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As shown across this network, I included a few of the notable social implications that stem from the depiction of minorities within the media. These highlighted examples showcase just a few of the countless implications that exist due to misguided media representation.
Despite the racial "progress" we have experienced as a society, there are still clear examples of racism that go unnoticed in society. Political cartoons (of the past and present), the tropes we see in television, the media headlines we read, the books we show our children, and the commodification of heritage and culture, create and reinforce stereotypes that create untrue social identities of people of color. These stereotypes aid in the creation of racist ideals that impact our education system, healthcare systems, financial systems, representation/leadership, and many other important parts of our society. They reinforce ideals of white supremacy in an already whitewashed society.

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Treatment of White vs. Black individuals in News Media

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Treatment of White vs. Black individuals in News Media

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White mass shooters receive sympathetic media treatment

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White mass shooters receive much more sympathetic treatment in the media than black shooters, according to a new study that analyzed coverage of 219 attacks.Findings showed that white shooters were 95 percent more likely to be described as “mentally ill” than black shooters.Even when black shooters…

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Showcased by the original works that artist Alexandra Bell reconstructs, media depictions of minority individuals often reinforce the untrue narratives of Black individuals as "dangerous" or "uncivilized."

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As a white, cis-gendered female, I am in an extremely privileged position within this wide-spanning network. Despite my research and active participation to learn more about topics of racism, I recognize that I will never be able to understand the impact or implications that media depictions place on people of color.
When exploring the artists and examples (from the past, and today), this project helps me to realize my part within this network. Like our class readings have mentioned, racism is like a fog that constantly exists in the air. As a white individual, I must do my part to be actively anti-racist within society and educate myself and others on relevant topics concerning race in society. I must actively reevaluate the things I have learned in my past, and the way this has shaped my identity. By acknowledging my own flaws, and researching ways to combat them, I can attempt to clean some of the fog in the air. This work impacts the way I view the world, and how I create meaning of what I see in the media. Especially during this time in our society, I feel as though this work showcases the active (and somewhat cautious) attitude that we should have when consuming media. This network (which doesn't even include all minority identities) makes me more aware of the privilege I have experienced throughout my life, and how others do not get the same treatment that I often take for granted.

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Note: These are only a few examples of the racist depictions/narratives minority groups across America.

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Note: These are only a few examples of the racist depictions/narratives minority groups across America.

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Many other harmful examples exist that are not explicitly explored in this project, including other minority identities. This also goes to show how the social identities of these individuals cannot be limited to the media's depiction of them.
There exists a very common theme over time of whitewashing the cultures of people of color in education, television, media, history, etc. The artists I have included are working towards combatting that sort of cultural degradation in order to reclaim the narratives in our society.

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"Native American Adult Halloween Costume" 

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"Native American Adult Halloween Costume" 

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This is a current "costume" posting for sale at Walmart.
It speaks to the stereotypical misrepresentation of Native American culture in American society and commodification of their heritage.

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current price $29.99

was $42.99

1920 Flapper Dress Rainbow Backless Skirt Gatsby for Women Halloween Costume, 20s Dress Costume Fabulous Cosplay Accessories, Size S Small

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This Native American Adult Halloween Costume is very authentic looking. Included with the outfit is the dress, boot tops, a belt, an armband, a choker and a headpiece. The components of this adult women's costume work together to let you quickly and easily transform into an Native American maiden. It is made of a poly-cotton blend. Due to seasonal volume, please review shipping/delivery date options closely.

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Native American Adult Halloween Costume - Walmart.com

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current price $29.99 was $42.99 1920 Flapper Dress Rainbow Backless Skirt Gatsby for Women Halloween Costume, 20s Dress Costume Fabulous Cosplay Accessories, Size S Small Similar items you might like Check out these related products About this item This Native American Adult Halloween Costume is very authentic looking.

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Dr. Seuss is a beloved icon who also drew some extremely racist stuff

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from Practices of Looking
• Speaks to the displacement of Native Americans across the country, and the dissolution of Indigenous culture and heritage.
• Aligns with work of Bobby C. Martin, Wendy Red Star, and Nicholas Galanin.

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from Practices of Looking
• Lack of agency within human interpretations through media agendas.

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from Practices of Looking

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from Practices of Looking
• Relates to the impact of power on constructed images of people of color.
• What people were in positions of power at the time? How did these people further notions of social identity?

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• Constructed the Hollywood idea of the "Wild West" and cowboy narrative of Native American culture.

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The Grass Fire, 1908
• Early example of how the concept of "Indians" and "Cowboys" became linked.
• Furthered the stereotypes we often see in films of a "lawless" and "wild west" environment.

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Never Forget, 2021
• Reference to the old "HOLLYWOODLAND" sign which formerly promoted a land development area strictly for white people only.
• Work to aid in land repatriation to Indigenous peoples.

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Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to Indian Country Today
COACHELLA VALLEY, California - The letters tower 45 feet above a picturesque swath of desert on the edge of the Santa Monica Mountains in southern California, defiantly sending out a message for the world.

INDIAN LAND.

It's a subtle reference to the HOLLYWOOD sign just two hours away - a sign that once spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND to promote a development for whites only. But it carries a not-so-subtle message, too: Stolen lands should be returned.

The installation, entitled "Never Forget," by artist Nicholas Galanin, is one of 13 pieces from an array of artists commissioned for the Desert X 2021 exhibition, which debuted March 12 and is set to run through July 6. It is produced by The Desert Biennial, a nonprofit group that installs recurring international art exhibitions based on the principles of the Land Art movement that emerged in the 1960s.

Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist and musician, goes beyond sending a message of land repatriation, however. He is working to raise funds to acquire titles to transfer lands to local Indigenous communities, and has set up a GoFundMe account to help purchase the land near "Never Forget" so it can be returned to the local Cahuilla tribe.

Nicholas Galanin, Tlingit and Unangax̂. The latest work from artist Nicholas Galanin draws attention to land that once was home to the Cahuilla people. The artwork, part of the Desert X 2021 installation, will be on site in southern California through July 6, 2021. (Photo courtesy of Native Arts and Cultures Foundation)

"Over the years I have worked with land issues, and this was an ideal subject to pair with place, as it is close to Hollywood, California, and I could make a statement of that," Galanin said, from his home studio in Sitka, Alaska.

"The entertainment industry is here from the other Hollywoodland, so I was allowed to pick the place, and challenge land ownership," he said. "This is a brand new piece; it was constructed on site in the desert. I hope it will travel to other locations after this that need attention, as it will have a different meaning in different spaces. I invite the viewer to participate in what this means."
Ancestral lands
Desert X paid tribute to the tribe in a recent statement on its website and on the GoFundMe site.

"We acknowledge the Cahuilla People as the original stewards of the land on which Desert X takes place," the organization said. "We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with the Indigenous people in this place. We pay our respect to the Cahuilla People, past, present and emerging, who have been here since time immemorial."

With balmy weather, picturesque mountains and hot springs, the valley had been the longtime home to the Cahuilla and Morongo Indians when the HOLLYWOODLAND sign went up in the early 1920s.

An art installation by Nicholas Galanin sits at the entrance to the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation in southern California. The installation is part of 13 pieces as part of Desert X 2021 in Coachella Valley, and is set to remain in place until July 6, 2021. (Photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X)

By then, Palm Springs was becoming a vacation spot for the film industry, since studio contracts limited actors' travel.

The location for "Never Forget" is tied to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, whose current land ownership is a complicated checkerboard pattern scattered across Palm Springs. The artwork sits at an entrance to the Cahuilla reservation.
Related: Want to see the other artwork in Desert X 2021? See for yourself
The region is heavily invested in tourism, hot springs resorts, golf and the arts, and home to two large, annual concerts, Coachella and Stagecoach.

The fundraiser so far has raised about $18,000 of the $300,000 it hopes to reach. Officials with the Cahuilla tribe, after several requests, said they were reserving comment.

The Cahuilla tribal citizens have lived in the Palm Springs area for thousands of years, calling it Sec-he, for boiling water, for the hot mineral springs. The Spaniards called it agua caliente, which means hot water.

In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant set aside lands for the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, which was expanded by President Rutherford B. Hayes to more than 30,000 acres. Allotments of land to members was finalized in 1959. All combined, the tribe remains the largest single land owner in Palm Springs, according to the tribal website.

The Agua Caliente Band, a federally recognized tribe, operates two 18-hole golf courses and casinos in Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage.
Decades of protest
The Morongo Band of Mission Indians, also a federally recognized tribe, make their home on the 35,000-acre Morongo Indian Reservation, which sits closer to Los Angeles in the Morongo Valley at the feet of the San Gorgonio and San Jacinto mountains.

The Morongo reservation was also created by order of Grant in 1876. The tribe is now the largest private sector employer in the region, operating non-gaming businesses and the $250-million Morongo Casino, Resort and Spa, which is considered one of the largest tribal gaming facilities in the country, according to the tribe's website.

Galanin says that the "Never Forget" installation, in word and location, "refuses to legitimize the settler occupation."

Though the installation is sanctioned, well-funded and curated, the words INDIAN LAND have a storied history.

The use of the words dates back to at least the occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971, when the beginnings of the American Indian Movement took over the abandoned federal prison on an island near San Francisco. They painted INDIAN LAND in red paint on the outer walls of the prison to proclaim the takeover.

In 2016, Native artist Jaque Fragua, on a dare and as homage, painted over a temporary white-paneled construction wall at the corner of South Eighth and Main streets in Los Angeles with eight-foot-tall red letters, "This Is Indian Land."

"It was just a clear-sighted statement," he has said of the street art, "but people thought it was a threat. It was pretty abrasive and aggressive and raw. It had this edgy feel to it, so people thought it was violent. I didn't think anything of it, besides, 'I did a civic duty.'"

The words surfaced again in 2016 in protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Randall Akee, associate professor of public policy and American Indian Studies at the University of California, teaches that reparations can begin by ceding the land back to those who were thrown off of it.

"The origin of being Indigenous," he says, "is location and ties to the land. The theft of land has immediate consequences for communities and individuals. It means eviction and removal."

The Land Back movement - which attempts to acquire title to land and return it to communities - has been surging in recent years, with courts increasingly recognizing tribal claims to lands unfairly taken.

The Land Back movement, though, is not about removing people who live there but about recognizing and respecting Indigenous sovereignty, organizers said.

In a statement on his GoFundMe page, Galanin calls for collective action.
'To be alive'
"As Indigenous people we are responsible to the land we come from, to care for and protect it - for our grandchildren's grandchildren, and for all life who would call this land home," he said.

Galanin has a forthcoming artist's book dedicated to "Never Forget," that has been in development over the past three years, with photographs by Lance Gerber. A portion of the sales will go toward Galanin's campaign.

Galanin works in various media, from sculpture and video to engraving and taxidermy.

He is a carver and educator, making canoes rooted in tradition and passing the knowledge and craft along.

He is also a musician, whose band, Ya-Tseen, released its debut album, "Indian Yard," on April 30 on the SubPop label. "Close the Distance" is the first single off the album, the latest project from Otis Calvin III, Zak D. Wass and Galanin.

Ya-Tseen is a nod to Galanin's heritage.

"The Tlingit title, Ya Tseen, means to be alive," Galanin said. "Using language ... it's such a core of our ways of being and thinking. I am always trying to implement or engage in language when I can even though I'm not really the speaker of the language. But I'm always a student."

He can also be seen in the new documentary film, "Love and Fury," by Seminole/Creek filmmaker Sterlin Harjo. The film follows Galanin around his hometown as he makes wooden canoe carvings, engraves metal, and in a striking segment, hunts a seal in the harbor and butchers it in his garage.
Sending a message
His works are in more than 20 museum collections.

He has exhibited at the Sydney Biennale, 2020, in Australia; the Whitney Biennial, 2019, New York; and a 2020 solo show at Peter Blum Gallery in New York. In 2018, his work was included in "Unsettled: Art on the New Frontier" at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

During a recent day in early May at the "Never Forget" installation, the white lettering stood in the blazing sun in startling, stark relief against the brown landscape.

A band of jet-black crows had taken up residence on the support scaffolding, cawing and flitting around the art.
IF YOU GO...
For many Native people, the crow is considered a symbol of rebirth and change, with a message for the future - a message that is not lost on Galanin.

"'Never Forget' marks what it is," he says, on his fundraising page. "It is also a beacon for the future."

The "Never Forget" art installation, part of Desert X 2021, will remain in place through at least July 6, 2021, at 2901 N. Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs, north of the Palm Springs Visitors Center at Tramway Road.

Other Desert X installations are based at locations throughout Coachella Valley. They can be seen from sunrise to sunset, and admission is free.

For more information visit DesertX.org.

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Art installation calls for return of Native lands

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Sandra Hale Schulman Special to Indian Country Today COACHELLA VALLEY, California - The letters tower 45 feet above a picturesque swath of desert on the edge of the Santa Monica Mountains in southern California, defiantly sending out a message for the world. INDIAN LAND.

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"In the Face of History" series, 2018
• Work in which the head of a black woman is placed over a historically significant document.
• Speaks to the lack of Black women included in narratives of progress.

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Olympic Threat, 2017
• Reconstruction of media headlines/covers that accurately showcases historical events.
• Showcases the constructed media notion that Black individuals are "dangerous."

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Children of the Large-Beaked Bird, 2014
• Annotated images from the historic 1880 Crow Peace Delegation that give context to the cultural depictions (and lack thereof) in portraits of former leaders in the Crow tribe.

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Public Fascination with "Gone With the Wind" despite Racist Tropes

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Public Fascination with "Gone With the Wind" despite Racist Tropes

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PSU Fan Letter Criticizing Johnathan Sutherland's Dreadlocks

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PSU Fan Letter Criticizing Johnathan Sutherland's Dreadlocks

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• Details a real letter written by Penn State University alumni that criticize the appearance of football player, Johnathan Sutherland.

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A Penn State fan sent a racist letter to safety Jonathan Sutherland criticizing his dreadlocks.

Fellow safety C.J. Holmes posted a photo of the letter on Twitter on Monday. It said:
"Dear Jonathan, "My wife and I are proud 'older' graduates of Penn State. We follow all Penn State sports; football, wrestling, volleyball, gymnastics, basketball. We love it all. I played all the sports in my younger days; still played full-court basketball into my 50's. Loved the competition but never had the size or talent to reach your level, though the desire was there! "Though the athletes of today are certainly superior to those in my days; we miss the clean cut young men and women from those days. Watching the Idaho game on TV, we couldn't help but notice your-well-awful hair. Surely there must be mirrors in the locker room! Don't you have parents or a girlfriend who have told you those shoulder-length dreadlocks look disgusting and are certainly not attractive. "We congratulate you on your game against Pitt, but you need to remember you represent all Penn Staters both current and alumni from years past. We would welcome the reappearance of dress code for athletes. "You will certainly be playing 'on Sunday' in the future but we have stopped watching the NFL due to the disgusting tattoos, awful hair and immature antics in the end zone. Players should act as though they've 'been there before.' [sic]"
"I also have locs, Tats, and NFL dreams too, these messages can not be tolerated, this was extremely inappropriate, racially biased, and selfish to feel like you even have a right to send this message," Holmes said on Twitter about the letter.

Other football players called out the letter's message on Twitter, including former NFL linebacker James Laurinaitis, who said he received some "awful letters" during his playing days at Ohio State.

"This is pathetic but I'm not surprised. I got a couple awful letters after I got tattoos before sophomore year from OSU 'fans' too, letting me know how disappointed they were in my decision."

Sutherland has yet to address the letter on social media.

The Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown, Penn. contacted the letter writer, David Peterson, on Tuesday. Peterson, who graduated from Penn State in 1966 with a degree in speech pathology, said it "was not the intent" to make a racial or political statement.

"I would just like to see the coaches get the guys cleaned up and not looking like Florida State and Miami guys," he told the newspaper.

Penn State coach James Franklin addressed the media over the letter on Tuesday.

"The football that I know and love brings people together and embraces differences," he said. "Black, white, brown, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. Rich or poor, rural or urban, Republican or Democrat. Long hair, short hair, no hair. They're all in that locker room together. Teams all over this country are the purest form of humanity that we have."

Franklin later added: "Jonathan Sutherland is one of the most respected players in our program. He's the ultimate example of what our program is all about."

Sandy Barbour, Penn State's vice president for intercollegiate athletics, shared her support for Sutherland on social media on Tuesday.

"I stand with our Penn State student athletes and appreciate how they represent PSU in competition, in the classroom and in the community," he said. "Their dress, tattoos, or hairstyle has no impact on my support, nor does their gender, skin color, sexuality or religion!"

Penn State also released a statement on Monday night:

"At Penn State we strive to create an atmosphere that promotes inclusivity and respect. The well-being of students, faculty and staff members is the University's priority," the university said, per pennlive.com. "As part of this, Penn State provides a range of assistance and resources for students and employees, and we encourage any community member who needs support to reach out."

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Penn State Fan Sends Letter to Safety Over Dreadlocks

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A Penn State fan sent a racist letter to safety Jonathan Sutherland criticizing his dreadlocks. Fellow safety C.J. Holmes posted a photo of the letter on Twitter on Monday. It said: "Dear Jonathan, "My wife and I are proud 'older' graduates of Penn State. We follow all Penn State sports; football, wrestling, volleyball, gymnastics, basketball.

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Emigrant Indians #1, 2018
• Displacement of American Indians from their own land.

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An Indigenous group said the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly children, had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan.

