Media Furthered Black Criminalization, Professor Says

The media are at fault for the high African-American incarceration rate in America due to their criminal portrayal of blacks, said Joe Austin, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee who specializes in history, in an Oct. 16 lecture on campus.

The professor’s speech was entitled “Preparing for the Great Incarceration: The criminalization of African American youth 1940-1970.”Austin was selected to give the university’s prestigious Fromkin lecture.

From the 1940s and into the 1970s, blacks weren’t identified as people or actual human beings, only as “Negros.” They weren’t given names, they weren’t given titles, and the only reason they were in the paper was to report crimes that had been committed; whether it was true or not didn’t matter.

The room, a medium-sized conference area, was packed to the wall with many middle age attendees, some elderly, and college students sprinkled throughout interested to hear what the professor had to say.

One college student, Samuel Santiago, was there for school purposes but also for the pure interest in the subject.

“I’m in a criminal Justice class and attending this lecture was an extra credit assignment, but also I’m curious as to why the black incarceration rate in America is so high,” Santiago said.

It’s not only high in America; UWM researchers recently found that Wisconsin has the highest black incarceration rate in the country.

The lecture began with a viewing of many newspaper clippings.

Austin spent a majority of his time showing his audience papers from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, explaining how blacks were portrayed in those time periods.

Austin showed the audience a newspaper from the Los Angeles Times on July 27, 1964 entitled “Negro Fears Black, white Civil.” The “negro” in this title is the famous American novelist James Baldwin, but, in the newspaper, he is identified only by color.

The professor showed another paper, this one a 1941 New York Times story entitled “Crime Outbreak in Harlem Spurs Drive by Police.” In this title, the word Harlem is used to describe blacks.

Is this something the media in America still do today?

“There are ways we (U.S.A) talk about race,” says Austin. “Blacks are portrayed as villains.”

Austin made the point that, before 1960, a majority of reporting on African-Americans was on lynching. There was anywhere from 5,000-8,000 lynchings, according to the professor.

Austin also took a close look at the treatment of African-American teenagers, posing the question, “Were African Americans allowed to be teenagers?” A common term used to describe troubled youth is urban youth, but that’s just another word for black youth, he said.

“We think in the United States, we got Democracy down but actually we haven’t got democracy because we haven’t gotten to social justice yet,” said Austin.  “There’s a sense in our society that African American men won’t become men.”

You could make the case that in our society today blacks aren’t expected succeed but rather there expected to fail, he said.

What drove Professor Austin to pursue a study on the black incarceration rate? The belief in the 1970s that graffiti artists were terrorists.

“I’ve been around those guys; they’re not terrorists,” said Austin. It was the false serotype that persuaded Austin to research why so many blacks were behind bars in America, he said.

The media’s influence on America was so strong in the past that anything they printed was instantly believed by the audience, he said.