In 2013, Alicia Garza posted on Facebook in response to the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Community activist and friend, Patrice Cullors, commented in response, #BlackLivesMatter. This post would go on to inspire a movement, now considered to be one of if not the largest displays of collective action in U.S. History. However, at its onset, the Black Lives Matter was not as we know it today. Despite spikes in the use of the hashtag in 2013, and again in 2014, after the murder of Mike Brown and subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, it was not until this year, that protests racked the nation at an unprecedented rate. On June 6, 2020, after the deaths of George Floyd, over half a million people turned out to protest in 550 different locations. 40% of counties in the U.S held a protest, suggesting that the Black Lives Matter movement may be the largest in U.S. history. In some ways, many of the defining factors present in the peaks in 2013 and 2014 have remained the same: advances in technology allow for public depictions of police brutality and violence against people of color that can now be widespread and easily viewed by the public. As we have seen in the past (for example, the death of Emmett Till, police use of fire hoses, attack dogs, and excessive force during the Civil Rights Movement,  etc.,), egregious acts of violence, committed against those who are innocent and make not attempt to fight back, propel people to action. 

However, despite people turning out to protest at unparalleled rates, it is evident that neither the message nor the medium has changed. In particular, as dominant media has gathered around taglines in the past, ranging from King’s “I have a dream” to the modern Black Lives Matter, it shrinks the call for true equality into specific messages and goals (achievables). As DuBois articulated in his 1897 work The Conservation of Races, one way to look at race is as groups that are perpetually striving to put forth a particular message. In the modern era, media has deflected from the overarching call that Black Lives Matter to crafting a call to ‘defund the police’ as the particular message black people are striving to put out into the world. In so doing, dominant media reveals itself as a force that not only informs the public on anti-racist work, but that defines its purpose. Ultimately, dominant media has changed the intentionality of the call to defund the police from a phrase emblematic of true social, cultural, and economic equality to a much more minute and easily deflected goal.

Dominant media is able to shape social phenomena as the language used can alter absolute truth. This is a concept best explained through the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Throughout his scholarship, Emerson insists that absolute truth is critical to engage with the world in a meaningful way. In his seminal text American Scholar, Emerson highlights the importance of objectivity while acknowledging that society has strayed from this principle, stating that “the soul actively seeks absolute truth” but “man has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light, that can lead him back to his prerogatives. Men are become of no account. Men in history, men in the world of today are bugs, are spawn, and are called 'the mass' and the herd’.” Overall, Emerson posits that man has lost his morality, as he no longer seeks absolute truth; questions of hypocrisy and accountability taint the ability to stand of the side of justice and truth. This realization has direct implications for media in the way that language used shapes societal events. As media structures of our understanding of the world, such that it may limit our comprehension of absolute truth and racial injustice, it is our responsibility to rake our language, and to find the whole truth of racist action such that it may be eradicated. Emerson calls on us to do this in Emancipation of the British West Indies: “From the earliest time, the negro has been an article of luxury to the commercial nations. So has it been, down to the day that has just dawned on the world.  Language must be raked, the secrets of slaughter-houses and infamous holes that cannot front the day, must be ransacked, to tell what negro-slavery has been.” Emerson’s citation is potentially more relevant today, than when it was first written in 1844. Whereas Emerson asks us to consider the true atrocities of slavery, today, we must rake the language that was used to once again enact racial subjugation, post-emancipation. Gaps in language, for example the 13th amendment clause banning slavery except as punishment for a crime, permitted racist institutions to simply move underground, rather than disappear. Over time, these racist actions have become increasingly more apparent, but the rhetoric of dominant media continues to provide cover for them.

Knowing that dominant media is not impervious to bias, we must critique how the call to defund the police is presented. The protests that took place earlier in the year were often linked to negative terminology, such as ‘rioting’ and ‘looting.’ These associations preempt backlash to the anti-racist work being conducted. This idea is articulated in the work of Frederick Douglass The Right to Criticize American Institutions. While Douglass does not directly address media, his speech raises questions of epistemology and how it is that “the sins of the nation” must be presented. Decrying slavery, Douglass critiques the need for American comfort, stating ““Have you not irritated, have you not annoyed your American friends, and the American people rather, than done them good?” I admit that we have irritated them. They deserve to be irritated. I am anxious to irritate the American people on this question. As it is in physics, so in morals, there are cases which demand irritation, and counter irritation.” Douglass’s words are equally as applicable to the current call to defund the police. While many feel uncomfortable with the sentiment, fearing a society that does not adhere to ‘law and order’, Douglass would ask us if that irritation merits counter-irritation (‘rioting’, ‘looting’). Moreover, media has limited the original purpose of the black lives matter movement, isolating relations with policing. However media “cannot build your forts so strong, nor your ramparts so high, nor arm yourself so powerfully, as to be able to withstand the overwhelming MORAL SENTIMENT against slavery now flowing into this land.” Again, we see a parallel to modern times. Despite media attempts to construct the narrative around policing, they should not retain the ability to alter the truth, sustaining structures of institutional racism.