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transcript

Unmarked Graves of Indigenous Children Are Found in Canada

Leaders of an Indigenous group said on Thursday that they had discovered the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, at the site of a former school in Saskatchewan.

In 1898, the Marieval Residential School opened its doors and it closed its doors, in 1996. The Roman Catholic Church overseeing the gravesite, the Catholics and the prayer and religion overseeing the grave site, we started our radar-penetrating research on June the 2nd of 2021. As of yesterday, we have hit 751 unmarked graves. Of the 751 hits the machine has a 10 to 15 percent error percentage. So we will only go by the hits that we have of 751. But we do know there's at least 600. We cannot affirm that they are all children. But there are oral stories that there are adults in this grave site as well. An assault on a First Nation people - we are proud people. The only crime we ever committed as children was being born Indigenous. A lot of work, a lot of healing will take place. There are many sites that we're going to be doing this similar work. And we will find more.

Leaders of an Indigenous group said on Thursday that they had discovered the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, at the site of a former school in Saskatchewan. Credit Credit... Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations

CALGARY, Alberta - For decades, the Indigenous children were taken from their families, sometimes by force, and housed in crowded, church-run boarding schools, where they were abused and prohibited from speaking their languages. Thousands vanished altogether.

Now, a new discovery offers chilling evidence that many of the missing children may have died at these schools: The remains of as many as 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, were found at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan, an Indigenous group said on Thursday.

The burial site, the largest one to date, was uncovered only weeks after the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former church-run school for Indigenous students in British Columbia.

The discoveries have jolted a nation grappling with generations of widespread and systematic abuse of Indigenous people, many of whom are survivors of the boarding schools. For decades, they suggested through their oral histories that thousands of children disappeared from the schools, but they were often met with skepticism. The revelations of two unmarked grave sites are another searing reminder of this traumatic period in history.

"This was a crime against humanity, an assault on a First Nation people," said Chief Bobby Cameron, of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, the provincial federation of Indigenous groups. "The only crime we ever committed as children was being born Indigenous," he said.

The burial site also puts new pressure on the current government of Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, which even today relies on a set of laws that govern the lives of Indigenous people that date back to the 19th century. Indigenous leaders say they hope the latest revelationswill be a catalyst for their long sought-after self-governance.

"We are tired of being told what to do and how to do it," said Chief Cadmus Delorme, of the Cowessess First Nation.

The recent unearthing of remains in Canada has reverberated globally, including in the United States, where this week the interior secretary said the country would search federal boarding schools for possible burial sites of Native American children. Hundreds of thousands of them were forcibly taken from their communities to be culturally assimilated in the schools for more than a century.

Image

A memorial for the 215 children whose remains were discovered on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Credit... Amber Bracken for The New York Times

It is unclear how the children died at the schools, which were buffeted by disease outbreaks a century ago, and where children faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse and violence. Some former students of the schools have described the bodies of infants born to girls impregnated by priests and monks being incinerated.

Both schools were part of a system started in the 19th century that took Indigenous children from their families.

A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2008 to investigate the residential schools, called the practice " cultural genocide." Many children never returned home, and their families were given only vague explanations of their fates, or none at all. Canada had about 150 residential schools and an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children passed through the schools between their opening, around 1883, and their closing in 1996.

The commission estimated that about 4,100 children went missing nationwide from the schools. But an Indigenous former judge who led the commission, Murray Sinclair, said in an email this month that he now believed the number was "well beyond 10,000."

Local Indigenous leaders on Thursday demanded an inquiry into what they called a "genocide," and called for the church and the government to turn over all records related to the administration of the schools.

Chief Delorme also called for Pope Francis to apologize, saying that the Roman Catholic Church needed to address its actions.

"The incredible burden of the past is still with us, and the truth of that past needs to come out, however painful," Don Bolen, the Archbishop of Regina, wrote in a letter Thursday addressed to the Cowessess group. He apologized and pledged to "do what we can to turn that apology into meaningful concrete acts."

The discovery in Saskatchewan was made by the Cowessess First Nation at the Marieval Indian Residential School, about 87 miles from the provincial capital, Regina.

Search teams using a ground-penetrating radar on a grave site near the former grounds of Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan. Credit... Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations

Chief Delorme said that his Indigenous community, spurred by the discovery at Kamloops and in conjunction with technical teams from Saskatchewan Polytechnic, began combing the area using ground penetrating radar on June 2, hitting as many as 751 unmarked graves. He said he expected more bodies would be found.

While it is not clear how the discovery of the remains will be investigated, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan said that next steps, including the potential involvement of the force, would depend on the wishes of the Indigenous group's leaders.

"Our actions must be respectful of the immense grief the people of Cowessess First Nation continue to suffer. We know we have enforced racist and discriminatory legislation and policies," a police spokesman said in an email.

For Canada's 1.7 million Indigenous citizens, who make up about 4.9 percent of the population, the finding of yet another mass burial site is a visceral reminder of centuries of discrimination and abuse, which has led to intergenerational trauma among survivors of residential schools and their families.

"There's no denying this: All of the stories told by our survivors are true," Chief Cameron said.

Florence Sparvier, 80, an elder of the Cowessess First Nation, said she attended two residential schools, including Marieval, the school where the unmarked remains were found.

"They were very condemning about our people," she said of the nuns at the schools. "They told us our people, our parents, our grandparents didn't have a way to be spiritual because we were all heathens."

Mr. Trudeau on Thursday called the discoveries in Saskatchewan and British Columbia "part of a larger tragedy," citing the legacies of "systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice that Indigenous peoples have faced."

In September 2017, Mr. Trudeau acknowledged the nation's past "humiliation, neglect and abuse" of Indigenous people, and vowed in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly to improve their lives.

When Mr. Trudeau took office in 2015, he made the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 recommendations a top priority. But progress has been slow, in part because some of them are beyond the federal government's control.

When the commission tried to look into the question of missing Indigenous children in 2009, the Conservative government at the time turned down its request for money to finance searches. Since the Kamloops discovery at the end of May, several Canadian governments have offered to pay for searches.

A convoy of vehicles driving past the Kamloops Indian Residential School after the remains of more than 200 children were found buried there in unmarked graves earlier this month. Credit... Cole Burston/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

On Tuesday, the federal government announced that it would provide just under 4.9 million Canadian dollars (about $3.9 million) to Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan to search for graves. The provincial government previously committed 2 million Canadian dollars ($1.6 million).

Like Kamloops, the Marieval school, which opened in 1899, was operated for most of its history by the Roman Catholic Church for the government of Canada. A marked cemetery still exists on the grounds of the school, which closed in 1997 and was subsequently demolished.

The commission called for a papal apology for the role of the church, which operated about 70 percent of the schools. (The rest were run by Protestant denominations.) But despite a personal appeal from Mr. Trudeau to the Vatican, Pope Francis has still not taken that step. By contrast, the leadership of the United Church of Canada, the country's largest Protestant denomination, apologized in 1998 for its role in running the schools.

Since the Kamloops announcement, Chief Cameron said, he has been traveling around the province, where farming and mining are major industries, looking at former school sites.

"You can see with your plain eye the indent of the ground where these bodies are to be found," he said in an interview Wednesday night. "These children are sitting there, waiting to be found."

Vjosa Isai in Toronto contributed reporting.

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Hundreds More Unmarked Graves Found at Former Residential School in Canada

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An Indigenous group said the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly children, had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan. CALGARY, Alberta - For decades, the Indigenous children were taken from their families, sometimes by force, and housed in crowded, church-run boarding schools, where they were abused and prohibited from speaking their languages.

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• Can be debated whether or not the connection was intentional.
• Furthers this notion that Black Americans are "violent" or "animalistic."

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"Stolen" series
• Artist dedicated certain number of minutes to each portrait that coincides with the number of years they were alive.
• Portraits remain purposely incomplete, to showcase the incomplete lives of those who were unjustly killed by police.

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Stolen, the incomplete illustrations by Adrian Brandon | Collater.al

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Stolen is the illustration series created by Adrian Brandon to honour black people who are victims of police abuse. Find out more!

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'dehumanizing and racist' native american leaders decry braves' 'tomahawk chop' ahead of world series game in atlanta  - cnn

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'Dehumanizing' and 'racist.' Native leaders decry Braves' 'Tomahawk chop' ahead of World Series game in Atlanta

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Native groups and advocates are demanding that the Atlanta Braves eliminate the "Tomahawk chop" symbol and gesture from its branding and game day traditions, saying the team is perpetuating racist stereotypes as the Braves take the national stage in the World Series.

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No matter the sport, fans' love for the game-and for their favorite team-runs deep. That love fuels family traditions, community rivalries and hours of tune-in time. It's also a love that's central to American culture. But what happens when that sense of connection comes at the expense of a culture or heritage that has endured centuries of harm in the name of Americana? For many Native Americans, the appropriation of sacred symbols and propagation of stereotypes have been par for the course in American sports at professional, collegiate and K-12 levels. But many of today's fans are saying it doesn't have to stay that way.

Fans applaud the shift away from the appropriation of Native American culture as mascots. In fact, a recent Nielsen Fan Insights survey in collaboration with IllumiNative found that 46% of respondents believe teams are doing the right thing by changing their names and stopping the use of culturally insensitive mascots. For example, after years of pressure, the Washington Football Team finally retired the use of its former name and logo in 2020. The Cleveland Indians made a similar move at the start of the 2019 baseball season when it stopped using its former mascot, Chief Wahoo.

But 45% of fans want sports teams to do more than just stop using culturally insensitive mascots and names. They want them to end the appropriation of Native American culture as well, citing the harm it does to the community and the damaging emotional effects on Native Americans. And much of the appropriation starts in school sports, which the American Psychological Association says establishes an unwelcome and oftentimes hostile learning environment for American Indian students that affirms negative images/stereotypes that are then promoted in mainstream society.

The response to evolving consumer sentiment is also evolving, as the Cleveland Indians took their stance a step beyond retiring its old mascot when it announced in December of last year that it will change its name, which is perceived as more neutral in nature than its former mascot. The phased evolution of the team's persona reflects how consumers have shifted from intolerance about offensive mascots to intolerance about any cultural appropriation at all.

In some instances, sports organizations and teams had good intentions, using Native American culture and mascots to honor the community. Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee), founder and CEO of IllumiNative, explains that what is intended as an honor can often have a demoralizing effect. "Native Americans are the only group being used as sports mascots, depicting our Native American communities not as people, but as 'other'. It's dehumanizing and objectifying."

Not only do fans recognize that sports mascots are the primary means by which Native American cultures are represented on television, 50% of respondents in our recent survey acknowledged that options to see Native American culture or people are represented on TV were limited-especially in contemporary roles and not just historical context. Outside of team names and logos, Native peoples' share of screen stands at just 0.27%-a figure about one-sixth the presence of Native Americans in the U.S. population today. Increased news coverage has broadened awareness of ongoing policy issues such as voting access and land rights, but when audiences seek out scripted content on TV that includes Native Americans, representation of Native American talent in lead roles is less than 1% in multiple TV genres:

More needs to be done to expand representation of Native Americans on their terms. And when it comes to championing social issues, sports are leading the way. Nielsen Sports Managing Director Jon Stainer says the changing tide is another opportunity for pro sports teams: "Sports fans want more from the teams they love-beyond watching their favorite teams play their best, fans want their teams to represent their values. The racial reckoning in the U.S. has created a greater awareness, and sports fans expect their favorite teams to stand up for underrepresented communities and take a stand against cultural appropriation of Native Americans."
Trading cultural appropriation in sports for the visibility that Native Americans deserve-representation that is defined by and not dictated to Native peoples-is a long overdue way to truly honor this underrepresented population.

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More than Mascots: It's Time to End Cultural Appropriation of Native Americans in Sports

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No matter the sport, fans' love for the game-and for their favorite team-runs deep. That love fuels family traditions, community rivalries and hours of tune-in time. It's also a love that's central to American culture. But what happens when that sense of connection comes at the expense of a culture or heritage that has endured centuries of harm in the name of Americana?

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Political Cartoon examining Cultural Appropriation of Native Americans

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Political Cartoon examining Cultural Appropriation of Native Americans

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• Mascots of "warriors" and "savages" do nothing but perpetuate untrue stereotypes of Native American culture.
• Repurposing of war imagery does not celebrate Indigenous culture or show respect.

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I was a sophomore in high school, about 15 years old, when a rather hostile group of cheerleaders and football players cornered me, yelling, as I sat on a bench in the quad between classes. "Don't you have school pride?" a cheerleader shouted. "You should feel proud! We're honoring your people!" one football player hollered.

I was the only Native American (as far as I knew) at Woodbridge High School in Irvine, California. Irvine is a planned city in Southern California and one of the safest cities in the United States, but I didn't feel safe that day.

I had met one-on-one with the principal, my guidance counsellor, a few teachers and several students to share my negative feelings toward our school's mascot - an anonymous Native American "warrior" with long, flowing, jet-black hair, a large nose and huge muscles. I guess I thought if I made it known that I felt appropriating Native American imagery was offensive, they'd stop. I was outnumbered, though, and my personal feelings didn't matter. But that's the thing: As Native people, especially as urban Natives (what we Indigenous people living in urban centers call ourselves), we are almost always outnumbered. So, we go unnoticed and unheard. Our opinions never really matter.

Students wore goofy, cartoonish costumes of our mascot (and his equally tasteless "warrior princess" girlfriend) at pep rallies and games. The pair would dance and do occasional acrobatic moves, as they made their grand entrance to the deafening sounds of the school's marching band, playing the quintessential Hollywood fight song that, for me at least, conjures up images of a scene from an old Western movie: "savage" Indians on horseback approaching a village of settlers...Uh-oh, there must be trouble.

Spectators always stood for the song and sliced the air with their arms. I'm sure you've seen it, or done it yourself -- the tomahawk chop. Every now and then you'd hear a distant war whoop. And if you were lucky, you'd get to see an imitation of war paint on game day.

I didn't understand how face paint purchased from a drug store and a faux headdress made of brown construction paper and dyed arts & crafts feathers was respect. How does celebrating Native people with war imagery honor a living people? Well, it doesn't. It saddens me that this is all we are to you: people who speak in broken English ("How.") and the only thing we do is engage in battle with bows, arrows and tomahawks. Oh, and perform an occasional rain dance when we hear a repetitive drum beat.

Racial stereotyping, inaccurate racial portrayals, and cultural appropriation do not honor a living, breathing people. Plain and simple, cultural appropriation -- especially when members of the culture protest the appropriation -- is not respectful.

It's beyond me why people are okay with this. With any other culture, people would be up in arms.

Maybe the Woodbridge High School community and others don't understand how this type of bullying -- yes, it's bullying -- affects young people. Native American and Alaskan Native youth have the highest rates of suicide-related fatalities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The lack of positive images of Native Americans doesn't help self-esteem.

I'm not the only one who thinks that racists mascots don't belong in sports. Just ask a psychologist.

The American Psychology Association (APA) recommends retiring American Indian mascots altogether. First of all, the organization found that the stereotypical images were harmful for the development and self-esteem of American Indian students. That wasn't all. The portrayals had a negative effect on all students.

The problem, according to the APA, is that American Indian mascots are "undermining the educational experiences of members of all communities-especially those who have had little or no contact with Indigenous peoples." And, it "establishes an unwelcome and often times hostile learning environment for American Indian students that affirms negative images/stereotypes that are promoted in mainstream society."

One of the best films on the subject that I've seen is the documentary film In Whose Honor?. The film focuses on Charlene Teters (Spokane) and her campaign against "Chief Illiniwek," the mascot of University of Illinois. Other highly publicized Native American mascot battles are described here.

Unfortunately, this racial insensitivity extends beyond U.S. borders. Ian Campeau, an Ojibway father and member of the DJ group, A Tribe Called Red, has filed a human rights complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal against an amateur football club, the Nepean "Redskins," in hopes of eradicating the use of the term altogether. The team is based in Canada's capital city, Ottawa, and uses a cartoon image of a red-faced Indian man with a large nose, a long, black braid and two feathers in his hair as their mascot.

"The players call each other 'redskins' on the field," said Campeau in a press release. "How are they going to differentiate the playing field from the school yard? What's going to stop them from calling my daughter a redskin in the schoolyard? That's as offensive as using the n-word."

If Campeau's request is granted, the Human Rights Tribunal would order the National Capital Amateur Football Association to change the name and logo. His complaint also requests that the Tribunal draft a policy on the use of Indigenous imagery in sports, which could have an impact on teams of various levels that use the Redskins name in Canada.

The most in-your-face examples of racists mascots are in professional sports, including the football team of our nation's capital, the Washington Redskins. The team's owner, Dan Snyder, refuses to change the team's name despite the obvious offensive nature of the imagery and name itself. Snyder has been quoted as saying, "We'll never change it. It's that simple. NEVER - you can use caps."

Well, to anyone else who believes in turning a marginalized group of people into a goofy caricature, I'd like to ask: Who asked you to honor me? Let alone in this way? Cultural exploitation for profit in the name of respect is not how you honor a minority group. You honor someone important with a building named in their honor, a street named after them, a scholarship fund in their name or a key to the city -- not a sports mascot.

In 2001, after facing increased pressure from the Southern California Indian Center and others, Irvine Unified School District decided to retire Woodbridge High School's Warrior mascot and imagery. The school would paint over the huge mural on the side of the gym of the anonymous Native American warrior and they would remove it from the the gym floor. The LA Times reported on it.

