The mainstream media in the U.S. often portrays Black Americans as consistently innocent victims, a troubling worldview highlighted by Robert L. Woodson Sr., a noted author and civil rights advocate.
In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, Woodson, who is Black and has long been active in civil rights, called on Americans to “disregard race in how we judge one another” to avoid what he warns could be “national ruin.”
Woodson pointed to a violent incident last month in downtown Cincinnati where two individuals were attacked by a mob. Video footage of the brutal assault spread widely on social media, yet, as Woodson noted, “not a single major television network covered the story. It didn’t fit the mainstream media’s narrative about racial violence in America.”
He added, “The victims were White, and as of Wednesday police had arrested six Black suspects for their alleged roles in the public pummeling. Today’s media seems to conflagrate over violence only when the perpetrator is White and the victim is Black. Then the cameras roll, protests erupt, and hashtags fly.”
An analysis by the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters found that ABC’s Good Morning America and World News Tonight, CBS’s News Mornings and Evening News, and NBC’s Today and Nightly News offered no coverage of the Cincinnati brawl in the days following the event.
Woodson, author of several books including A Pathway to American Renewal: Red, White, and Black, believes the media tends to ignore or downplay violence when the racial dynamics do not fit their usual narrative, especially in cases of “Black-on-Black” crime.
He cited the tragic story of Ariana Delane, the 4-year-old niece of George Floyd, who was shot while sleeping beside her grandmother during an apartment shooting. Despite the severity of her injuries, her story did not receive the national attention that followed her uncle’s death. Woodson remarked, “Both the girl and Floyd deserved to live in peace, yet there is national outrage when a Black man is killed at the hands of police but silence when Black children are the collateral victims of the senseless violence plaguing our cities every day.”
Woodson also noted that during a 2018 surge in violent incidents against Asian-Americans, journalists largely overlooked that many perpetrators were Black.
He concluded, “The truth would have broken the media’s worldview that Black Americans are always innocent victims.”
Woodson emphasized, “We teach our children that to be Black is to be permanently victimized and that to be white is to be perpetually guilty. Americans should renounce any schema in which one race is guilty and another innocent. That is the path to national ruin.”
Robert L. Woodson Sr. also founded the Woodson Center, which according to its website, “empowers community-based leaders to promote solutions that reduce crime and violence, restore families, revitalize underserved communities, and assist in the creation of economic enterprise.”