By discussing the call to defund the police through a lens of violence, dominant media centers the conversation on physical force, rather than the social factors that allow for it. In light of the murder of George Floyd, policing became the dominant focus of the Black Lives Matter movement. While this focus rightfully came about, as millions of America watched the police exert excessive force on peaceful protesters, the conversation was deeply rooted in violence against black and brown people. Images of protestors battered by less lethal weapons such as rubber bullets, flash bangs, tear gas, armored vehicles, etc. came to dominate our screens. ABC broadcasted protestors breaking curfew and clashes with police. Fox News replayed videos of violent protests and looting even as new content became available, and host Tucker Carlson claimed the protests had “little to do with racial inequality.” Videos across all platforms howed peaceful protesters pulled off sidewalks and beaten by police, elderly people violently attacked, and close-up shots of rubber bullet wounds. Protests have thus been criminalized and critiqued, reinforcing the need for policing in and of itself. The quintessential example of this is looting; amid the protests that occurred, looting was depicted as being equally as prevalent. Alongside images of peaceful demonstrations, came days of media coverage showing stores preparing for the wave of demonstrators. This creates a false equivalence between looting and protesting, that was then capitalized on by media, counter-demonstrators, and polarized sources. This pattern was also observed during the Ferguson protests, as stated by Vicky Osterweil in her 2014 piece, In Defense of Looting, “the dominant media is itself a tool of white supremacy: it repeats what the police deliver nearly verbatim and uncritically, even when the police story changes upwards of nine times, as it has thus far in the Brown killing.” Media reiterates occurrences of violence, even when the story changes, so as to support a dramatic, long-entrenched narrative. Violence evokes the need for policing and thus protesting becomes criminalized.

The call to defund the police then seems increasingly radical and unfeasible. The call to defund the police initially seems illogical, as it conjures an image of a lawless society; police are believed to maintain order. However, as mentioned earlier, this places the focus entirely on crime, rather than the social forces that enable it (as well as the organizations that may be better equipped to deal with them, in lieu of policing). In the words of Osterweil, “in working to correct the white-supremacist media narrative we can end up reproducing police tactics of isolating the individuals who attack property at protests” and later “the effect of this discourse is hardening a permanent category of criminality on black subjects who produce a supposed crime within the context of a protest.” As we embrace dominant media depictions of protesting, we internalize the narrative that black people are criminal, and that it is their actions that are problematic. The media fixation on looting and violence criminalizes protesting as deviant behavior, which in turn, creates a reluctance to eliminate police. However, this is not to condemn all media; at the same time as dominant media has dispersed information in line with the racist status quo, traditionally leisurely forms of media have risen as activist platforms. For example, social media platforms and comedy TV shows, have transcended their original intent as spaces of recreation and satire to talk back to dominant media, often articulating the true root of the problem. Speaking on Amy Cooper, George Floyd, and the Minneapolis people, late night host, Trevor Noah, stated “what’s really interesting about what’s happening in America right now is that a lot of people don’t seem to realize how dominoes connect, how one piece knocks another piece, that knocks another piece, and in the end creates a giant wave.” In this spotlight on policing, Noah acknowledges a key sentiment that other sources of media did not: policing is just one piece of a larger domino effect, wherein other social forces are at play. Therefore, while dominant media has critiqued the call to defund the police as radical, there are resources present for those who wish to open a dialogue around the topic.

While the call to defund the police is most definitely a sign of progress, the minimization of the call for complete social, economic, and cultural equality has condensed the scope of anti-racist work in the public eye, such that potential allies can sidestep true commitment to a just society. For example, institutions that do not establish clear political values face no backlash for doing so. By claiming fear of financial loss or property damage, companies can avoid engagement with societal issues or even enable them, by boarding up their stores in line with media advice. Companies that do choose to politicize their views, are not bound to action; they may follow up with financial resources, that may or may not work to benefit their bottom line, but have no significant shift in ideology. Similarly, the people we interact with in our daily lives may purport to decry racist actions and blatant violence, while remaining ignorant of their own racist behaviors. Moreover, those who do not stand against oppression and chaos, may retain their innocence, by supposedly standing on the side of law and order. In essence, it is critical to push back against dominant media and revisit what they would write off as violent, in order to build a better world. As Douglass asserts “they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters...power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.” The call to defund the police, combined with heightened participation in protesting, while indicative of growing resentment toward racist institutions, are just part of the demands that need to be made. Therefore, as we look to create a more just society, it is integral that we question the language of dominant media, remaining ever vigilant of whose story is truly being presented.