But racism dies hard. In 2009, eight years later, my mother was forced to contact the school district due to cyber-bullying my sister, who is nine years younger, faced while a student at Woodbridge. A group of students who were in favor of the Warrior mascot created a Facebook campaign called "Save Our Warrior Mascot" and several members of the group wanted to find out who the sophomore girl opposed to the mascot was and "teach her a lesson." (Their words.)

Last year was my 10-year high school reunion and despite making close friendships with some classmates, I decided not to attend primarily because one former classmate suggested they get together to repaint the warrior face on the exterior of the gym.

The name Redskins is offensive to many, but my beef is not just with the name. It's with the imagery. When can we let go of our need to own Native American imagery?

*Amy Stretten is a member of the Chickahominy Tribe of Virginia.

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Redskins Still Misappropriates Native American Imagery

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I was a sophomore in high school, about 15 years old, when a rather hostile group of cheerleaders and football players cornered me, yelling, as I sat on a bench in the quad between classes. "Don't you have school pride?" a cheerleader shouted. "You should feel proud! We're honoring your people!"...

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Cinematic stereotypes reflect and shape common prejudices. Perceptions can be influenced by portrayals of Asians as nerdy, black men as dangerous and Latinas as fiery. So, how does Hollywood portray various groups?

In recent years, there has been increased attention on racism and sexism in Hollywood films, which can be reflected in who acts in front of the camera, who directs behind it and how people are represented on-screen - and often all three. To illustrate how stereotypes have developed in Hollywood, DW analyzed tropes used in more than 6,000 Oscar-eligible movies since 1928.

Hollywood history provides many examples of racist caricatures. Black and Asian people have been repeated targets. Take the 1961 Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's and the bucktoothed Mr. Yunioshi, whose stereotypical "Engrish" accent was intended to mock Japanese people. He is notorious, and there are so many more examples.
From racist caricatures to lingering stereotypes
"Racism, in the form of job exclusion and racially stereotyped roles, has defined the Hollywood film industry since its birth in the early 1900s," the sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen writes in her book, Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism. Indeed, Asian characters in the early days of Hollywood mostly appeared in the form of racist cliches - either as mysterious, menacing villains or as laughable caricatures such as Mr. Yunioshi. In addition to everything else, that character is played by the entirely white American actor Mickey Rooney, thus making it an example of yellowface: a non-Asian person impersonating an Asian person.

This practice used to be quite common in Hollywood. Production teams were reluctant to hire minority actors of any kind, instead often opting to use white actors in their place. This practice became self-reproducing: Sociologists have found that prejudices break down when people of various ethnic groups have increased contact with each other.

But Asian communities have historically been frequently marginalized in the United States. "Even today, most images of Asians and Asian Americans on screen weren't created by Asians or Asian Americans, but by people who don't know much about them," says Kent Ono, who studies media representations of race at the University of Utah. "This creates a very strange idea of who Asians and Asian Americans are for those who don't know any Asian people. And it also creates a very confused and estranged relationship by Asians and Asian Americans to Hollywood, because they can't fully identify with this bizarre representation of themselves."

The information on these stereotypical cinematic devices has been compiled in the community-generated wiki TVTropes.org, from which the names of the various tropes detailed in this article are drawn. Users there can document any recurring motif they observe in a piece of media: Which TV shows claim Elvis is still alive? Which video games feature a creepy child character? Does a movie feature a white actor dressed up to look Asian?

In 2012, for example, the movie Cloud Atlas drew criticism for making many of the non-Asian actors up as Asian characters for part of the film. Many critics argued that, as there are already so few roles for Asian actors, let alone roles that are not caricatures, white actors should not be cast to play Asian characters. That came up again when Scarlett Johansson starred in the live-action film of the classic Japanese manga series Ghost in the Shell and then Tilda Swinton played an originally Asian character in Doctor Strange. And the list goes on.

A trope that began to appear more frequently in the 1960s and '70s is what TVTropes calls the " Mighty Whitey, Mellow Yellow" dynamic: a powerful white main character with a submissive Asian love interest. Before the 1950s, strict self-censorship in US cinema forbade romantic pairings between people of different ethnicities, or "miscegenation," which meant that there were even fewer roles available to Asian actors. When self-censorship gave way to the current system for rating motion pictures, instances of the trope increased, which indicated that this stereotype of Asian women had already existed before it was depicted on the screen.

Other tropes also became more prominent in the second half of the century. In the 1970s and '80s, the popularity of Bruce Lee and martial arts movies in general led to the entrenchment of the "All Asians Know Martial Arts" trope.

But the most common way of representing Asians and Asian-Americans in US media today is as the "model minority," Ono said: "They might be scientists, doctors or in some technical field. By and large, they're good students, come from good families and don't have any economic problems." This stereotype is not specifically recorded in the TVTropes wiki, but it overlaps with the "Asian and Nerdy" trope, which has occurred more frequently in recent decades.
Minority groups underrepresented
What this analysis cannot show is the share of movies that have nonstereotypical nonwhite characters. These don't typically get documented in the TVTropes wiki. In general, it's difficult to make any large-scale assessments of whether there are fewer stereotypical depictions now than there used to be.

What researchers do track, though, is the number of nonwhite actors cast and how many directors and writers of color see their films produced. "The greater the range of different roles, the less likely people are to think that a group is just one of these representations," Ono said. Conversely, there is all the more weight on individual characters for groups who are rarely represented on-screen.

Hollywood still has a long way to go, according to the Hollywood Diversity Report from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): The share of female and nonwhite characters on-screen has risen quite steadily over the past few years, but also quite slowly. Even though Asians, for example, make up more than half of the world's population, and just under 6 percent of the US population, only 3 percent of all roles in 2017 and 2018 were played by Asians. Black characters made up 12.5 percent of all roles, which approaches proportionate representation for the US population. But in many cases, the portrayals are quite problematic.
Black characters die first
As with Asians, black characters often weren't played by black people in the early days of Hollywood. In fact, they barely appeared at all, except as caricatures played by white actors in blackface. This practice originated in the American theater tradition of minstrelsy, in which racist stereotypes about black people were a staple.

Blackface occurs much less frequently now, after a long period of criticism of the practice: In Dear White People, for example, college fraternity members throw a blackface-themed party, which the film, as well as the Netflix series of the same name, use as the basis for a discussion of racism at colleges across the United States.

But, as Hollywood has featured more black characters and cast more black actors, it has also emphasized other stereotypes. To this day, black men are often portrayed as scary or angry and black women as loudmouthed and sassy. If a movie features one token black character, it's likely to be the black best friend. And, if people die in a movie, the black character is still likely to go first. Even with awareness of racial stereotypes rising, Hollywood persists with these tropes.
If Africa is featured, it's dangerous and untouched by civilization
Hollywood's stereotypical depictions of black people mostly refer to black Americans. Tropes that are about Africans are rarer, partly because few Hollywood movies have African characters. The most common trope about Africa, though, is what TVTropes users have dubbed "Darkest Africa": Movies portraying the continent as a mysterious and dangerous isolated land with only limited ties to "modern" civilization. That depiction has become less common, however.
Latino characters are defined by their sex appeal
Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the US, making up around 18 percent of the population. A look at 2,682 movies since the year 2000 finds that tropes about Latino characters focus most often on their sex appeal. For women, this translates as the "Spicy Latina" trope: a temperamental temptress who can hold her own and always looks sexy.

Men get the role of the seductive "Latin Lover," often a fling for a white woman. Additionally, films tend to ignore the diversity of Latino cultures throughout the Americas: A particular brown-skinned, black-haired look is presented as defining the appearance of all Latinos. TVTropes users call this trope the "Latino is brown" stereotype.

The stereotypes perpetuated in movies are particularly hurtful to historically oppressed and marginalized groups. But there are enough tropes in Hollywood to go around. And for groups who don't feel the detrimental effects of being stereotyped in their everyday lives, seeing themselves poorly represented causes much less pain.
Germans in movies are still often Nazis
The most common stereotype about Germans in movies since 2000 is that they are all Nazis. That is closely followed by the character of the German scientist, filed under "Herr Doctor" on TVTropes. The latter was probably influenced by the real-life scientists who fled to the US during the Nazi regime, most notably Albert Einstein, who was born in Germany.

A curious trope has to do with Germans' supposed love for Baywatch and Knight Rider star David Hasselhoff. In 1988, Hasselhoff released his version of the song "Looking for Freedom," which was originally recorded by the German Marc Seaberg in the 1970s. Hasselhoff performed the song at the Berlin Wall just weeks after it fell at the end of 1989. The song fit the zeitgeist and was indeed popular in Germany for a time. Now, the "Germans Love David Hasselhoff" trope is used by the TVTropes community as a shorthand for any person or character who receives unexpected popularity outside of their home country.
A British accent is an indicator of evil
Surprisingly, the most dominant trope about the British is not the classic posh accent or the stereotype of uptightness, though both are on the list. No, British characters overwhelmingly seem to be a popular choice for villains. This is so pervasive that the British actors Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong and Tom Hiddleston even starred in a 2014 Super Bowl commercial poking fun at the trope.

A British accent even seems to signal villainous intent in animated characters: The Egyptians in The Prince of Egypt, the Dreamworks rendering of the biblical story of Moses, have British accents; an animated car with a British accent is the bad guy in the Pixar movie Cars 2; and The Lion King, Kung Fu Panda and Rise of the Guardians all feature British-sounding villains, just to name a few films.
Russians: Tough, rough and played by non-Russians
Finally, Russians in movies are still very much defined by Cold War-era images in Hollywood. The most common stereotype is the "hard-fightin', heavy-drinkin', manly, boorish" character, as the corresponding TVTropes entry describes it. These characters often bear the brunt of the suffering during the movie, getting injured or generally leading hard lives.

Curiously, movie Russians are quite often played by non-Russians. In Rocky IV, the Swedish Dolph Lundgren started his action career as Russian boxer Ivan Drago; Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Heat and Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises are other examples. During the Cold War, there was a predictable shortage of actual Russian actors in Hollywood. But, even in newer movies, non-Russians are often cast to play Russian characters.
Diversity pays
Changing gears would be in Hollywood's best interest: According to the report, movies and TV shows with fairly diverse casts bring in more at the box office and get higher ratings from audiences. However, Hollywood is still a long way from representing the diversity of the world - or even that of the United States. White people are still considerably overrepresented in front of the camera, as well as behind it. That fact, too, has an influence on how stereotypes are perpetuated.

A few events in recent years have given rise to optimism that this might change. When she won the Oscar for her performance in Fences in 2017, Viola Davis became the first black woman to win the triple crown of acting over the course of career, including her two Tony Awards for stage work and the 2015 Emmy for her role in How to Get Away With Murder. In 2018, the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians became a box office hit with an all-Asian cast. And the Vietnamese-American actor Lana Condor has the lead role in the successful teen romance To All the Boys I've Loved Before on Netflix.

As the figures from UCLA's Diversity Report indicate, proportionate and accurate representation is not yet the norm. "We're still facing huge challenges," says Kent Ono, "and there are always going to be people that go back to the historical trove of representation. But I'm more hopeful now than even two years ago. There are great independent people doing the work to push out those representations. And sometimes, Hollywood listens."

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What Hollywood movies do to perpetuate racial stereotypes - DW - 02/21/2019

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Cinematic stereotypes reflect and shape common prejudices. Perceptions can be influenced by portrayals of Asians as nerdy, black men as dangerous and Latinas as fiery. So, how does Hollywood portray various groups?

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"Counternarratives"

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Since January 2017, Alexandra Bell's large prints have been spotted around the Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, and Bushwick neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. Many of these public works were installed by the artist without permission; others, such as the recent exhibition in the courtyard at MoMA PS1 and on the campus of Bennington College in Vermont, were arranged and planned with Bell. The Counternarratives series shows Bell's inscribed corrections of New York Times print articles, exposing editorial bias conveyed by ill-chosen images, poorly worded headlines, and textual masking of white crime. Her works reveal viewpoints that abrade the dominant narratives about power and race portrayed by the media.

The first work in Bell's Counternarratives series was posted on the night of New Year's Eve 2016. Bell's notes and redactions to the New York Times article about the death of Michael Brown appeared on one side, and her revised article was shown on the other. Bell's version showed a full-width graduation photo of Michael Brown, as opposed to the more casual photo selected by the Times editors, which split the page with-and followed after-a profile of the police officer responsible for his death. The two posters-one printed and the other propositional-outline the limited and biased perspective of the newspaper on the troubling death of an unarmed black teenager, fatally wounded by Darren Wilson, a white police officer.

Then in May, Bell revised and pasted a new version of the prints around Brooklyn. Bell said she wanted the work to be on display for the occasion of Michael Brown's birthday. Over two years had passed since the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, but the message of Bell's revised headline, "A Teenager with Promise," was still pressing.

Race, especially how it is portrayed in the print version of the New York Times, is also the crux of the four other works in the Counternarratives series. The second installment reworks a front-page article about Ryan Lochte, a swimmer from the United States competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and his suspicious claim of a late night robbery. The New York Times version of the article was accompanied by an unrelated image of the Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt, and the headline implicitly gave Lochte the benefit of the doubt. The Times wrote the swimmers were "accused of fabricating robbery," as opposed to Bell's more direct rewrite: "Rio Gas Station Footage Reveals White-American Swimmers Were Offenders." Next, Bell was motivated by xenophobic language in an article about a hate crime in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The contrasting size and placement of two feature articles on tennis players-retired player John McEnroe and Venus Williams, who holds five Olympic medals in the sport-became the subject of the fourth work. The final and most recent work in the series analyzes the white supremacist rally with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia.

how do we respond to detected injustices within the media?

An important shift of focus unites the Counternarratives series. Reproduced to the scale of the human body, the weight and presence of the enlarged texts and images appear more urgent. The act of reading a newspaper becomes collective when placed in public spaces. Gathered on the sidewalk, a group of people can read Bell's work together. This communal experience replaces the often singular and private reading of a newspaper, either digitally or in print. The Counternarratives series asks readers to consider how often we read as members of communities or as empathetic citizens. And how do we respond to detected injustices within the media?

Bell's thoughtful analysis of the New York Times underscores the importance of examining and improving the veracity and fairness of news publications in our turbulent political divide. Her critical position offers an antidote to a ubiquitous and dismissive attitude toward the media through her painstaking revisions. Bell, who holds a Master's degree from the School of Journalism at Columbia University, evinces her dedication to the field by reading and revising the news with abstemious care.

At the same time, Bell understands that the field of journalism has a substantial and troubled history. She said, "I think the bias that haunts most publications is subtle and is not new." She works with relatively recent articles, but with Bell's encouragement, viewers can forge connections to the problematic content of the past. Viewers have begun to follow Bell's example and are no longer mindlessly ingesting the news-instead they are considering the bias implicit in the space allowed and words chosen to describe events.

Writing comes with responsibility and privilege

Bell believes that another poignant way the field of journalism can combat these biases is to diversify their editorial staff. Writing comes with responsibility and privilege. The editorial staff should include greater numbers of marginalized groups. The New York Times-and all news publications-share a responsibility to represent the minority perspective, even if the editors are outside that sector of the population. Bell's Counternarratives series illustrates how publications can prune the printed word more cautiously, yet more drastic changes are warranted that precede the drafting and editing phase-changes that speak to the priorities of the newsroom.

Bell said, "There are moments when the journalism field looks at itself and makes some changes." The popularity of Bell's works across social media and the anonymous postings of her works in Chicago and Washington, D.C. demonstrate Bell's prescience of that moment, yet the media appears reluctant to change. Earlier this month, Bell was profiled in the New York Times, the source of the biased content for all of the works in the Counternarratives series. The article did not concede any editorial error.

Bell's work A Teenager with Promise from the Counternarratives series is on view in the group show, Lack of Location Is My Location, at Koenig & Clinton Gallery through January 14, 2018 in Brooklyn, New York.
1. All quotes from the artist are from a conversation with the author on November 4, 2017.
Jacquelyn Gleisner is an artist, writer, and educator. She holds an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA with honors from Boston University. Her work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally in Italy, Finland, and Botswana. Gleisner lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Reading Critically: Alexandra Bell's "Counternarratives" | Art21 Magazine

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Since January 2017, Alexandra Bell's large prints have been spotted around the Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, and Bushwick neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. Many of these public works were installed by the artist without permission; others, such as the recent exhibition in the courtyard at MoMA PS1 and on the campus of Bennington College in Vermont, were arranged and planned with Bell.

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Pixels on virtual table, image editing, photomontage

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The Downgrading of Olympia, 2014
• Digitally reconstructed work that counters the idea that the place of Black individuals is that of a "slave."

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Olympia, 1863

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Princess Henrietta of Lorraine, Attended by a Page, 1634

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• Combats the lack of representation of Black individuals in fashion/beauty standards.
• Aims to change the narratives of African Americans in art history.

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"When I go to the movies, I'm expected to identify with all of the characters, and most of them are white," says the African-American artist Kerry James Marshall, sitting on the top floor of David Zwirner's immaculate gallery in a Mayfair townhouse in London, where his new exhibition of paintings Look See has just opened. "But when you put a black character in there, somehow the white audience isn't expected to identify with them. That's a problem."

He smiles, before continuing: "If you walk into any magazine store, I guarantee that nine out of 10 covers will feature white, blonde, blue-eyed, slim women because that's still the ideal of beauty. When a black or Asian figure shows up in a fashion magazine, she's the exception, not the rule. So what does that mean when we talk about equality? To me, equality means that I would be as likely to see black figures as anybody else."

