Amid anger and protests in Baltimore following the unexplained death of 25-year-old African American Freddie Gray from a spinal injury sustained in a police paddy-wagon after being arrested, Baltimore exploded in protests. But the American media did not use the that opportunity to talk about the poverty-ridden neighborhood in which Gray grew up.The media didn't use the opportunity to have a conversation about the economic disadvantages that Gray, his peers, and so many young African American adults, are disadvantaged by the current socio-economic conditions found in minority neighborhoods throughout Baltimore and in other U.S. metro areas from the very beginning of their lives.
Neither did the American media use the opportunity to talk about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of illegal searches and arrests across decades of discriminatory policing policies, the debate revolved around whether or not the teenagers who set fire to two West Baltimore CVS stores after Gray's death were "thugs," or merely wrongheaded criminals.
From Eric Garner to Michael Brown to Akai Gurley to Tamir Rice to Walter Scott and now Freddie Gray, there have now been so many police killings of African-American men and boys in the past calendar year or so that it's been easy for both the media and the political mainstream to sell us on the idea that the killings are the whole story.
