What is the most helpful post (or Twitter hashtag) you read in all the coverage on Ferguson?
I don’t use twitter so I haven’t been following this story that closely.
Living overseas, it’s interesting how this story is portrayed in international media, and from what I’ve seen, it was run as a story about an innocent teenager who was innocently gunned down and murdered by the police. The police were portraying him as a ‘thug’, as well as other ultra-conservative media outlets, whereas other media outlets were calling those people out on it and calling shenanigans as a case of racial profiling / stereotyping.
Being an ‘outsider’ to this type of story, it’s hard to form an opinion about the situation, because we’re being presented with both sides of the story. This type of issue in terms of violence between police and African-Americans doesn’t really exist in out country – well, certainly not to the extent that it does in the United States. Instead, we just have a government more concerned with turning away political refugees and asylum seekers and sending them right back to where they were fleeing from, or locking them up in refugee centres. Well done, Australia.
Given that our media is soooo heavily influenced by American media, I try to avoid it as much as possible, because it’s usually only about 3 things:
– the most recent school shooting,
– whatever couch Kim Kardashian is currently impersonating, and
– every little thing that Obama does.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad, but it is pretty full on. Sometimes I feel like our supposed ‘local’ news is just relaying everything that happened in America, and then it’s interrupted with tomorrow’s local weather. This is why I try to avoid the news.
In terms of US media, I’m not going to deny that the black community is regularly portrayed as the violent criminals and the police are always doing the right thing – by gunning them down. But at the same time, the US police seem to have the same reputation as the Victorian police here used to: shoot first, ask questions later. I can’t help but feel as though the US cops are a bit too trigger happy and they get a bit power hungry from wearing the uniform, that mentality of “I AM the law, so I’m completely untouchable” and so they can then pretty much do anything regardless of whether it’s using excess force to subdue a suspect, through to shooting an innocent person, they don’t care because they’re in a uniform – and that makes it okay.
However, if the guy shoots a cop, he’s up for the death penalty…
adorablyobnoxious 