Now 59, Marshall may have little sway in the world of moviemaking or the fashion industry, but he is doing his damnedest to ensure equality for black people in contemporary art. It is more than three decades since he painted Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self (1980), a caustic, subversive work in which the whites of a schematic black man's eyes, as well as his bright teeth and shirt, float against a dark background. "That grin referred to a joke people used to tell about black people," he says. "That they are so dark you couldn't see them at night unless they were smiling."

Since then, he has earned acclaim for placing black figures centre-stage within his complex, beautiful paintings - and his new exhibition continues this campaign. From the victorious beauty queen and the happy couple enjoying cocktails in a nightclub, to the models in an artist's studio and the woman holding up a pink towel against her chest, every figure in the show is black.

Not only that, but their skin tone is strikingly uniform: ebony-dark, with an attractive, satiny sheen. "The blackness of my figures is supposed to be unequivocal, absolute and unmediated," Marshall explains. "They are a response to the tendency in the culture to privilege lightness. The lighter the skin, the more acceptable you are. The darker the skin, the more marginalised you become. I want to demonstrate that you can produce beauty in the context of a figure that has that kind of velvety blackness. It can be done."
On the margins
It feels sad to write this in 2014, but seeing black people represented in paintings in this fashion remains unusual. In part this is the legacy of the way that they were traditionally presented within art history.

Western artists often cast a black figure as one of the magi when painting the stock scene of the Adoration of the Kings ( Jan Gossaert's Renaissance altarpiece on this theme in the National Gallery in London is a good example). Other than that, though, black people usually appear in Western art as peripheral servants: the Moorish page to the left of Van Dyck's 1634 portrait of Princess Henrietta of Lorraine or the woman bearing flowers in the background of Manet's famous nude Olympia (1863) are both typical of this trend. "Those are the two primary forms of representation," says Marshall, "although you might also see images of black people in the process of being conquered."

Marshall, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in the South Central area of Los Angeles, first became aware of the invisibility of black people within what he calls "the visual field" not by visiting museums but by reading comic books. "There were no black superheroes," he recalls. "When they did introduce the Black Panther in Fantastic Four [in 1966], I became acutely aware that the black superhero was a strange phenomenon - an exception to the rule. Then I started noticing the same thing everywhere else. Black figures were never the central subjects in art-history books."

There is no rancour in Marshall's voice when he says this: rather, it is obvious that he loves art history and hopes to emulate the Old Masters, not raze them to the ground. But he does lament the fact that black artists still have to negotiate a predominantly white art world.
Figuring it out
Of course, in recent decades, many black artists have enjoyed enormous success, from Jean-Michel Basquiat in the '80s to Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Steve McQueen today. But Marshall believes that there is still much work to be done.

"For black people," he says, "everything we do has to be ratified and endorsed by a power structure that is white. And that reinforces a kind of racial hierarchy where whiteness is the privileged position to be in, and ethnicity is problematic. But if you are always standing on the sideline as witness to other people achieving great things, then ultimately that has a damaging psychological effect because it undermines your sense of self-worth."

This is why Marshall is so keen to thrust black figures into the limelight in his art. "The reason why I do figurative work is because I think the presence of those figures is really important," he says. "What is of value in the work I have done is that I am bringing with me an image that a lot of other people are afraid to bring into the mainstream. Eventually, I want the presence of black figures in the art-history books to be commonplace." Slowly but surely, he is rewriting art history, one picture at a time.
Alastair Sooke is art critic of The Daily Telegraph If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our page or message us on .

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Kerry James Marshall: Challenging racism in art history

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"When I go to the movies, I'm expected to identify with all of the characters, and most of them are white," says the African-American artist Kerry James Marshall, sitting on the top floor of David Zwirner's immaculate gallery in a Mayfair townhouse in London, where his new exhibition of paintings Look See has just opened.

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• Speaks to the way black individuals and figures were ignored in art history narratives.

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Édouard Manet, "La négresse (Portrait of Laure)," 1863. Credit... Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turino

In any survey class of Western art, Édouard Manet's 1863 painting "Olympia" invariably comes up on the screen. Professors typically discuss how the naked white prostitute displayed starkly across her bed meets our gaze confrontationally, rejecting the age-old representation of the demure courtesan and presaging the birth of modernism.

Rarely a mention is made of the black maid at her mistress's bedside with a bouquet of flowers, said Denise Murrell, who sat through many such classes in disbelief as an art history graduate student at Columbia University.

"This woman is in full view, but she's invisible, ignored in the narrative," said Ms. Murrell, whose 2014 dissertation plumbed what could be learned from this black figure. It is now the springboard for "Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today," at Columbia's Wallach Art Gallery through Feb. 10. "Would Manet really give all this pictorial space to someone he didn't want us to pay attention to?"

During her doctoral research, Ms. Murrell uncovered in Manet's studio notebook an appointment from 1862 with a model he described as "Laure, très belle négresse." Her address was a 10-minute walk from the artist's studio in northern Paris, where the Impressionists lived and worked, a neighborhood with an influx of black migrants after the French abolition of territorial slavery in 1848.

"The early modernists' objective was to represent all aspects of city life as legitimate subjects in fine art," Ms. Murrell said, arguing that Laure was emblematic of a new black working class that Manet saw around him every day.

"Part of what was radical about 'Olympia' was the way that he chose to portray this black woman," Ms. Murrell said of the maid, who wears the plain, shapeless dress of the French proletariat. "She's not bare-breasted or in the gorgeously rendered exotic attire of the harem servant," typical of how black women were depicted in history paintings at the Paris salons.

"Here she almost seems to be a friend of the prostitute, maybe even advising her: 'Look, think twice before you turn this man away. Take these flowers, girl! You gotta get paid,'" Ms Murrell said.

If art historians have been blind to the black maid, artists haven't been. In her dissertation and now at the Wallach exhibition, which she curated, Ms. Murrell traces the legacy of Laure and how Manet's peers - from his acolyte Frédéric Bazille to Romare Bearden a century later to Mickalene Thomas today - have directly reimagined this black female figure.

Ms. Murrell, who is African-American with an M.B.A. from Harvard and a long career in finance before shifting to art, initially struggled to find backing for her unconventional research. After getting her doctorate at Columbia, she was unable to find a museum job and was turned down for multiple postdoctoral fellowships. Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, was sent a copy of her dissertation and described being "flabbergasted" that she had not found work. He immediately committed $100,000 to Ms. Murrell to continue her research in 2014 and has given $500,000 in total to support the exhibition at the Wallach.

"This is the way narratives get changed," Mr. Walker said. "I'm not surprised that the large institutions weren't interested in this show because often the smaller institutions are more willing to take the risk on an unknown curator or on a disruptive idea."

For the Wallach, which moved to larger quarters last year in the Lenfest Center for the Arts on Columbia's new Manhattanville campus, Ms. Murrell's proposed exhibition dovetailed with the gallery's ambition to bring high-level scholarship to a broader public in Harlem.

"We're trying to be part of the conversation to open up and diversify the museum profession," said Deborah Cullen, former director of the Wallach who recently took the helm at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. "The show is definitely punching above our weight in its unprecedented level of loans," Ms. Cullen said of the Wallach.

Ms. Murrell has borrowed more than 100 paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper from over 40 international lenders. In a concentration of works by Henri Matisse, Ms. Murrell demonstrates how his Orientalizing of black models significantly changed after several trips to New York in the early 1930s, when he went to jazz clubs and theater in Harlem.

"Matisse encountered modern urban black populations in New York City and later reflected it in his art, when he didn't choose to portray the old tropes," Ms. Murrell said, noting how he worked with four models of color for his 1940s illustrations for an edition of Charles Baudelaire's poems "Les Fleurs du Mal." The women are presented as elegant and cosmopolitan, with no obvious markers of racial ethnicity or exoticism.

Evidence of Matisse's excitement about his time in Harlem would be accessible to any scholar looking through the artist's archive, Ms. Murrell said, "but it's just not the way Matisse had been historicized."

Her dream of bringing Manet's "Olympia" to Harlem, a painting that has never traveled from Paris to the United States, ultimately did not pan out. But extended talks with the Musée d'Orsay, home to the painting, led to the institution's signing on as a co-organizer of the exhibition. It will go on view at the Orsay in an expanded version in March.

Part of the appeal for the Orsay's director, Laurence des Cars, was the possibility of attracting "new audiences that might feel excluded from places like Orsay," she said. "Reactivating the way we look at some very famous works of art - that we think we know everything about - and connecting them with today's questions is very important."

Might "Olympia" now be presented a little differently in all those art history survey classes? "That's what you always want from research," said Kellie Jones, a professor in art history and archaeology at Columbia and a reader on Ms. Murrell's dissertation. "You create a baseline that is then picked up by others."

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New Attention for Figures in the Background (Published 2018)

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In any survey class of Western art, Édouard Manet's 1863 painting "Olympia" invariably comes up on the screen. Professors typically discuss how the naked white prostitute displayed starkly across her bed meets our gaze confrontationally, rejecting the age-old representation of the demure courtesan and presaging the birth of modernism.

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"What Makes the Red Man Red" from Peter Pan

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"What Makes the Red Man Red" from Peter Pan

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When Peter Pan opened in 1904, it was an instant hit, "from beginning to end a thing of pure delight," wrote The Times of London that December. Part of that delight was Neverland-a place where all the imaginings of the Darling children came to life.

Peter Pan's creator, J.M. Barrie, described Neverland as an island of "coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers...and one very small old lady with a hooked nose." This was the cast of characters that populated turn-of-the-century playtime in Britain, and in the play, as one New York Times reviewer wrote in 1905, "Mr. Barrie presents not the pirate or Indian of grown-up fiction but the creations seen by childish eyes."

In practice, that meant portraying the fierce tribe that lives on Neverland in a way that even in the early 20th-century looked like a caricature. As The Times of London wrote:

"...the Never-Never-Land is peopled by Red Indians and Pirates, who lose no time in showing us that they know how to 'behave as sich.' [sic] The Red Indians always lay their ear to the ground, then give vent to unearthly yells, and prepare for scalping somebody-a Pirate, for choice."

At the time, this portrayal wasn't controversial. But while much of Barrie's original work is just as delightful today as 110 years ago, Tiger Lily and her tribe have become a problem for contemporary productions. There's no real reason for a tribe of Native Americans -"not to be confused with the softer-hearted Delawares or the Hurons," Barrie wrote-to live on Neverland, where they are impossible to excise from the story. But it's almost as impossible to depict them in a way that's not offensive.

In the play, Peter refers to the tribe as "piccaninny warriors," and in Peter & Wendy (Barrie's book-long adaptation of the story, published in 1911), they are introduced as the "Piccaninny tribe"-a blanket stand-in for "others" of all stripes, from Aboriginal populations in Australia to descendants of slaves in the United States. Barrie's tribespeople communicate in pidgin; the braves have lines like "Ugh, ugh, wah!" Tiger Lily is slightly more loquacious; she'll say things like "Peter Pan save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him." They call Peter "the great white father"-the name that Barrie had originally chosen for the entire play. A tom-tom pounded in victory is a key plot point.

"It was a popular fantasy trope," says Anne Hiebert Alton, a professor of English at Central Michigan University and the editor of a scholarly edition of Peter Pan. "Barrie was telling the story in the very early 1900s, and so part of it, I think, was: this was a good story, this'll stage well. He was very Victorian-and that's the age when British people were still proud to brag that the sun never set on the British empire."

Peter Pan grew from Barrie's relationship with a family of boys, the Llewelyn Davies brothers, and the games they used to play. In the biography J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys, the writer and filmmaker Andrew Birkin suggests that theirs was "a world of pirates, Indians and 'wrecked islands'"-a sort of mish-mash of Victorian adventure stories. Barrie likely would have been influenced by James Fenimore Cooper's stories, Alton says; he also loved "penny dreadfuls"-trashy adventure novels. Birkin writes that one book in particular, The Coral Island, provided the outline for the adventures that Barrie created for the Llewelyn Davies boys. The book does have "natives" in it: shipwrecked on an island, the white heroes come upon two groups of native people, one in pursuit of another. When they see the pursuers threaten to kill a woman and her children, the heroes come to the rescue; they befriend the tribe they've saved and, in particular, the chief's beautiful daughter. It's not so unlike how Peter and Tiger Lily become friends-when he saves her from doom at the hands of Captain Hook's pirates.

However the tribe ended up in Peter Pan, Barrie's work has not been scrutinized as closely as the portrayals of native people in children's books written a generation later- Mary Poppins, for instance, or A Little House on the Prairie- which were subject to more serious criticism, both popular and academic.

First written in 1934 (more than 20 years after Barrie published Peter & Wendy), Mary Poppins included a chapter in which the famous nanny takes her charges to visit the four points of the compass, where they meet, in author P.L. Travers' words, "a mandarin in the East, an Indian in the West, an Eskimo in the North, and blacks in the South who speak in a pickaninny language." By the 1980s, this chapter was considered so objectionable that the San Francisco public library took the book off the shelves; Travers rewrote the chapter to feature "a panda, dolphin, polar bear, and macaw."

Some books were so obviously offensive that they were altered almost immediately: Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None was first published in Britain in 1935 as Ten Little Niggers. The title was changed in 1940, for the first American edition. And while Laura Ingalls Wilder's A Little House on the Prairie, first published in 1935, has never been revised, there's an extensive body of scholarly criticism examining the portrayal of the Osage people the Ingalls family encounters as a frightening "other."

By contrast, Peter Pan has gotten off rather lightly. Occasionally the play's content derails a performance-in 1994, one Long Island school canceled a planned production- but there's little critical academic work focused on the tribe that Barrie created. And the original text still stands unrevised.

"Peter Pan is really weird in this sense, because it's protected," Alton says. Barrie gifted the copyright to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, in London, and when the copyright expired in 1987, the British Parliament passed a special extension that gave the hospital the rights to receive royalties from stage productions, radio broadcasts, e-books and other adaptations, in perpetuity.

For years, the hospital kept tight control over who used Peter Pan and how. "Nobody could touch it," Alton says. In the United Kingdom, anyone adapting the story or anyone performing it-even schools-still has to apply to the hospital for a license.

The earlier adaptations that were approved, though, did not do much to update Barrie's portrayal of native people. If anything, the 1953 Disney movie doubled-down on racial stereotypes; one of the film's songs is "What Made the Red Man Red."

Disney's Peter Pan - What Makes The Red Man Red ?

The heralded 1954 musical (with a completely different song list from the Disney movie) still had the tribe running around the stage saying "Ugga-wugga-wigwam." "Sondra Lee, as Tiger Lily, the Indian maid, is uproarious," Brooks Atkinson, then nearing the end of his long term as the New York Times' theater critic, wrote. "She dances and acts a sort of gutter Indian with a city accent that is mocking and comical." The 1960 televised version of the musical became a stalwart of NBC's programming for decades to come.

Best Of Peter Pan-Indians

More recently, though, directors who take on Peter Pan have tried to update these ideas, a tiny bit. Hook, the 1991 Robert Zemeckis movie, leaves the tribe out altogether. When the British director Tim Carroll staged Peter Pan for the Stratford Festival in 2010, he turned the tribe into Amazons.

"The role of the Indians in the play is to be both exotic and a bit savage," he wrote in an email. "But the use of the term (and the stereotyped language) could only cause offense to a North American audience. It seemed to me that 'Amazons' was a neat way of killing two birds with one stone: as mythic warriors they satisfied the 'exotic and savage' criterion; but it also allowed me to cast a group of women."

2015's Pan, a film that imagines Peter's first years in Neverland as an orphan kidnapped by pirates and forced to work in a mine, made a similar choice. The film features Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily but dresses her tribe in a sort of outlandishly bright array of pinks, purples, browns and bright blues that manages to be fantastic enough that no one would ever confuse this tribe with an American Indian tribe.

NBC's 2014 version of the 1954 musical is going in the opposite direction, in search of something like authenticity. Unknown actress Alanna Saunders, whose paternal heritage has distant ties to the Cherokee nation, will play Tiger Lily, and the song "Ugg-a-Wugg" was updated to include actual Native American phrases. Perhaps these changes will keep today's directors from looking, in another hundred years, like purveyors of crude racial stereotypes; perhaps they'll seem just as clumsy as Barrie's original conception of the tribe's relationship to Peter-"We redskins - you the great white father."
Editor's note: This story initially misspelled the name of the hospital in London. It is the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

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The Racist History of Peter Pan's Indian Tribe

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Even in the early 20th century, though, critics saw Tiger Lily and her fellow "Picaninnies" as caricatures

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Mark Knight's cartoon of Serena Williams

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Mark Knight's cartoon of Serena Williams

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• Recent cartoon that received significant criticism for its racist tones.
• Showcases tennis-pro Serena Williams as an uncivilized, brutish character.

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Political Cartoon following "The Fight of the Century" in 1910

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Political Cartoon following "The Fight of the Century" in 1910

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• References the historic Johnson-Jeffries Fight from 1910.
• Public outrage following the fight after Johnson (a Black man) won.

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native american advocates praise cleveland for  - cnn

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Cleveland's plans to drop 'Indians' from team name is a welcome change but it's long overdue, Native Americans say

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A Major League Baseball team's decision to remove "Indians" from its name is being hailed as historic, but Native American advocacy groups insist their fight to remove all racist sports mascots is far from over.

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Bobby C. Martin is contributing to change the narrative for Northwest Arkansas' Native American population.

Martin teaches art at John Brown University and creates work exploring his heritage from his 7 Springs Studio in West Siloam Springs, Okla.

The 62-year-old always knew he had a talent for art, but didn't delve into his craft seriously until he was in his 30s and failed to find success as a musician, he said.

"I basically swapped a starving musician's career for a starving artist's," Martin said.

