The Waste Products of the American Dream: framing Black cultural pathology in the dominant news media in times of crisis

ABSTRACT

In The Waste Products of the American Dream I argue that the ability to influence the popular narrative that frames the Black communities' public existence is critical if the Black urban poor is going to draw the nation’s attention to the structural and historical forces that create and continue to perpetuate concentrated Black poverty today. More specifically, enticing white “common sense” fears about Black life, culture, and space became a strategic political maneuver that conservative politicians began to use in the late 1960s by suggesting that all “civil rights brought was rioting.” The mainstream media would reproduce these narratives of Black criminality to further demonize low-income inner city communities and its inhabitants as the culprits of urban decay, delivering the state from any blame for the creation of concentrated poverty and the spatial mismatch that went along with social isolation. To illustrate how this discursive politics works to frame North Minneapolis and its residents as always already deviant, I did a comparative reading of the 2011 North Minneapolis tornado media coverage between the historic Black press and local mainstream press. I did this to show how important it is for the creation of Black counterpublic spaces that the historic Black press maintains as a way to take control of the community's narrative while also highlighting how the mainstream press simply relies on readily available stock narratives of Black cultural pathology which blame the victims of disaster for their plight with an uncanny similarity to Hurricane Katrina coverage.

KEYWORDS:

• Blackness in the media
• the politics of disposability
• Black counter publics
• Hurricane Katrina
• and North Minneapolis tornado

Notes

1 The NCRT was started with the leadership of Louis King of Summit Academy OIC, Chanda Baker-Smith of Pillsbury United Communities, Chad Schwitters of Urban Homeworks and Mike Wynne of Emerge Community Development. They charged themselves with responding to the immediate human needs of North Minneapolis residence as they determined that the City was ill prepared to handle the need in a timely manner. During the first two weeks they raised over 200,000 through their own institutional networks. Later in the summer this Ad Hoc group grew to over 40 non-profit organizations, neighborhood associations and community partners and were awarded about 250,000 from the Minneapolis Foundation to continue its work. I attended their regular community meetings to stay abreast of the group’s development.

2 At the July 15, 2011 NCRT meeting held at Summit OIC a representative from the American Red Cross told the group that they had a little over 11 families still living at North Commons Park who were relying on the Red Cross as a transitional housing site, which is not their role. They also shared that the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is trying to kick the Red Cross off City property although displaced residents were still on site.