After reading Tressie McMillan's article "Whistling Vivaldi Won't Save You", I was shocked and disgusted mainly by two things: the fact that this had actually happened, and the fact that it was not on the front page of every newspaper and news website and brought to the public's attention. The fact the stereotype of "the dangerous black man" is so engraved in our culture that it went as far as ending an innocent man's life should be a red flag that dramatic changes need to take place in our society.
The theory that Gilliam discusses in his article, "Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public" supports the idea that we may rely too heavily on stereotypes, or believe that what we see in the news or pop culture is the complete truth. Gilliam discusses how on the news, whites are primarily seen as the victims and blacks are primarily seen as the perpetrators, even though this does not reflect statistics of everyday life. If this is all people see on the news, naturally they are going to believe this is true if they have no other knowledge. The woman who called the police, frantic, believing that Ferrell was trying to break down her door, made an extremely poor judgement call. Instead of doing the humane thing and seeing what was wrong, (which she then would have found out about the car crash Ferrell was in) she decided to play off of stereotypes. I honestly believe that if Jonathan Ferrell was a white man who had been in the same car crash and went to the same house for help, he would not have been shot ten times. This story shows the extremely sad reality that stereotypes do play an extremely integral role in our culture, and that people still rely on these stereotypes to live their lives.
I agree with you as well, if Jonathan was a white man he would still be alive today. It is really unfortunate that there are people who still associate blacks with crime/violence etc. The media is to blame! We are bombarded with images of blacks as the perpetrator of crimes on a daily basis. It is no wonder why people react to blacks negatively. I am sick of seeing blacks represented negatively in the news. When are we going to start seeing positive representations? Many stories like Ferrell’s leave out what he has accomplished and all the good he has done. Our news needs to shed more light on the ways young black women and men act positively in their communities. There are not enough positive representations and that is why people can only associate blacks with crime and nothing else.
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