II CENTS: Black Violence Propaganda
We cannot have an honest Black History Month dialogue without addressing the legacy of state-sanctioned violence against black people. While many are taken aback by these senseless acts of violence, I believe that these killings are part of a larger war on the black body, started not by the pulling of a trigger, but by the images that are placed in the media for our consumption. For us to truly engage in a dialogue about the value of black lives we must first look at media representation that has desensitized the American people to the killing of black folks. I do not want to discuss the Ferguson protests, or the Trayvon Martin trial because we have discussed those things enough. I want us to ask ourselves one simple question: how did we get here? How did we get to a place where black men and women are murdered in the street, and the rest of us are perfectly fine with getting up and going about our day as per usual? How have we as black men and women become okay with being at war in our own communities?
It is important to remember that war does not begin when the first shots are fired. Indeed Germany began preparing for war from the second that Hitler took office. One of the most successful ways that Hitler rallied the professional class behind his cause was through the use of propaganda. Dictionary.com defines propaganda as “information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a group, movement, institution, nation, etc.” Wartime propaganda has several purposes. It is used to build nationalism and unity amongst a citizenry, it is used to fuel a particular political agenda, and it is used to maintain a heightened sense of danger. In preparing for his war, Hitler established Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda to do just those things. Some may wonder what World War 2 and German war cartoons have to do with state-sanctioned violence in the United States; however, wartime propaganda is not just a tool used by Germany. It is also a tool that has been used in the United States for centuries.
Pro-slavery propaganda out of the South portrayed Blacks as happy and docile slaves. Images and articles were often written discussing the civilizing of Blacks through slavery. Images like the one included often displayed well-fed and content slaves who enjoyed plantation life. Propaganda changed following the end of the Civil War. Gone were the images of docile and stupid Negroes. Instead we saw the rise of the Black Brute stereotype, made most famous by the film “Birth of a Nation”. Depictions of Black men as brutes who must be stopped have not stopped with Civil Rights Movement. The rise of Blackface and minstrel shows saw continuous negative depictions of Black men and women as oversexed, lawless creatures who needed to be sanctioned. Even in the new Millennium, Lebron James’ Vogue cover reinforces these same stereotypes about black people.
It is no wonder then that when Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, two teenagers were shot down in the street, that the media began to assassinate their character. It is also no wonder that the nation was not up in arms about the killing of these young men. We are a country that, through the usage of carefully placed imagery, has become desensitized to the killing of African Americans.
The response of the American people to these killings has been varied. Some of rallied to the cause and led protests in Ferguson. Others have created art. And still others have begun to point to Black on Black crime as a reason why we should not be concerned with “a few” police killings. Media representation through shows like “Empire” has created a climate in this country that says it is okay to kill Black people because look at what they do to themselves.
If we are to have dialogue about state-sanctioned violence, we must not first look at the police, but at the propagandistic imagery that the American people are being fed, that has created our current climate. We as African-Americans should be careful consumers of content, because the imagery on our televisions is the first phase of the war on our bodies. We are okay continuing to go to work and school while our brothers are murdered in the street because we see it every day on television and in the news. Those of us who are college-educated often think that it can never be us because we have “good jobs” and live in “good neighborhoods” but if we are to look at history, then we know that soon we will all be targets.
