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?
Progress celebrates victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it.
It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful.
I am a Christian…so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.
Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
Let the voice of the people be heard!
Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.
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