Martin is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was pursuing a master's degree in fine arts at the University of Arkansas when he found inspiration in old family photographs.

"I knew I had this amazing heritage of all these great stories, but the only real link I had was these photographs," he said. "They were just cool little art pieces."

Martin grew up in Tahlequah, Okla., and didn't have a lot of connections to his Native American heritage over the years. He said his mother was Muscogee, while his father had European ancestry.

The artist initially began copying family photographs as part of his graduate studies and progressively became more creative, adding etchings and objects, as well as using oil paint and encaustic wax to bring more depth to his work.

"You put it on paper, and it soaks through," he said of the wax. "It kind of puts this patina of age on it automatically when you do that."

Martin is working on a piece called But You Don't Look Indian, which will be featured in a show of the same name. The portrait is of his mother, Bonnie Martin, and is one of the largest pieces in his collection at 5 feet-by-6 feet, he said.

Four generations are represented in the work with the addition of doilies his grandmother made and some of his son's teeth removed when he had braces as a teen, he said.

His family's Native American history is also sprinkled throughout the work, Martin said, with pages from his grandmother's hymnal, maps of Oklahoma and an old license plate embedded in the piece's wax.

"I'm going to put everything and the kitchen sink in this to make a point about identity," he said. "So, I guess in some ways, it's just this giant self-portrait."
[Don't see the podcast above? Click here.] Different dialogue
Much of Martin's work involves identity and shifts the narrative of what people may anticipate from Native American art and how the population is represented within it.

"There was a certain expectation of what Indian art should look like," Martin said of the time when he began working as an artist 25 years ago. "There was even a certain style -- very much a flat style with many people on horseback and buffaloes and various very sort of stereotypical things."

Such art is often inspired by influences outside of the Native American community, said Charlotte Buchanan-Yale, the director of the Museum of Native American History in Bentonville.

Founded by David Bogle, a member of the Cherokee Nation from Bentonville, the museum houses more than 10,000 Native American artifacts.

"Hollywood and television think everybody is a plains Indian living in a tepee, which is just crazy talk," Buchanan-Yale said. "What we tried to do is expand that."

Inaccurate history lessons, media reports and rumors have contributed to stereotypes individual Native Americans aren't U.S. citizens, receive money from the government, don't pay taxes, are rich from casino proceeds and go to college for free, according to a research initiative by Reclaiming Native Truth.

Reclaiming Native Truth is a national effort to foster cultural, social and policy change by empowering Native Americans to counter discrimination, invisibility and the dominant narratives limiting opportunity, access to justice, health and self-determination.

The effects of such stereotypes can be profound, according to the initiative. They can harm the self-esteem and aspirations of Native Americans, especially children. Martin said he had no way to relate to how Native Americans have been historically represented in art.

"We grew up in eastern Oklahoma in a different sort of environment than in western Oklahoma, where it was more the plains idea of tepees and buffalo," he said.

What Martin said he did relate to was the history and the resiliency of the Native American population, who've overcome political adversity and relocation, while attempting to maintain a sense of connectivity as a people.

"That's really what I want to show, is that kind of sense of family and community," Martin said. "It just so happens that all my family and my community are Native people."
Native neighbors
Arkansans who identified as Native American and Alaska Native alone or in combination grew from 37,002 in 2000 to 47,588 in 2010, a 28.6% increase, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Cherokee Nation is the most predominant population in the region, according to Bonnie Barnes, the museum's assistant manager.

"Before it was Osage, Caddo and Quapaw." Barnes said. "They were the ones who were indigenous here."

Many of Northwest Arkansas' early Native American people were forced to migrate out of the state through the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, according to the National Park Service.

Martin recognizes his art doesn't just tell his family's story, but also builds awareness for the history of the region's Native American population.

"It represents memory. It represents honoring my ancestors. It represents giving them honor and recognition for the work and the care that they took of me, whether I knew it or not," he said. "It's been interesting that it's turned out that it's kind of grown to mean more than that for not just for me, but for other people."
New conversations
Work by organizations such as Bentonville's Native American Museum and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is pivotal for keeping momentum to further change the narrative, Martin said.

"Major museums like Crystal Bridges are starting to be interested in collecting contemporary Native art," he said.

Martin said he sits on an advisory board at Crystal Bridges to promote inclusiveness and more diversity in art at the museum.

"I think this is a goal of a lot of different museums and art centers, is to tell a clearer and more inclusive picture of the history of the United States that involves a lot more than just this idea of colonial America," he said.

Art is an ideal vehicle for gaining a better understanding of the Native American community, Barnes said.

"It crosses all language barriers," she said. "You don't have to speak the language or read it to appreciate it."

Art is a non-confrontational and accessible way to negate stereotypes, Martin said.

"History and writings are incredibly important in enlightening people, but sometimes maybe this story starts by somebody seeing a piece of art or a picture or something that might get them thinking," he said. "They could still see this as purely as an old family photo, but then there's also stuff bubbling around under the surface if you wanted to look for it."

Art can be a critical part of the diversity conversation, Buchanan-Yale said.

"What if we met each other with the clear eyes of a child, and you let someone's story unfold instead of coming to a new place and looking at people as other?" she asked. "I can solve more problems with creative minds than all the money in the world."

Trail of Tears

Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 requiring various Native American tribes in the southeastern United States to give up their land in exchange for federal territory west of the Mississippi River. Most Native Americans resisted the policy, but as the 1830s wore on, most of the major tribes - the Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and Chickasaw - agreed to move to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. A brief history of the Trail of Tears is available online at https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/index.htm.

Source: National Park Service

Help Change the Narrative

The Museum of Native American History, 202 S.W. O St. in Bentonville, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The museum is closed Sunday. Admission to the museum is free. Information on featured events, exhibitions and programs is available online at https://www.monah.us/.

Source: Museum of Native American History

Upcoming articles

Subsequent articles in this series about artists in Northwest Arkansas will feature:

* Jody Travis Thompson, who is addressing challenges and diversity within the LGBTQ community.

* Ziba Rajabi, an Iranian working to reconcile her relationship with her homeland with the life she's building in Northwest Arkansas.

Editor's Note: This is the fifth in a series of articles about diversity in the visual arts in Northwest Arkansas.
NW News on 01/02/2020

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Artist uses photos to celebrate Native American ancestors

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Bobby C. Martin is contributing to change the narrative for Northwest Arkansas' Native American population. Martin teaches art at John Brown University and creates work exploring his heritage from his 7 Springs Studio in West Siloam Springs, Okla.

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• Turning an entire culture into a "mascot."
• Commodification of culture- not respect.

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my teammate got this in the mail today, and tbh Im at a lost for words.. I also have locs, Tats, and NFL dreams too, these messages can not be tolerated, this was extremely inappropriate, racially biased, and selfish to feel like you even have a right to send this message #WeAre

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
my teammate got this in the mail today, and tbh Im at a lost for words.. I also have locs, Tats, and NFL dreams too, these messages can not be tolerated, this was extremely inappropriate, racially biased, and selfish to feel like you even have a right to send this message #WeAre https://t.co/DPTp9Km9yt

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my teammate got this in the mail today, and tbh Im at a lost for words.. I also have locs, Tats, and NFL dreams too, these messages can not be tolerated, this was extremely inappropriate, racially biased, and selfish to feel like you even have a right to send this message #WeAre pic.twitter.com/DPTp9Km9yt
— ㅤ (@CjHo1mes) October 7, 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
my teammate got this in the mail today, and tbh Im at a lost for words.. I also have locs, Tats, and NFL dreams too, these messages can not be tolerated, this was extremely inappropriate, racially biased, and selfish to feel like you even have a right to send this message #WeAre https://t.co/DPTp9Km9yt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
my teammate got this in the mail today, and tbh Im at a lost for words.. I also have locs, Tats, and NFL dreams too, these messages can not be tolerated, this was extremely inappropriate, racially biased, and selfish to feel like you even have a right to send this message #WeAre https://t.co/DPTp9Km9yt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
my teammate got this in the mail today, and tbh Im at a lost for words.. I also have locs, Tats, and NFL dreams too, these messages can not be tolerated, this was extremely inappropriate, racially biased, and selfish to feel like you even have a right to send this message #WeAre

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from Practices of Looking

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Misinterpretation/commodification of a symbolic part of Indigenous culture for company gain.

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from Practices of Looking
• Lack of authenticity in fashion and sports when it comes to representing Native American culture.

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from Practices of Looking
• How do the images seen in children's books/films/education construct social ideals?
• If educators are placed in a position of power, then how are children supposed to make meaning of the images they are exposed to?

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Last Thanks, 2006

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Pop culture and design loves to appropriate grossly stereotypical elements of percieved Native American cultures (do I really need to bring up Coachella?), learned from normalized racially insensitive media portrayals such as the "Piccaninny Tribe" in Disney's Peter Pan. Contemporary multi-disciplinary artist Merritt Johnson, a descendant of the Blackfoot and Kanienkehaka Tribes, writes that most people think of "beads and feathers" when they hear the term "Native American art." This pigeonholing, among being immensely generalized and demeaning, fails to the acknowledge unique individual expression between and within Native American communities. There are 567 federally recognized Native American nations in the United States. Amongst those tribes exists a great deal of diversity in culture, language, and elements of day-to-day life such as food preparation and dress. Conflating Native American cultures disregards this diversity, and effectually silences Native American voices.

This is what makes the Jimmie Durham controversy so complicated. In case you missed it: Durham has long been regarded as the central, or at least the most well-known figure of Native American Art. He has historically identified with Cherokee descent (along with a bizarre slew of celebrities including Johnny Depp, Cher, Miley Cyrus, and Johnny Cash), and this identity is a central aspect of his work. Durham's recent retrospective at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has sparked a massive controversy, as multiple Cherokee artists and curators claim that Durham is not in fact recognized by any of the three Cherokee nations. In an article published on Indian Country Today, contributors write that "Durham continues to misrepresent Cherokee language, history, and culture. Throughout his career, he has misrepresented other's tribes' practices (giveaways, vision quests, Trickster Coyote, feasts of the dead) and said they are Cherokee. His fabrications insult not only us but also the other tribes whose cultures Durham has misappropriated."

The controversy is complex, as Durham was a fervent activist with the American Indian Movement in the '70s, and his work has always relied on themes of Native American identity and the destructive nature of colonization. In a recent New York Times article, Durham admits, "I am perfectly willing to be called Cherokee.... But I'm not a Cherokee artist or Indian artist, no more than Brancusi was a Romanian artist." (Brancusi was born in Romania.) But it also sounds a whole lot like that time "Iron Eyes Cody," the actor in the infamous 1970s "Crying Indian: Keep America Beautiful" PSA video who earned a number of roles on the premise that he was Native American, was "outed" as second-generation Italian.

It's about time that Native American artists start getting recognition and support for their work, apart from the media representations by non-Native folks. Meet these eight groundbreaking artists of Native American descent, working in a variety of mediums, who are making moves to counter the stereotypes of Native American art and culture in contemporary society.

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Nicholas Gallanin
Born in Sitka, a borough of Juneau, the capital of Alaska, Nicholas Gallanin is a conceptual artist and a musician of Tlingit and Unangax descent. Gallanin has a way of making artworks that mix completely contemporary-looking aesthetics with historical or traditional elements of his culture. For example, a series of prints use images of Native Americans overlaid with text, rendered in the style of Pop Art, with bright colors and Warhol-eque graphics. For his video Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan 1, which won the 2008 ImagineNative Film Festival, he paired video footage of a break dancer and audio of a traditional Tlingit song. In another video, he paired traditional Tlingit dance with sparse electronic music. Gallanin often repurposes objects like handcuffs used to remove Indigenous children from their homes, and makes clear society's tendency to bury historical truths. He writes "culture is rooted in connection to land; like land, culture cannot be contained."
Wendy Red Star
Wendy Red Star, a Native American artist of the Apsáalooke (Crow) lineage, born in Billings, Montana in 1981, is known for her funny, surreal, but biting self-portrait photographs that poke fun at white American culture's tendency to misrepresent Native American history. Red Star's photography practice is her way of navigating her experience growing up on a Crow Indian Reservation, juxtaposed with her experience of mainstream contemporary society. Using materials like Target-brand Halloween costumes and inflatable animals, Red Star counters the stereotypical trope that all Native American people are "one with nature." In her Four Seasons Series, Red Star photographs herself dressed in traditional Apsáalooke clothing against four different richly saturated panoramic Western landscape backdrops (which she is careful to leave with creases and wrinkles to exemplify their artificiality), reminiscent of dioramas one might see at a history museum, populated with artificial, store-bought materials such as fake plants, cardboard cutouts of animals, and astroturf. Her photo series Home is Where My Tipi Sits features collections of photographs from the reservation she grew up on after she returned from UCLA, where she received her MFA. The photographs are grouped by category, and feature broken down cars, churches, and decrepit living structures covered in blankets that stand in opposition to the stereotyped romantic perception of Native American life.
Post-Commodity
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary activist/arts collective consisting of Native American artists Kade L. Twist, Raven Chacon, and Cristóbal Martínez. You may recognize Postcommodity from the collective's contribution to the Whitney Biennial earlier this year: a dizzying four-channel video sped up and slowed down in conjunction with sound, tracing the fences that line the US-Mexico border. The installation, titled A Very Long Line, demonstrates the "dehumanizing and polarizing constructs of nationalism and globalization through which borders and trade policies have been fabricated." In their artists's statement, the collective writes "Postcommodity's art functions as a shared Indigenous lens... to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence." Borders seem to be a recurring theme; Repellent Fence (2015), an ephemeral land-art installation comprised of 26 enlarged replicas of an ineffective bird-repellent balloon, hovered 50 feet above a two-mile long stretch of land connecting the US and Mexico. The group hopes to incite a constructive conversation about social, political, and economic forces that are destroying communities globally.
Duane Slick
Duane Slick is a Native American painter and storyteller of the Meswaki Nation. His photo-realist paintings on glass and linen have a dream-like, spiritual quality, using subtle shadows, light studies, and layering. His series Disagreeable Coyotes (2015-2016) consists of nine acrylic-on-panel minimal paintings of coyote heads, layered in bright reds, blues, and yellows, reminiscent of a full color 3D film watched without the glasses. Of the paintings, Slick writes, "In narrative traditions, to tell the story of tragedy one must always begin by telling the ending first. I once believed that the weight of such expectations functioned as a cultural given for the artist of Native American descent. Its rules stated that we cry for a vision and place ourselves in a single grand narrative of history and representation... but the laughter of Coyote saturated and filled our daily lives. It echoed through the lecture halls of histories and it was so powerful and it was so distracting that I forgot my place in linear time and now I work from an untraceable present." Slick is represented by Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown, and his work appears in a number of collections across the United States including the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. He teaches printmaking and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Merritt Johnson
Merritt Johnson is a multi-disciplinary artist of Blackfoot, Kanienkehaka, Irish and Swedish descent. She works in sculpture, painting, and video, but has a special affinity for performance art, for the way it allows her to embody the past, present, and future all at once. Her work speaks to the relationship between Native American history and "American" history. She comments on the boundaries that humans create (borders, fences, state lines), as juxtaposed with the natural boundaries of nature (airflow, waterflow). In her performance Clouds Live Where, viewers watch from above as Johnson delineates space using tape, wood barricades, and fabric. The artist attempts to navigate this barricaded space, transporting water back and forth from clouds to land. Says Johnson "tongues and knives cut the intersections of land, culture, sex, and body, so I weave together seen and unseen; looking with closed eyes open, breathing in and out." Another recurring theme in her work is camouflage, illuminating the complete disregard of indigenous people as part of American society. Her work plays with the unseen, exploring its "precarious possibility (of) endless creation and destruction. She is interested in the ways that indigenous and non-indigenous people's interpretations of her work differ, specifically with regards to the treatment of land and nature: on the one hand respected and imbued with spiritual qualities and on the other looked at as a resource. Without judgement, she says, humans can feel that all things are ultimately intertwined.

