness － and in most cases, the people featured in the photos and stories were black. At the same time, articles that discuss other aspects of American life － from home buying to medicine to technology to nutrition － rarely, if ever, show blacks playing a positive role, or for that matter, any role at all.
5    Day after day, week after week, this message － that black America is dysfunctional and unwhole － gets transmitted across the American landscape. Sadly, as a result, America never learns the truth about what is actually a wonderful, vibrant, creative community of people.
6    Most black Americans are not poor. Most black teenagers are not crack addicts. Most bl
ack mothers are not on welfare. Indeed, in sheer numbers, more white Americans are poor and on welfare than are black. Yet one never would deduce that by watching television or reading American newspapers and magazines. 
7    Why do the American media insist on playing this myopic, inaccurate picture game? In this game, white America is always whole and lovely and healthy, while black America is usually sick and pathetic and deficient. Rarely, indeed, is black America ever depicted in the media as functional and self-sufficient. The free press, indeed, as the main interpreter of American culture and American experience, holds the mirror on American reality － so much so that what the media say is is, even if it’s not that way at all. The media are guilty of a severe bias and the problem screams out for correction. It is worse than simply lazy journalism, which is bad enough; it is inaccurate journalism.
8    For black Americans like myself, this isn’t just an issue of vanity － of wanting to be seen in a good light. Nor is it a matter of closing one’s eyes to the very real problems of the urban underclass － which undeniably is disproportionately black. To be sure, problems be
setting the black underclass deserve the utmost attention of the media, as well as the understanding and concern of the rest of American society.
9    But if their problems consistently are presented as the only reality for blacks, any other experience known in the black community ceases to have validity, or to be real. In this scenario, millions of blacks are relegated to a sort of twilight zone, where who we are and what we are isn’t based on fact but an image and perception. That’s what it feels like to be a black American whose lifestyle is outside of the aberrant behavior that the media present as the norm.
10    For many of us, life is a curious series of encounters with white people who want to know why we are “different” from other blacks － when, in fact, most of us are only “different” from the now common negative images of black life. So pervasive are these images that they aren’t just perceived as the norm, they’re accepted as the norm.
11    I am reminded, for example, of the controversial Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing and the criticism by some movie reviewers that the film’s ghetto neighborhood isn’t populat
ed by addicts and drug pushers － and thus is not a true depiction.
12    In fact, millions of black Americans live in neighborhoods where the most common sights are children playing and couples walking their dogs. In my own inner-city neighborhood in Denver － an area that the local press consistently describes as “gang territory” － I have yet to see a recognizable “gang” member or any “gang” activity (drug dealing or drive-by shootings), nor have I been the victim of “gang violence”.
13    Yet to students of American culture － in the case of Spike Lee’s film, the movie reviewers － a black, inner-city neighborhood can only be one thing to be real: drug-infested and dysfunctioning. Is this my ego talking? In part, yes. For the millions of black people like myself － ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying Americans sort of等于什么－ the media’s blindness to the fact that we even exist, let alone to our contributions to American society, is a bitter cup to drink. And as self-reliant as most black Americans are － because we’ve had to be self-reliant － even the strongest among us still crave affirmation.

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