Monday, March 6, 2017

Stases of the Malcolm X speech

In his speech, Malcolm X talks about the portrayal of black people in the media as criminals and how the white public is convinced by such portrayals to believe that black people are deserving of the horribly violent and oppressive tactics that the police use in profiling and targeting black people. The arguments that Malcolm X makes in this speech are mostly stases of evaluation. He evaluates the "controlled press" as something that negatively impacts the image of the black community, and he evaluates the unjustifiably large presence of the police force in black neighborhoods as detrimental to these neighborhoods and the people within them. X purports that the media is controlled by the police and releases unfair representation of black people as violent and criminal, so that white people who have not had deep interactions with black people are convinced of a heavily negative stereotype of black people. This negative stereotype makes the white people feel that the police is justified in their maltreatment of black folk. Additionally, X asks the audience how it is possible that with the increased presence of the police force in black communities, there is still so much crime? He answers this question himself by telling them that the police must be in cahoots with criminals in these communities so to weaken them from the inside.

3 comments:

  1. I think the evaluation of the media is very important. Now days, the media shapes our views of almost everything. They have a lot of power and they use it to bias the news.

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  2. I agree that Malcolm X mostly used stases of evaluation. This emphasized that negative stereotypes put people's lives in danger.

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  3. I think you are making a great point here - honestly, I don't know that I would have thought that the main stases was evaluation but after reading your response I totally agree! This is a crucial way that Malcolm X brings attention to the racial inequalities present at the time.

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