Teri Greeves

Teri Greeves (b. 1970), originally from the Wind River reservation in Wyoming, is known primarily for her use of the traditional Kiowa art of beading, which she learned from her grandmother. She writes that her grandmother expressed herself through beadwork, and despite working menial jobs as a dishwasher and a cleaner, she was always primarily an artist. Greeves has been working with beads since she was 8 years old, and for her, being an artist is about giving a voice to her ancestors before her. She writes, "I am compelled to do it... I have no choice in the matter. I must express myself and my experience as a 21st Century Kiowa and I do it, like all those unknown artists before me, through beadwork... and though my medium may be considered 'craft' or 'traditional,' my stories are from the same source as the voice running through that first Kiowa beadworker's needles. It is the voice of my grandmothers." Greeves merges her cultural history with contemporary objects, as in the case of her tennis shoes series (shown above). She blends traditional geometric traditional Kiowa styles with figurative elements of the Shoshone, while also commenting on the derivation of American modernist abstraction from traditional Native American designs. Her figures are adorned with both traditional and contemporary clothing items, as a commentary on being a Native American woman in the modern world. Her work appears in numerous public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Heard Museum, and more.
Matika Wilbur
Matika Wilbur is a photographer and storyteller of the Tulalip and Swinomish Tribes. She has been traveling across the country for over 5 years, taking portrait photographs of Indian Tribes across the country to reclaim the Native American image, and to effectually change the way that Native Americans are represented. Wilbur has a background in fashion and commercial photography, and despite being very successful in her career, she knew in her heart that she had to use her voice to expose the diverse, unique individual personalities amidst America's indigenous communities, who are too often either neglected or misrepresented. She began her portrait photo-series titled Project 562 in order to communicate the lives of neglected and/or misrepresented peoples. Her portraits capture a sense of intimacy and genuine raw emotion, likely because of Martika's process. Her subjects choose where they want to be photographed, and Martika spends up to multiple days with them, bringing gifts and sharing songs and prayers. She seeks to bring the individual to life in her works, placing her photos side by side with text from the subject. She views herself as a "creator and messenger," and her project is a form of re-education, offering a comprehensive visual curriculum of contemporary Native culture. She writes "while holding true to my heritage and tradition, I aim to empower contemporary visions. I believe that my work is the answered prayers of my ancestors, as I walk the path they fought to pave." Wilbur has travelled to over 300 sovereign nations so far, and her photographs capture the vast diversity within and between indigenous communities.
Frank Buffalo Hyde
In his vibrant, richly saturated, satirical graphic realist paintings, artist Frank Buffalo Hyde (b. 1974) juxtaposes 21st century pop culture signifiers with symbols and themes from his Native American heritage. Born in Santa Fe and raised on his mother's Onandaga reservation, Hyde seeks to dismantle stereotypes of Native American culture with his work. He takes imagery from pop culture, politics, films, television shows, etc. and overlaps the references to replicate what he refers to as "the collective unconsciousness of the 21st century. In his painting series "In-Appropriate," Hyde paints satirical portraits of people wearing "jacked-up portrayal(s) of Native American imagery" that are at once funny and revolting. Hyde overtly defies the aesthetics of what people might think Native American art "should" look like, including subjects such as selfie-sticks, iPhones, cheerleaders and plates of buffalo wings. His narrative series I-Witness Culture explores life as a Native American in the digital age. Hyde's work addresses contemporary America's fear of the "other," and the tendency to homogenize indigenous cultures to counter this fear (which ultimately materializes as racist mascots and costumes). Hyde's work has been exhibited internationally, and he was artist-in-residence at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe.

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8 Contemporary Native American Artists Challenging the Way We Look at American History

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Pop culture and design loves to appropriate grossly stereotypical elements of percieved Native American cultures (do I really need to bring up Coachella?), learned from normalized racially insensitive media portrayals such as the "Piccaninny Tribe" in Disney's Peter Pan.

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Abstract

The synonymy of Blackness with criminality is not a new phenomenon in America. Documented historical accounts have shown how myths, stereotypes, and racist ideologies led to discriminatory policies and court rulings that fueled racial violence in a post-Reconstruction era and has culminated in the exponential increase of Black male incarceration today. Misconceptions and prejudices manufactured and disseminated through various channels such as the media included references to a " brute" image of Black males. In the 21 st century, this negative imagery of Black males has frequently utilized the negative connotation of the terminology " thug." In recent years, law enforcement agencies have unreasonably used deadly force on Black males allegedly considered to be "suspects" or "persons of interest." The exploitation of these often-targeted victims' criminal records, physical appearances, or misperceived attributes has been used to justify their unlawful deaths. Despite the connection between disproportionate criminality and Black masculinity, little research has been done on how unarmed Black male victims, particularly but not exclusively at the hands of law enforcement, have been posthumously criminalized. This paper investigates the historical criminalization of Black males and its connection to contemporary unarmed victims of law enforcement. Action research methodology in the data collection process is utilized to interpret how Black male victims are portrayed by traditional mass media, particularly through the use of language, in ways that marginalize and de-victimize these individuals. This study also aims to elucidate a contemporary understanding of race relations, racism, and the plight of the Black male in a 21-century "post-racial" America.

Keywords: Black males, thug, media, social media, police brutality, racial profiling

Introduction

On April 28, 2015, President Barack Obama referred to a collection of citizens from Baltimore, Maryland as "criminals and thugs" in response to a question about the recent rebellion that broke following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. The use of the term "thug" by President Obama became the zenith of the word's use to characterize primarily individuals and groups of Black males. In this specific case of the rebellion that began on April 25, 2015, public figures such as President Obama and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake both used the term "thug" along with many news reporters and others on social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. During an interview with CNN, Baltimore councilman Carl Stokes, a Black male, rejected the notion of calling citizens "thugs" by the news anchor that pushed him to agree with the term to describe the occurrences of looting. Stokes responded by stating, "C'mon, so calling them thugs, just call them niggers, just call them niggers" ( WSHH, 2015). Councilman Stokes was calling attention to the use of coded language that is in some ways explicitly and other ways implicitly used as a substitute for personally mediated racism, specifically the term "nigger."

Over the last several years, the term "thug" has become a way to describe Black males who reject or do not rise to the standard of White America. For example, NFL football player Richard Sherman was called a "thug" for his post-game interview following the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship game ( Wagner, 2014). While Sherman did not use vulgar language or express any feelings of violence or criminal action, his physical presence and loud voice was used to evoke the idea of "thuggery." Additionally, political adversaries of President Obama such as Michelle Bachmann, Karl Rove, and Rush Limbaugh have referred to him as a "political thug." This term has become the platform to dismiss Black life as less valuable and perpetuates a negative and criminal connotation in forms of micro-insults and micro-invalidations. Moreover, the recent killings of unarmed Black men have sparked discussion and discourse surrounding the term "thug" and how it is used in the context of reshaping perceptions of Black life broadly and Black males specifically.

This study investigates how language is used to describe Black men who have been killed by law enforcement in the past year (July 2014-April 2015). Specifically, there is a demonizing process that happens to unarmed Black men posthumously. Unlike earlier Black icons and figures, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, that were vilified while alive and then sanitized in death to be repackaged as an acceptable part of the United States historical narrative, these men are portrayed as thugs and criminals to seemingly justify their deaths while simultaneously shifting blame away from law enforcement. To illustrate, we examine six different unarmed Black men who were killed by police throughout the United States in order to understand how media coverage addresses their deaths. By utilizing local, national, and international media coverage of these cases, we are able to find both overlapping and unique themes to each case which support the notion of posthumous demonization and criminalization of unarmed Black men.

In order to explore this notion of posthumous demonization and criminalization, we examine this inquiry in several ways. First, we look at the terms historically used to describe Black people in the United States. Secondly, it is important to connect the historical legacies of racial demonization to contemporary criminalization of Blackness, particularly in a Post-Obama America. Therefore, we utilize four major groups to categorize the language and imagery of the articles being investigated for this study: (1) Behavior, (2) Appearance, (3) Location, and (4) Lifestyle. These are used to specifically address both overt instances of racism as well as micro-insults and micro-invalidations. Moreover, we look at the cases of each unarmed Black male and how they are treated by media sources focusing particularly on the primacy effect, or the first impression media outlets create when describing these males posthumously which either justifies or negates their death by law enforcement. Finally, the paper discusses the growing social movements of #BlackLivesMatter and the impact these collectives have on both national and international awareness of White privilege, White supremacy, and coded race-based language.

Literature Review

Race is the most significant sociodemographic distinction in the United States. The social construction of contemporary racial ideology finds its birth in the period known as the Enlightenment ( Eze, 1997). Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Jefferson contributed to the literature and theory behind biological racial differences. Jefferson, a founding father of the United States, third U.S. President, and slave owner, wrote about the differences between the races in his essays, Notes on the State of Virginia. In his writings he describes physical differences such as skin color and hair texture as the basis for scientific distinction, stating, "the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and causer were better known to us" ( Jefferson, 1997, p. 97). Jefferson uses observable data - presumably his own slaves - to come to his conclusions, stating:

Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin...They seem to require less sleep...They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome...They are more ardent after their female; but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. ( Jefferson, 1997, p. 98)

These sentiments and ideologies were carried on to develop notions of race, and more specifically the racial dynamics of superiority and inferiority.

As slavery prevailed this dichotomy of racial superiority and inferiority metastasized because of the need for economic labor ( Fields, 1990). The need for a surplus of cheap labor, which was acquired in Africa, was justified through racial distinction primarily set by law ( Fields, 1990; Memmi, 2000). Separations were made clear through the passage of laws that determined the race of child via the matrilineal line and anti-miscegenation laws, harsher punishments for Black runaway slaves, and the use of poor Whites as laborers to monitor and guard against slave rebellions. These legal distinctions coupled with economic need justified slavery and the growth of racial ideologies, to which Barbara Jeanne Fields (1990) states, "Racial ideology supplied the means of explaining slavery to people whose terrain was a republic founded on radical doctrines of liberty and natural rights; and, more important, a republic in which those doctrines seemed to represent accurately the world in which all but a minority lived." (p. 114) In other words through the repetitive and daily routine, these social constructions take on meaning over time and become seen and internalized as truth.

This "truth" of racial ideology spawned racism, which is practiced at both the institutional and individual level in American society. However, we must be cognizant of other sociodemographic variables such as social class and gender and the authority they play on influencing the dynamics of the superiority and inferiority dyad. Therefore, to understand racism in the 21 st century we must look at the intersectionality ( Crenshaw, 1989) of these variables in how it relates to the use of excessive and deadly force by law enforcement on unarmed Black males and its relationship to historic views of race, class, and gender. Specifically, there must be an understanding of the shift from the "brute" which demonized Black males in the 19 th and early 20 th century to the "thug" that brought about criminalization in the late 20 th and early 21 st century.

From "Brute" to "Thug"

During the institution of slavery, the image of Black people, specifically Black males, was of a docile character. The images of buffoonery, blissful ignorance, and juvenile angst were seen as the primary traits of enslaved Blacks. This is characterized in several portrayals of Black males of this time. The use of Blackface - a type of performance that generally used White actors wearing black make-up to portray Black people in stereotypes - became popular in the 19 th century. White actors popularized minstrel shows, depicting stereotypes of Black life as foolish, messy, and overall comedic at the expense of Black culture ( Lhamon Jr., 2000; Strausbaugh, 2006). In addition, other popular literature and media characterized antebellum enslaved Blacks as content with their place in society. In literature, the character of Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin is portrayed as an older Black slave who is faithful and dutiful to his White master. The film Gone with the Wind depicts content slaves, specifically the role of Mammy who even fends off freedmen. Finally, the Disney film Song of the South depicts Uncle Remus as an elderly Black freedman who was satisfied with his place in society, singing the famous happy song, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah."

These depictions of Blackness as docile and manageable reflected the ability to control the Black body and mind, creating the idea that slavery was the best position for Black people. This status of inferiority is echoed in W.E.B. DuBois' writing of how Whites viewed freedom as a way to "spoil" and "ruin" Black people ( DuBois, 1903). Additionally, according to David Pilgrim:

These portrayals were pragmatic and instrumental. Proponents of slavery created and promoted images of blacks that justified slavery and soothed white consciences. If slaves were childlike, for example, then a paternalistic institution where masters acted as quasi-parents to their slaves was [sic] humane, even morally right. More importantly, slaves were rarely depicted as brutes because that portrayal might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (2012)

However, this image of Blackness ended after the American Civil War. During the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877), newly freed Blacks began to obtain social, economic, and political rights with the passage of the 13 th, 14 th, and 15 th Amendments to the Constitution. This growth was seen in the building of Black communities such as Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was referred to as "Black Wall Street" ( Pickens, 2013), the building of schools now known as Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs), and the election of the first two Black U.S. Senators in Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce.

This growth in power challenged White supremacy and created White fear of Black mobility. Particularly, wealthy Whites were fearful of political power newly freed Black people could acquire via voting, whereas poor Whites saw Blacks as competition in the labor force. Thus the rise of the Jim Crow era began, which was solidified by the Supreme Court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson which stated, "separate but equal is constitutional." This fear was met with a shift from Black people being viewed as compliant and submissive servants to savages and brute monsters.

Media portrayals of this mythical Black brute began to grow using the same initial science Jefferson and other Enlightenment-era theorists proclaimed, which was based on inaccurate anthropological and biological factors. This time, the argument was that Blacks were naturally more prone to violence and other aggressive behaviors. Charles H. Smith wrote in 1893, "A bad Negro is the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless" (p. 181). This myth of cruelty and vicious disposition was directed towards White women. As the myth grew and stories spread about the savage Black brute, so did the occurrences of lynching. Lynching - the extrajudicial punishment - was ritualistic and struck fear into Black residents throughout the United States ( Litwack, 2004). The most prevalent accusation was the rape or sexual assault of a White woman by a Black male. This allegation would have reverberating effects throughout entire communities. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a young White woman accused a Black male of sexual assault and roughly 300 Black people were killed and more than 9,000 people were left homeless after White mobs destroyed the Greenwood community ( Pickens, 2013). Regardless of producing evidence or facts, White mobs would seize Black defendants or attack Black neighborhoods to seek out revenge for this crime.

The case of Sam Hose is an example of how different and various versions of the truth were reported. Hose killed his employer in self-defense after being threatened with a pistol. However newspapers wrote "a monster in human form" emerged, which detailed Hose as cold-blooded, killing his employer, and savagely raping his employer's wife. The report drove White fear to lynch Hose ( Litwack, 2004). In reality, these charges were mere excuses to exercise exorbitant amounts of violence on Black people. The lynching of a Black body became a form of ritualistic violence where limbs and other body parts were taken as souvenirs. Litwack wrote:

After stripping Hose of his clothes and chaining him to a tree, the self-appointed executioners stacked kerosene-soaked wood high around him...they cut off his ears, fingers, and genitals, and skinned his face...the contortions of Sam Hose's body as the flames rose, distorting his features, causing his eyes to bulge out their sockets...Before Hose's body had even cooled, his heart and liver were removed and cut into several pieces and his bones were crushed into small particles. The crowd fought over these souvenirs. (p. 123, 2004)

This overkill of the Black body became part of the racist ideology that was used to justify these acts of violence. This mythical act of Black savagery was situated in this idea of Black brutality and criminality that had no other recourse but death. A prominent Georgia woman wrote about the Sam Hose lynching, "The premeditated outrage on Mrs. Cranford was infinitely more intolerable than the murder of her husband" ( Litwack, 2004). Hence, uncontrollable desires of Black males were illegal, criminal, and needed to be stopped through the use of physical force. Therefore, this justified vigilante justice in the name of keeping White womanhood pure.

The brute image of Black men became significant moving into the early 20 th century, when fear was reinforced with depictions of Black men as harmful. The film Birth of a Nation, made in 1915, shows Black men as savages trying to attack White women. Their brutality is met with propaganda depicting the Ku Klux Klan as heroic and honorable. The result was Blackness becoming closely associated with criminalization. The criminalization of Blackness ( Davis, 1998; Alexander, 2010; Muhammad, 2010) allowed for White supremacy to use Black bodies as their scapegoat for all problems, real or fictional. The driving forces behind Black criminality as savage and unmanageable were structurally reinforced by passage of stricter sentencing guidelines in prison and the expansion of the War on Drugs in the second half of the 20 th century ( Mauer, 2002). These programs and stricter prison guidelines exponentially grew the American prison system by 700% ( Pew States, 2007). During this time campaigns for "tough on crime" policy emerged as the soundboard for elected officials. For example, George H.W. Bush's presidential run used a smear campaign tactic, famously known as the "Willie Horton" ad, where a Black prisoner's face was used to talk about his heinous crimes and Bush's opponents' soft-on-crime policy. While the ad overtly discusses a single Black man, the subliminal and larger take away is Willie Horton's face became synonymous with all Blackness. In short, the mythical brute became the realistic thug via the process of criminalization.

The image of Black men as brutes in society has a long legacy that begins with the social construction of race and brings us to the current period of mass incarceration. In the United States, Black men are six times as likely to go to jail or prison as White men (Gao, 2013). This disproportionate and unequal number indicates the skewed representation of Black men in U.S. prisons. However, the argument is shifted to no longer being about race but about crime and community safety. This negation of understanding the historical link between "brute" and "thug" marginalizes the significant role race plays.

Lastly, a prime example of how the brute image still thrives in society is the April 2008 Vogue magazine cover of professional basketball player LeBron James holding super model Gisele Bündchen. The image of LeBron giving a menacing look while Gisele is in his arms shares a strikingly eerily similarity to a World War I poster that depicts a gorilla holding a White woman with the title "Destroy this Mad Brute" ( Shea, 2008). These types of images that draw on past racial stereotypes and myths reinforce this criminalization, and are now coded with terms such as "thug" today. While historically in America overt racist language was socially acceptable, there has been a cultural shift of social intolerance to this blatant racist behavior. This does not mean that racism or discriminatory actions have been eradicated but rather driven beneath the surface and reemerged as coded language, gestures, signs, and symbols to indicate difference. Terms such as "thug," "ghetto," "hood," "sketchy," and "shady" are all examples of coded language that are used to refer to or speak of Blackness without overtly sounding racially prejudiced. Fraternities on college campuses throw "Pimps and Hos" parties where stereotypes of Black people as pimps or prostitutes, exemplifying characters from the film Superfly (1972), also lack the language of race but show in physical gesture and imagery the racism encoded in the details.

Over the last several years with the proliferation of social media, many more events are documented and shared via social networking sites ( Yar, 2012; Smiley, 2015). Some of these events captured on video are cases involving unarmed Black males being killed by law enforcement agents. While some videos show the disturbing death, such as Eric Garner, others show the aftermath like that of Michael Brown's body in the street. These deaths and others have sparked outrage across communities looking for justice and accountability of law enforcement's excessive force when dealing with Black people.

Furthermore, this paper looks at how these Black males who are killed by law enforcement are turned into a "thug" (the modern day "brute"), which seemingly tries to justify their death or personal contribution to their demise. Beyond this, a "blame game" effect occurs that shifts culpability from the perpetrator to the victim. In this case, the blame moves from law enforcement agents to the Black males who have been killed.

