My friend Adam pointed me towards another example of egregious racism in the mainstream press: the captions on photos of looters in New Orleans. Both pictures show residents of New Orleans wading through chest-deep flood waters, carrying various goods. According to the two AP captions, in the first photograph a young black man is returning from “looting a grocery store”; the caption of the second photograph (which shows a white couple) says simply that they are returning from “finding bread and soda” in a “local grocery store.”
Salon.com also has an article about the photographs of looters.
Mark,
Adam’s a friend of mine as well (and I think you and I played soccer on a YMCA team long, long ago)
Anyway, while I agree that in some cases there is subtle (and not so sublte) racism at work – it took several days before people began pointing out that most residents who “chose” to stay in New Orleans were, in reality, too poor to leave – I’d like to point you to the photographer’s explanation of the caption: (You have to scroll down the page a ways – his name’s Chris Graythen, and he posted at 6:10 p.m. on Aug. 31)
http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=17204
By the way – I like your blog and your thoughtful writing, which Adam often shares with me.