Campaign coverage highlights disconnect between media, black community

[Cali_Democrat]

Campaign coverage highlights disconnect between media, black community

by Rex W. Huppke

Chicago Tribune (MCT)
8 July 2008

CHICAGO - Mike Terry is black, and he knows that a black man giving someone a fist bump is not news. He also knows that calling a man’s wife his “baby mama” is derogatory, and that no self-respecting black person he has ever met would use the term “whitey,” even if they wanted to insult a white person.

That’s why he rolls his eyes at the news media’s recent coverage of Barack and Michelle Obama. He calls it “typical,” emblematic of the gap in understanding between black and non-black America.

“The brother is black, and he can’t throw up a fist?” asked Terry, a Chicago bill collector. “That’s what we do.”

Though Obama has tried to make his skin color an ancillary element of the campaign, the issue of race continually swings front and center, with the predominantly white news media taking on the often-awkward role of interpreting black culture for the masses.

Read More...http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/60674/campaign-coverage-highlights-disconnect-between-media-black-community/

[Igel]

1. Welcome to diversity.

In which fist bumps aren't common in my subculture, "baby mama" and "baby daddy" can be derogatory but are usually jocular (and not derogatory), and "whitey" is simply not a word that comes to mind, at least as a common noun.

Moreover, welcome to a cultural mosaic in which there's less and less of a common culture that everybody pretty much obligatorily knows and considers mandatory for public discourse and interaction, meaning that everybody has to be up on the current ins and outs of numerous subcultures--with the downside that if you're not, people are free to assume that you really are and are being intentionally culturally insensitive if you're in the "wrong" subculture.

Of course, with sufficient good will this wouldn't be a problem and that downside I mentioned would only be a problem with boors. But lack of good will is about the one aspect that's shared between all subcultures, at least with respect to members of most other (but seldom "all other") subcultures.

[ecstatic]

2. Regarding the Michelle rumor... It never occured to me, but

Mike is ABSOLUTELY right: "no self-respecting black person he has ever met would use the term “whitey." ROFL. I never thought about it until reading Mike's comment--but I've NEVER heard anyone use that word in regular conversation.