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>>>>>>>>
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