The media love to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up about 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the media's portrayal of black individuals, emphasizing the societal issues of incarceration over education.
Michael Moore's quote draws attention to the stark reality faced by black men in society, where a significant percentage are incarcerated rather than receiving higher education. This contrast not only influences media narratives but also reflects deeper systemic issues regarding race, justice, and opportunity, raising important questions about how society chooses to represent and engage with these realities.
In practice
In a discussion about media representation at a conference.
If the guy out in the woods with the Michigan Militia is a real estate negotiator, instead of some crackpot, and has a normal life, that's unnerving. You don't want to think it's as normal as the guy next door, hedging his lawn. It's easier to demonize or separate them off from 'us.'
The vast majority of the guns in the U.S. are sold to white people who live in the suburbs or the country. When we fantasize about being mugged or home invaded, what's the image of the perpetrator in our heads? Is it the freckled-face kid from down the street - or is it someone who is, if not black, at least poor?
We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it's so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.
You can't find the right roads when the streets are paved.
The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.
Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back; but what the mystics say is not the same as what happened to them.
Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one.
If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.
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