Discourse in the Segregated City: Racial Violence, Capital, and Milwaukee's Media

In June 2015, Revolutionary Books in Los Angeles had adorned its storefront window with a large sign that read: “Ferguson Is Everywhere.” Beyond the immediate denotation of Michael Brown’s murder and the subsequent protests in the Missouri town, the sign also indicated the universality of violence both police and ordinary citizens inflict on African Americans, from Eric Garner to Freddie Gray to Trayvon Martin to others. 

There is an additional signification here too, and one that will serve as the leitmotif for this article. This other signification bespeaks the pervasiveness of commonsense ideology among many European Americans vis-à-vis the daily realities of Black men and women. This gnarled line of thought typically ends in one thicket: the belief in stereotypes of the order of the lazy welfare cheat, the violent animal, and the drug fiend, etc.1 This ideology, which also has a specific class dimension, is extremely harmful in its casual disregard and willful ignorance.  Read More>>>>>>>>