Methods

Content Analysis

For this study, media coverage of the deaths of six unarmed Black males resulting from law enforcement interaction were investigated. Specifically, the portrayal of the incidents and the victims involved via newspaper articles were examined. Newspaper articles were chosen as the modality for investigations because of the understanding that all published articles go through a vetting process. As a result the articles, including the perceptions created, are an organizational decision. The cases garnered significant national and international coverage for a notable period of time, leading to a considerable database from which to select samples. The incidents chosen for analysis are as follows, listed in chronological order from earliest to latest:

Eric Garner - 43 years old, died July 17, 2014 due to "compression of neck (choke hold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police" after altercation with New York Police Department officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico in Staten Island, New York.

Michael Brown, Jr. - 18 years old, died August 9, 2014 due to multiple gunshot wounds after altercation with Ferguson Police Department officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.

Akai Gurley - 28 years old, died November 20, 2014 due to single gunshot wound after interaction with New York Police Department officer Peter Liang in Brooklyn, New York.

Tamir Rice - 12 years old, died November 22, 2014 due to single gunshot wound after interaction with Cleveland Police Department officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback in Cleveland, Ohio.

Tony Robinson - 19 years old, died March 6, 2015 due to multiple gunshot wounds after altercation with Madison Police Department officer Matt Kenny in Madison, Wisconsin.

Freddie Gray - 25 years old, died April 19, 2015 due to various injuries, including three fractured vertebrae, damage to the voice box, and spine 80% severed at the neck, after altercation with Baltimore Police Department officers Caesar Goodson, Garret Miller, Edward Nero, William Porter, Brian Rice, and Alicia White in Baltimore, Maryland.

Analytical Plan

For each incident ten news articles, each published no more than 30 days after the victim's death, were selected. The time range allowed for an accurate capturing of the newspapers' initial portrayals of the victims, underlining the influence of the primacy effect ( Holbert et. al., 2007), as well as minimized the coverage of tangential events to the incident such as protests and legal proceedings. All newspaper articles were retrieved from LexisNexis using only the names of the victims. An effort was made to select an equal number of articles from national and international outlets if possible, and particular attention was paid to articles from news outlets in the cities where the deaths occurred. Analysis of the articles were based on the concept of autoethnography, which allowed the authors to utilize personal knowledge of and experience with racial profiling, harassment, negative interactions with law enforcement, and involvement in protests stemming from a number of police brutality cases, as a primary foundation of expertise and evidence.

Autoethnography

While this paper is an exercise in academic writing about current and social issues, for the authors - both of whom identify as Black males - the intersections of race, police brutality, and harassment are part of the lived experience which contextualize our social milieu. The relevance and urgency in creating a discourse around state violence, particularly law enforcement, upon the Black community, specifically unarmed Black males, is not at a distance but an immediate threat to the health and livelihood of the authors. Therefore, autoethnography becomes an important and useful methodology to include in this work because it relies on the narrators' credibility of using memory as legitimate data ( Ellis et. al, 2011; Wall, 2008; Byfield, 2014). In other words, as Blacks in America experiencing racism through forms of overt speech and actions, as well as through micro-insults and micro-invalidations ( Sue et. al, 2007), we believe our own experiences are relevant and valid towards assessing the results and conclusions of this paper.

There has been a precedent set by scholars using autoethnography. Natalie Byfield (2014) utilized autoethnography methodology in her study of media coverage of the "Central Park Five" case, where five young men of color were tried and convicted for the rape and attempted murder of a White female jogger in New York City. Byfield, who is a Black woman and a reporter for the New York Daily News at the time of the event, covered the case from the arrest, trial, and conviction, and then followed up when another person admitted to the crime. Byfield wrote, "Autoethnography seemed an ideal methodology for me to incorporate into this study because it is a technique that allows the researcher to also be a subject in a study" (2014, p. 20). Furthermore, while not articulated through the term "autoethnography," various Black historical figures have utilized this methodology to bring to light their experiences of racism and social justice. People such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Malcolm X elucidated their narratives of being victimized by state violence, and their memories and experiences validated their claims.

Our personal encounters with harassment by law enforcement become a way in which we corroborate the narratives of unarmed Black males being killed by law enforcement. For example, the first author of this paper has been stopped by New York City Police and has been questioned by all White officers if he, "was the one screaming nigger down the street?" The second author, while having no notable instance of harassment by law enforcement, has lived much of his adult life combatting the perception of being an intimidating, menacing Black male due to his large size, long locked hair, goateed facial profile, and propensity to wear urban attire. Additionally, he has experienced the physical and social manifestations of anger and pain due to the death of an unarmed Black male by law enforcement as a lifelong resident and participant in protests surrounding Freddie Gray's death in Baltimore, Maryland. These are just a couple of illustrations of law enforcement's abuse of power through micro-aggressions, believing the police were looking for a hostile reaction in order to escalate the situation. Overall,

Autoethnography is characterized by personal experience narratives, auto-observation, personal ethnography, lived experience, self-ethnography, reflexive ethnography, emotionalism, experiential texts, and autobiographical ethnography. Thus autoethnographic accounts are characterized by a move from a broad lens focus on individual situatedness within the cultural and social context, to a focus on the inner vulnerable and often resistant self. ( Boyle & Parry, 2007, p. 186)

Results

Research suggests that race and racism is still a relevant and determinant factor in the United States ( Advisory Board to the President's Initiative on Race, 1998; Thompson & Neville, 1999; Haney-Lopez, 2010). The election of Barack Obama as the 44 th President of the United States and the first Black president led many to believe that America achieved racial equality. The term "post-racial" America was coined to validate this notion of racial parity, while simultaneously negating issues of racism as somehow irrelevant in this new era of American history. Despite this idea of being post-racial, several cultural critics and scholars point out that this racial equity has not been reached or achieved ( Wise, 2010; Tesler & Sears, 2010). Further research indicates the widening gap in racial inequality in this post-racial era include the following: education research shows racial segregation has grown in the last forty years and policy makers have abandoned policies to create efforts for integration ( Rothstein, 2013; Kucsera & Orfield, 2014); housing examinations determine that Black and White citizens still live in racially segregated communities ( Desmond, 2012; Crowder et al, 2012); health disparities indicate the vast differences in health care determined by race ( LaVeist, 2005; Dressler et. al, 2005); employment opportunities starkly contrast by racial differences favoring White potential employees over their Black counterparts ( Western, 2006; Pager, 2007); voting rights have been shown to play a significant difference in changing election results and denying Black citizens through disenfranchisement laws ( Harvey, 1994; Manza & Uggen, 2006; Uggen et al, 2006); incarceration has been shown to be unequally distributed across racial lines ( Wacquant, 2002; Western, 2007; Alexander, 2010).

Despite the abundance of research specifying stark differences by race and creating enormous racial disparities, White Americans believe racial differences are declining ( Sue et. al, 2007). In addition, many White Americans view themselves as good, moral, and believe in equality, which would refute ideas of prejudice or discrimination ( Sue, 2004). Therefore, racism in a post-racial America is much more covert and implicit as opposed to earlier forms of overt and explicit forms of racial aggression. Scholarship indicates that new forms of racism have emerged via micro-aggressions that imply traditional racist ideology without having to be explicit in using race but now use other traditional American values (e.g. self-reliance) as a reason why individuals or groups are unsuccessful.

Operational Definitions

The sample of news articles fell under two operational classifications, both derived from the concept of racial micro-aggressions. The first classification is the micro-insult, which is defined as "verbal and nonverbal communication that subtly conveys rudeness and insensitivity as well as demeaning a person's racial identity and heritage" ( Sue et. al, 2007). The second classification is the micro-invalidation, defined as "communication that subtly excludes, negates, or nullifies the thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color" ( Sue et. al, 2007). A number of examples demonstrated aspects of both micro-insults and micro-invalidations, suggesting that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Key Themes

In addition to the two operational classifications, the portrayals of the victims fell under four major recurring themes:

Behavior - the actions of the victim at the time of their death. Also found were actions of the victim prior to their death that could be considered correlational to the interaction with law enforcement. This included but was not limited to past criminality.

Appearance - the look of the victim at the time of their death. This included both their physical composition as well as the style of apparel worn.

Location - the geographical area in which the victim's death occurred. Also found were references to the area in which the victim lived and references to the area(s) in which the victim frequented for social engagement.

Lifestyle - the culture(s) with which the victim was associated. Family usually provided friends, this information, or close associates of the victim.

Eric Garner

Eric Garner's representation in newspapers primarily featured micro-invalidations revolved around his physical composition. Specifically, Garner's health and size, as he was a particularly tall and large individual with a number of preexisting medical conditions, were among the first pieces of information introduced in many of the articles:

The 350-pound man, about to be arrested on charges of illegally selling cigarettes, was arguing with the police. ( Goldstein & Schweber, 2014)

But the 350-pound Garner's poor health, including 'acute and chronic bronchial asthma; obesity; hypertensive cardiovascular disease,' were also 'contributing conditions' to his death, it added. ( Schram et. al, 2014)

A 400-POUND asthmatic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against the sidewalk, video of the incident shows. ( Murray et. al, 2014)

The prominent references related to Mr. Garner's physical attributes were micro-invalidations and micro-insults regarding his behavior at the time of his death, which involved Garner vehemently defending his role in breaking up an altercation. Additionally were the micro-invalidations related to his past actions and lifestyle. This included criminality and the perception of being a "hustler" due to his propensity to sell single cigarettes, which is illegal yet not a felony in New York:

The encounter between Mr. Garner and plainclothes officers, from the 120th Precinct, began after the officers accused Mr. Garner of illegally selling cigarettes, an accusation he was familiar with. He had been arrested more than 30 times, often accused of selling loose cigarettes bought outside the state, a common hustle designed to avoid state and city tobacco taxes. In March and again in May, he was arrested on charges of illegally selling cigarettes on the sidewalk. ( Goldstein & Schweber, 2014)

The pending cases, which have now been dismissed and sealed, included selling untaxed cigarettes, driving without a license, and possession of marijuana, said a law enforcement official. ( Fox, 2014)

Police suspected that Garner, who was African American, was selling untaxed cigarettes - a charge that he had faced numerous times before. ( Blakely, 2014)

Michael Brown

The representation of Michael Brown in the media immediately following his death surrounded issues of behavior and appearance. The incident between Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson was wrapped in opaque details with various eyewitness testimonies contradicting each other. On one hand some witnesses, including Brown's friend, indicated that he had his hands raised in the air when Wilson opened fire. On the other hand others, including Officer Wilson, said that Brown lunged at the officer and physically assaulted him.

Brown's death ignited the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" chant in subsequent protests around the country. Within days, articles appeared that implicated Brown in a robbery moments before his death:

Police on Friday said that Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown last weekend, confronted Brown after the teenager was identified as the main suspect in a convenience store robbery that occurred Saturday morning. ( Berman & Lowery, 2014)

Almost a week after 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, the police department identified the officer involved as six-year veteran Darren Wilson. At a press conference at 9 a.m. this morning, police chief Tom Jackson said Wilson, who has no disciplinary history, was responding to a robbery at a nearby convenience store when he encountered the teenager. The police also released video stills that appeared to show Brown threatening the convenience store owner, and a detailed report on the incident. ( Coscarelli, 2014)

These reports became micro-insults and micro-invalidations to Brown's death as this report of him robbing a convenience store took precedent to the overall narrative of an unarmed young Black male being shot several times by a police officer. In addition, there were contradictions in news reports about the relevancy of the robbery and the stop of Brown by Officer Wilson. The Huffington Post reported Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson said, "the initial contact between 18-year-old Michael Brown and police officer Darren Wilson was not related to a convenience store robbery" ( Lavender & Cadet, 2014). Despite the opposing stories, the larger theme of associating the posthumous Michael Brown with robbery became the broader narrative.

Beyond the theme of behavior was that of Brown's physical presence. Images released by the media showed Michael Brown's physical size.

Brown certainly was a giant, as surveillance footage seems to prove, showing his 6′4", nearly 300-pound self towering over a petrified convenience-store employee, who got manhandled and intimidated for having the temerity to object to his store being robbed. ( Duke, 2014)

Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor...He was hit at least six times, twice in the head. His 6-foot-4 frame lay face down in the middle of the warm pavement for hours, a stream of blood flowing down the street. ( Eligon, 2014)

Very much married to the theme of the convenience store robbery, descriptions of his physical presence and lifestyle, including the coupling of rapping, has a negative connotation of both Brown's physical appearance and lifestyle. This larger-than-life description of Michael Brown is supported by Officer Darren Wilson's description of Brown in a media interview given in November 2014. Wilson stated:

When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan...and then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked. ( Sanburn, 2014)

While Wilson's description of Brown gave the impression of Brown being a colossal or more than human figure, it should be noted this imagery of Brown became another justification of the use of excessive and lethal force. However, what was very much downplayed was the fact that Wilson and Brown were of the same relative size. Sanburn writes, "Wilson, who is 6′ 4″ and 210 lbs., said of Brown, who was 6′ 4″ and 292 lbs. at the time of his death" (2014). In any professional boxing match or mixed martial arts fight, Wilson and Brown would fall into the same weight class, heavyweight. In other words, Wilson's imagery makes him the victim while simultaneously perpetuates Brown's criminalization.

Akai Gurley

The shooting death of Akai Gurley was immediately spun in the media, mainly by police press conferences as a "tragic accident" by a rookie officer. Despite the concerned effort to make this story not about police brutality or conscious excessive force, this case presented Gurley in several ways including his appearance and location as indications of micro-insults and micro-invalidations, which de-victimized him.

Akai Gurley's death gained coverage because of its timing of happening within days of the grand juries in both the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases declining to indict the officers involved. Many images of Akai were used in news articles. The most flagrant image of Akai Gurley's mug shot was used by at least two international media sources. The United Kingdom's Daily Mail published a story with a double entendre title, "NYPD rookie officer shot 'innocent' unarmed father dead in Brooklyn stairwell by 'accident' as girlfriend watched in horror." The interesting part of this is they put innocent and accident in quotes as if to question if Akai Gurley was actually innocent, which would then imply that his death was not an accident but valid if he was not innocent. The Daily Mail goes a step further and published a mug shot photo saying, "Akai Gurley, 28, (pictured left and right in an old booking photo) was shot and killed by rookie cop Peter Liang as he entered a stairwell in a public housing project in Brooklyn" ( Robinson, 2014). Beyond the use of mug shots, many of the images published of Gurley show him wearing urban fashion styles: cornrow hairstyle, flat brimmed hats, sunglasses, and visible neck tattoos ( Goodman, 2014; Corcoran, 2014). All of these images are associated with Blackness specifically, which are in turn linked to this idea of criminality ( Davis, 1998; Muhammad, 2010).

In addition to Gurley's appearance is the location of his death. He was killed leaving his girlfriend's apartment located in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Pink Houses located in East New York, Brooklyn. The East New York section of Brooklyn is associated with violence and according to DNAinfo.com, East New York holds some of the highest crime rates in all five boroughs. Fagan et. al (2002) have indicated that over seventy percent of all New York state prison inmates come from New York City. Moreover the majority of those being incarcerated from New York City come from one of seven neighborhoods, East New York being one of them. Beyond just the environment of East New York, the location of Gurley's death at the Pink Houses is also relevant. The Pink Houses is a notorious New York City public housing complex making several online sites' worst housing projects ( Ettelson, 2009). The New York Post published an article two days after Akai Gurley's death entitled, "Living in Fear at the Dark & Deadly Hellhole Houses" ( Feuerherd et. al, 2014). The article discusses the collapse and neglect of the Pink Houses, particularly the lack of proper lighting in the hallways and uncleanliness of the environment. In addition, the article makes reference to violence saying, "The Pink Houses are among the most dangerous projects in the city, and their stairwells are the most dangerous places in the projects" ( Feuerherd et. al, 2014). While the article is addressing real concerns of environmental justice and public safety issues, the timing of its release becomes an issue. From the beginning the NYPD claimed this shooting to be an accident because of lack of lighting in the hallways, which once again shifts the blame from the NYPD officer who killed Gurley to city government. In addition, the theme of continually expressing how violent the Pink Houses are does two things: 1. Again, shift the blame from the officer who did not use proper training tactics and 2. Negates Gurley's death as a victim because he is associated with the Pink Houses which is linked to violence, therefore implicating Gurley as a criminal or violent. The micro-insults and micro-invalidations of Akai Gurley come out in a particular manner of subversive text and imagery to take the focus off the particular case of excessive police violence but rather focus on the physical character and appearance of Gurley and the location and environment of the event.

Tamir Rice

Tamir Rice's death was met with questions of lifestyle and behavior. However, the themes of micro-insults and micro-invalidations were expanded to include Rice's mother as part of his death. The first and most shocking theme that emerged out of this case of a twelve-year old child being shot and killed by law enforcement was the discussion of who was to blame. Initially, the city of Cleveland, Ohio announced that Rice caused his own death:

The city of Cleveland's response to a lawsuit filed by the family of Tamir Rice says the 12-year-old boy is to blame for his own death by police...The family's suit filed in December said Tamir 'suffered terror and fear' at the hands of Loehmann [police officer] before his shooting death - claims the city says Tamir and his family are at fault for. It states Tamir's death was "directly and proximately caused by their own acts. ( Hensley, 2015)

In papers filed in federal court Friday, the city said Tamir was responsible for his own death and said the injuries, losses and damages were "directly and proximately caused by the failure of [Tamir] to exercise due care to avoid injury." ( Muskal & Raab, 2015)

The city also stated in their response, obtained by Cleveland.com, that Tamir died because of 'the conduct of individuals or entities other than Defendant...The Defendant is police officer Timothy Loehmann. ( Spargo, 2015).

