Race, Media & Public Perception..oh, and White Privilege.

When white people make the news, race, and its associated connotations, is never mentioned. It’s a privilege that we people of color covet - because when we make the news, we can’t have that same luxury.

Our reality is this - when we make the news, white society blankets us with every negative stereotype constructed throughout time. It’s a generalization, but we live in a society that deals in generalities and doesn’t care for the details. It doesn’t matter if you are Polynesian, Hispanic, African-American or purple - we are all lumped into the same group and we equally suffer from their imposed ignorance. If you don’t believe me, read the forums of KSL, the Salt Lake Tribune or the Deseret News.

Somehow, there is a numbness in the minds of white America that exempts them from feeling the impact on their racial identity when one of their own commits a crime. In Utah, and even nationally, we see a steady stream of white crime on the news.

For example, there seems to be a white female teacher charged with screwing a teenage student on a weekly basis. I bet parents are happy school is out for the summer.

Last week, two young white males beat down their own grandmother, robbed and then urinated on her. Yes, you read that right...they gave grandma a golden shower.

We read about a white drug addict shot during a home invasion, during a quest to steal items to pawn for more drug money. Or, a white male who beat his girlfriend’s child to death. Or a white male who beat his own wife or girlfriend to death. And why is it that most sex crimes that involve serial rapists, serial killers and child pornographers, are mostly white?

And today, KSL is reporting this, this, this, this and this. But how much do you want to wager that the article that will receive the most attention is this, about a black man going crazy in a Provo post office?

Yet, the stigma of an unruly, uncivilized society is never imposed upon white America.

The biggest contributor to this disproportional disconnect is the media. I heard it first hand during a meeting with the Salt Lake Tribune managing editor Terry Orme early this year, when I and two other members of our community met with the Trib to discuss the racist overtones of specific articles printed at the time.

The Trib, on several occasions, is guilty of adding fuel to the flames of racial tension. When a black transient stabbed a man in Pioneer Park in 2007, the Salt Lake Tribune published online the race of the perpetrator, even though he had already been detained and identified. My hell, he was shot dead by police. After several readers called out the Trib for their shoddy journalism, the reference to race was quickly scrubbed from the site.

When Christian Charles Sweeten, a white male, shot and killed two black men in a shady part of Salt Lake City in the wee hours of the morning, he was given the benefit of the doubt because of his whiteness. However, the Trib dug up and published all the public records available on the two victims.

KSL rounded up the Sweeten family and solicited from them an emotional appeal. They pleaded and cried that Sweeten was a nice young man and would never shoot anyone unless it was self defense.

The Salt Lake District Attorney disagreed and Sweeten was charged with double murder. It’s hard to play the victim card when the people you shot in “self defense” have bullet holes in their backs.

But, the damage was already done - the media did its nasty work, creating doubt, unfounded public hysteria and reinforced existing negative stereotypes by creating the narrative that in circumstances of white/black violent crime, whites are the victims.

One of the revealing moments during our meeting with Orme was when he replied to our concerns with “What can I say? Bad news sells.”

Up to that point, we felt we made some progress during our meeting until we were lowballed with such a simplistic, arrogant statement. And then he added another, when he asked “So it sounds like to me, your people have a problem with gangs.”

We couldn’t help but walk away with the thought that yes, we do have a problem with gangs - which isn’t why we requested to meet with the Tribune - but what does this say about the managing editor of the Salt Lake Tribune? Does he approach other crime stories involving whites with the same self reflection? Does he think “Wow, we sure have a problem with our teachers screwing our kids?” Or, “we sure have a problem with drug use.” Or, a problem with domestic violence, murder, child abuse, domestic terrorism, sex crimes, hate crimes, serial killers, child pornography, and yes, even white gangs.

I hardly doubt it. Clearly his mind was already occupied with constructs of racial dichotomy when he chose to use the language of segregation in uttering "your people." Orme reflects a part of society that recognizes and exploits the benefits of white privilege.

And now, to my final point and why I felt I needed to write this piece. KSL recently featured a 10 year old Polynesian female golfer, someone we can all be proud of. When a reader posted her pride in this young lady and mentioned the lack of positive news stories about Polynesians, she was met with backlash by others who felt this poster was turning the discussion into one of race. One poster even suggested that we are responsible for the negative articles written about us.

That’s American white privilege in a nutshell - people who succumb to white privilege aren’t cognizant of other ethnicities and their experiences. Like Orme, they only see and relate to their own. They function as a raceless class because they have no sense of their own history to appreciate other people’s histories and perspectives. Because they enjoy a life from the perch of socially constructed racial superiority, they can’t understand why we would want more fairness in how we are covered in the media.

From their perspective, it is assumed that whites committing crime is an anomaly, which explains the misplaced sympathy and shock for the clean cut Craigslist killer or Scott Peterson. And white privilege demands that we are suppose to accept the narratives created for us from the white perspective.

This is why they can't fathom that a Latina can indeed be wise, that blacks can be victims and that even we, Polynesians, are capable of achieving and we deserve to celebrate those achievements.