This blaming of a child for his own demise by a professional law enforcement agent is a micro-invalidation of his death. It puts the ownership on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Other forms of micro-insults towards the death of Tamir Rice were in the form of blame and lifestyle of his mother. Many on social media outlets were pondering and posing the question: Why did his mother allow Tamir Rice to play with a realistic-looking fake gun? Again, this is a micro-insult, which implies Tamir's mother was not a good parent and did not exercise good parenting skills. This also reinforces micro-invalidation of Tamir's life because it implies his fault that he was shot for playing with this gun. Tamir Rice's mother, Samaria Rice's character became the focus. An article on Cleveland.com, entitled, "Lawyer Representing Tamir Rice's Family Defended Boy's Mom in Drug Trafficking Case" ( Blackwell, 2014) explains that the mother's lawyer from an earlier drug charge would be representing her in her son's death case. This irrelevant connection to a previous drug charge becomes a way to invalidate and negate Tamir's death and his mother's credibility as a parent. More recently, Samaria Rice has moved into a homeless shelter, which would also give a negative connotation of her unfit parenting and ability provide for her children, therefore to blame for Tamir's unsupervised playing with a toy gun. Like other cases, this case shifts the focus from excessive force by law enforcement and puts blame on the victim and victim's family.

Tony Robinson

The perception of Tony Robinson was overwhelming concentrated on the behavior that immediately preceded his death, prompting a number of micro-invalidations and micro-insults based on presumed criminality:

Authorities have said Robinson, who was unarmed, was shot multiple times after he assaulted Officer Matt Kenny, punching him in the head and knocking him off balance. ( Savidge, 2015)

Anthony Robinson, 19, was killed about 6:30 p.m. as police responded to multiple reports of a disturbance, Koval said. Officers were told a man was jumping in and out of traffic and was suspected of committing battery before he ran into an apartment, he said. An officer forced his way inside after hearing sounds of a disturbance, where Robinson struck the officer in the head, Koval said. The officer then fired his weapon. ( Frankel, 2015)

Robinson was shot after Officer Matt Kenny responded to calls about a man dodging cars in traffic who had allegedly battered another person, according to police officials. They said Kenny fired after Robinson attacked him. ( O'Brien, 2015)

One newspaper, a local outlet, highlighted Robinson's past behavior that included criminality:

Wisconsin court records show that Mr. Robinson pleaded guilty to armed robbery last year and received a probated six-month sentence. Chief Koval declined to comment on Mr. Robinson's record. ( Brooks, 2015)

Freddie Gray

Much of the narrative surrounding Freddie Gray focused on the behavior immediately prior to his arrest. Many considered his behavior suspicious and thereby warranted a presumption of criminality, resulting in examples of micro-insults:

Four bicycle officers tried to stop Gray about 9 a.m. on April 12 in the 1600 block of W. North Ave. for an alleged violation that police have not disclosed. He ran, police said, and the officers caught him and restrained him on the ground while awaiting backup. ( Sherman et. al, 2015)

In a police report filed with the court, Officer Garrett Miller wrote that Gray was stopped after fleeing "unprovoked upon noticing police presence." Miller said a knife was found clipped to Gray's pants pocket and he was arrested. ( Johnson & Eversley, 2015)

Also notable in Gray's posthumous portrayal were micro-invalidation, which emphasized both, where he lived, known to be one of the more impoverished and crime-heavy neighborhoods in Baltimore, and also his prior interactions with law enforcement and the criminal justice system. A few newspaper outlets included his physical composition:

Gray was a 25-year-old resident of the neighborhood around the Gilmor Homes, a Baltimore Housing Authority project. He stood 5 feet 8 and weighed 145 pounds. He had a police record, mainly on drug charges and minor crimes, according to court records reported by the Baltimore Sun. ( Muskal, 2015)

Court records indicate that Gray's arrests were mostly for drug charges and minor crimes, and sometimes were not prosecuted. He had several cases scheduled for trial in the coming months. One case, involving charges for second-degree assault and malicious destruction of property, was scheduled for a June trial. He also faced drug charges that were scheduled for trial in April and May. He has been found guilty of drug charges in the past; his sentences were unclear from court records. ( Rector & Marbella, 2015)

Discussion

While media depictions of Black bodies have remained compliant to White supremacist structures using body type, negative images (e.g., picture of victim in mug shot), previous criminal convictions or charges, and allegations of criminal behavior, it is important to realize that individual reporters do not need to be consciously racist. The purpose of this study is not to accuse any individual of holding those values, but to recognize how White privilege and other forms of privilege allow journalists and other media outlets to report on these cases the way they do, without self-reflection of how the words, images, and storylines are disseminated. These narratives play a role in the initial assumption of the victim and can shift the perspective of how these victims are viewed.

In this last section, we discuss the overall movement that has grown in wake of these deaths, #BlackLivesMatter. It is important to recognize social movements and their usefulness in gaining equality. It is also important to recognize and understand why this movement uses the language of "Black Lives Matter."

#BlackLivesMatter

In the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, which occurred less than a month apart in Summer 2014, activists, students, and many groups of various racial, class, and social backgrounds came together to protest the ways in which law enforcement handled these situations. In New York City, an organic rally emerged using the slogan "hands up, don't shoot!" which was also being chanted in Ferguson, Missouri. Other cities around the country took notice and joined in solidarity. Fast forward to November 2014, when both the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases were dismissed because grand juries decided to not indict either officer involved in these cases. The first decision came in the Michael Brown case. Contradictory testimony from eyewitnesses, racial tension in the community of Ferguson, and a prosecutor who seemed to not do his job dictated this case. However, the main argument was that there was no video evidence that confirmed either side's story. Conversely, a week later, a grand jury in Staten Island, New York, put forth a non-indictment verdict for the officer who was implicated in killing Eric Garner. The main difference in this case from Ferguson was the video evidence.

Over the next several days and weeks leading into the holiday season, mass movements began to emerge across U.S. cities shutting down highways, practicing forms of civil disobedience, and chanting "Black Lives Matter." #BlackLivesMatter has become a recognizable hashtag on social media, which has been used to connect individuals and organizations in solidarity against police brutality, excessive force by law enforcement, and racial profiling. Critics of the #BlackLivesMatter movement argue that equality is about "all" lives and therefore saying "Black" lives is limiting and a form of racism. The answer is simple: those who have issue with the term "Black" do not recognize their own privilege and why there is both a historical and systemic need to focus on the brutality the Black community has faced throughout America's existence. If Black lives mattered in the United States, we would not see such disproportional rates of poverty, incarceration, school drop-out, lack of secure housing and other socially significant factors. To not recognize racism as an ongoing problem only exacerbates the issue, silences and marginalizes those affected by it, and does not start the process of discourse on how to change cultural and social paradigms in society that only see young Black men as thugs.

Responsibility of Media

As previously mentioned, the aim of this study is not to accuse the selected newspaper outlets of intentionally perpetuating a negative or insensitive racialized portrayal of any of the aforementioned victims of police brutality. We cannot ascertain the mindsets of neither the authors nor the editorial staffs who finalized the articles' publication, so to make such assumptions would be highly flawed and unethical. However, this study aims to highlight that the White-dominated media, newspapers included, is operated under the perspective of White privilege. Among its many aspects, White privilege incorporates an assumed naïveté as to the negative implications of perceived innocuous verbal and nonverbal behaviors committed by Whites against people of color. Simply put, it is not their obligation to understand, let alone acknowledge, that what they believe to be a compliment, a term of endearment, a simple observation, or even the presentation of facts is anything but what they intended it to be.

Relative to the horrors of lynching and mob "justice" carried out against people of color on a regular basis during the 19 th and 20 th centuries, personally mediated racism is rarely committed via overt acts of violence today. For as much as it seems that little progress has been made in the efforts to promote true racial equality, such blatant expressions of racial hatred are usually met with the highest levels of condemnation in American society. The resulting adjustments made are that an individual who aims to exert their White supremacy over a person of color is socially inclined to do so via coded language - micro-aggressions, as previously detailed - as its subtlety limits mainstream detection. Additionally, the nature of micro-aggressions has evolved to include tangential facets and characteristics historically linked to people of color such as socioeconomic status and culture ( Clark et. al, 1999). What occurs with the inclusion of tangential facets and characteristics to race is that the line of demarcation between entities that are intentional in their racial disrespect and insensitivity and entities that have no ill will are blurred. Therefore even honest reporting of an incident carries the risk of creating a negative persona for the victim, and that is what the selected newspaper articles exemplify.

A reasonable question can be raised when considering the potential influence of micro-aggressions in media: should an outlet sacrifice journalistic integrity for the sake of a heightened sensitivity to racialized language? The simple answer is a resounding no. Rather, outlets must be more judicious in the information that they decide to present regarding any incident, let alone deaths involving unarmed Black males and law enforcement. The situations previously examined provide many teachable moments. For example, how necessary was it that the audience knew Eric Garner was 6′3", 400 pounds, and had preexisting medical conditions ( Goldstein & Schweber, 2014)? What greater clarity was achieved by readers in knowing that Tony Robinson was previously convicted for armed robbery ( Brooks, 2015)? How does knowing that he lived in a housing project and had an extensive police record promote a better understanding of why Freddie Gray died ( Muskal, 2015)? Relative to the facts of each incident, these pieces of information were peripheral at best. The only contributions they potentially provide are a triggering of negative misconceptions that will be unconsciously and unjustifiably attached to these individuals. What is worse is that because this potential triggering is done in the immediacy following their deaths, when all information is novel, the perception created is very difficult to alter even in the face of more sound, debunking information. The growing number of fatal law enforcement interactions involving unarmed individuals, especially Black males, warrants greater cognizance of the images created by the media of the victims. Simply regurgitating all information provided, most of which comes from the same law enforcement agencies involved in the altercations and could possibly contain an agenda, is no longer acceptable. True understanding of the power of racialized language, both overt and covert, should be the new standard of journalistic integrity.

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse grant number T32DA007292.

Footnotes

i Note Freddie Gray, 25, was an African-American male who was arrested by Baltimore City police on April 12, 2015. Mr. Gray died on April 19, 2015 stemming from neck and head injuries he suffered while in police custody. On May 2, 2015, Baltimore City's State Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, ruled the death a homicide and charged six officers involved in Gray's death.

ii Eric Garner (NY); Michael Brown (MO); Akai Gurley (NY); Tamir Rice (OH); Tony Robinson (WI); and Freddie Gray (MD)

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From "brute" to "thug:" the demonization and criminalization of unarmed Black male victims in America

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The synonymy of Blackness with criminality is not a new phenomenon in America. Documented historical accounts have shown how myths, stereotypes, and racist ideologies led to discriminatory policies and court rulings that fueled racial violence in a post-Reconstruction era and has culminated in the exponential increase of Black male incarceration today.

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from Practices of Looking
• Aligns with work of Alexandra Bell.
• The deliberate change in media headlines that align with truth, rather than a constructed narrative.

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• Blatant example of the villanization of Black individuals in America.

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A look at the major moments between Mr. Arbery's killing in a Georgia suburb and the arrest of two suspects, both charged with murder.

A rally in Brunswick, Ga., on Friday to protest the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery. Credit... Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Ahmaud Arbery loved to run. A former high school football standout, he had been jogging near his home on the outskirts of Brunswick, Ga., when he was shot and killed after being pursued by two white men with guns, according to the authorities.

The men, Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, Gregory McMichael, 64, were charged on Thursday with murder and aggravated assault - two days after a graphic video of the shooting of Mr. Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, became public, and more than two months after the killing itself.

The case has generated a wave of outrage and raised concerns about persistent racial inequities in the justice system.

Here is a timeline of the events leading up to the arrests this week.

Feb. 23

Ahmaud Arbery Credit... via Reuters

Mr. Arbery was killed shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 23, in Satilla Shores, a suburban neighborhood about 15 minutes from downtown Brunswick.

The authorities said he was shot after an encounter with Gregory and Travis McMichael, who had grabbed two guns and followed Mr. Arbery in a truck after he jogged past them.

Gregory McMichael told the police that he thought Mr. Arbery looked like a man suspected in several break-ins in the area. The Brunswick News, citing documents obtained through a public records request, reported that there had been just one burglary in the neighborhood since January: the theft of a handgun from an unlocked truck parked outside Travis McMichael's house.

Feb. 27

The Brunswick District Attorney's Office and the Glynn County Police Department conducted the initial investigation into the killing.

On Feb. 27, the Brunswick district attorney, Jackie L. Johnson, recused herself from the case, pointing out that Gregory McMichael, a former Glynn County police officer, had been a longtime investigator in her office until his retirement last May.

April 1

After a public records request, The Brunswick News reported details of the Glynn County Police Department's records on the shooting. The police report was based almost entirely on the responding officer's interview with Gregory McMichael. The records claimed that after the McMichaels pursued Mr. Arbery, Travis McMichael and Mr. Arbery "started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot."

Early April

The case was taken over by George E. Barnhill, the Waycross district attorney, who advised the police that there was insufficient cause to arrest Mr. Arbery's pursuers. He argued that they had acted legally under Georgia's citizen arrest and self-defense laws, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

Under pressure from Mr. Arbery's family, Mr. Barnhill then recused himself from the case because his son had worked in the Brunswick prosecutor's office with Gregory McMichael. Mr. Barnhill asked the Georgia Attorney General's Office to help find another district attorney to handle the case.

April 13

On April 13, the case was transferred to a third prosecutor, District Attorney Tom Durden of the Atlantic Judicial Circuit.

April 26

Image

Protests have been mostly limited to Brunswick, Ga. Credit... Bobby Haven/The Brunswick News, via Associated Press

For two months, the shooting received little attention outside Brunswick. As the coronavirus pandemic dominated headlines and shut down communities around the country, The Times spoke with Mr. Arbery's friends and family, who were by then concerned the case might quietly disappear in their Deep South community, because social distancing restrictions had made it difficult for them to gather and protest.

May 5

By Tuesday evening, a graphic video of the fatal encounter had begun to circulate online. It galvanized an already growing chorus of voices calling for charges to be brought in the case.

Recorded from inside a vehicle, it shows Mr. Arbery running along a shaded two-lane residential road when he comes upon a white pickup truck, with a man standing beside its open driver-side door. Another man is in the truck bed. Mr. Arbery runs around the vehicle and disappears briefly from view. Muffled shouting can be heard before Mr. Arbery emerges, tussling with the man outside the truck as three shotgun blasts echo.

That same day, Mr. Durden said that he wanted to send the case to a grand jury to decide whether to bring charges. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that night that it would be taking over the case at Mr. Durden's request.

The Times later learned that WGIG, the Brunswick radio station that first posted the video, had obtained the footage from a local criminal defense lawyer who had informally consulted with the suspects. The lawyer, Alan Tucker, said in an interview on Friday that he had leaked the video to dispel rumors that he said had fueled tension in the community.

"It wasn't two men with a Confederate flag in the back of a truck going down the road and shooting a jogger in the back," he said.

May 7

Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested at home on Thursday evening and booked into a jail in Glynn County, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Both were charged with murder and aggravated assault. It was not clear on Thursday whether the men had retained legal counsel.

Protestors commemorated Ahmaud Arbery's birthday on Friday in Brunswick. Credit... John Bazemore/Associated Press

Mr. Arbery would have turned 26 on May 8. The hashtag #IRunWithMaud was shared thousands of times across social media, as supporters documented 2.23-mile runs and walks, to commemorate the date of Mr. Arbery's killing.

Georgia's attorney general, Chris Carr, through a spokeswoman, said on Friday that he planned to start a review of all of the relevant players in the case.

May 10

Mr. Carr, a Republican, urged the Justice Department to initiate a sweeping investigation into the case.

Justice Department officials later said that they were weighing whether to bring federal hate crime charges, and had asked state officials to pass along relevant information as they considered beginning an investigation.

May 11

Mr. Carr appointed the fourth prosecutor to handle the case. She is Joyette M. Holmes, the district attorney in Cobb County, a populous Atlanta suburb, where she is the first African-American to hold the office. Mr. Carr also requested that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation investigate possible prosecutorial misconduct by Mr. Barnhill and Ms. Johnson.

May 12

An autopsy report showed Mr. Arbery was shot twice in the chest and had a third wound on a wrist. He had no drugs or alcohol in his system and the manner of death was homicide, the report said.

May 21

The man who filmed the fatal encounter between Mr. Arber and the McMichaels was arrested on Thursday, the authorities said. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that the man, William Bryan, 50, was being charged with felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

Richard Fausset, Michael Levenson and Sarah Mervosh contributed reporting.

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Ahmaud Arbery Shooting: A Timeline of the Case

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A look at the major moments between Mr. Arbery's killing in a Georgia suburb and the arrest of two suspects, both charged with murder. Ahmaud Arbery loved to run. A former high school football standout, he had been jogging near his home on the outskirts of Brunswick, Ga., when he was shot and killed after being pursued by two white men with guns, according to the authorities.

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Taking the heritage and meaningful culture of Indigenous groups and turning them into kitschy fashion and mascots does not honoring identities, but rather completely disrespects their deeper meanings.

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From a young age, children are shown these sort of racist depictions of other races. Amid a culture that consistently whitewashes society, this can have longterm implications like a complete lack of respect and understanding for other cultures. These examples further untrue stereotypes and could create longterm racist tendencies from a young age.