Why has racism increased in America?
Question
For what reason has has racial discrimination ballooned in the United States of America? It has become commonplace for white Americans to express their dislike against African Americans and other ethnicities. It seems everywhere you look there is racial prejudice and anti-Semitism growing. Are white Americans instinctively racist?
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Politics
2 years
2021-01-09T05:11:36+00:00
2021-01-09T05:11:36+00:00 3 Answers
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Answers ( 3 )
First we need to figure out how we can measure racism before we can definitively say it has grown. Analyzing the number of racial hate crimes that have occurred since record keeping began might help us determine its growth. It may even help us establish its cause.
An increase or decrease of racially motivated hate crimes could signify that racism in America has either grown or reduced. If you make a line-graph using FBI racial hate crime statistics, you’ll notice that racially motivated hate crimes have dramatically declined since record keeping began but started to increase again in 2013.
In 1996 there were 5,396 racial bias hate crimes. In 2012 that number dramatically declined to 2,797. But then it all changed. Based on the latest FBI data (2018), racially motivated hate crimes have increased to 4,047.
While the overall number of racially motivated hate crimes have decreased, there was a significant increase of racial hate crimes starting in the year 2013. But for what reason? Why has racism suddenly increased in America? Based on Newton’s third law…
“for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction”
Well, it started with the Zimmerman trial. Then the shooting of Michael Brown, the death of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Orlando Castile, Alton Sterling and so on. Political news media outlets like CNN changed the way it covered stories—24/7 wall-to-wall coverage.
The Cable News Network CNN seen its largest increase in new viewership at the end of the Zimmerman trial. When the trial was over, two-thirds of that traffic left. So CNN needed its next big story. The CEO of CNN was even quoted, saying
“if viewers only come to CNN when there is a big story, make sure there is always a big story”
Competing political media outlets took notice of CNN’s dramatic increase in new viewership. To be successful in business you take what your competition is doing and do it better. It’s called being first, second. So more media outlets started to aggressively focus on race, always trying to one-up the competition.
If you shine the light on a racism long enough, people become attracted to it. It can change a person’s perception about race, create resentment and spark violence. So, to answer your question, constant media coverage created a perpetual cycle of racial hate in the good ole’ U.S.A. That is why racism increased in America. We can call it modern racism.
Why did media change the way it covered racism and was it intentional? In other words, did media purposely turn Americans against each other?
All bias opinion political media outlets divide society. CNN sunk to a 21 year primetime ratings low in 2012. Ratings for all cable news outlets declined—until the year 2013.
Ratings for the three biggest cable news television channels (Fox News, CNN, MSNBC) declined because of cord-cutters. More than 40 million subscribers have canceled their cable television subscription in favor or cheaper internet-based programming.
Much of cable news revenue comes from cable companies. Each time a person subscribes through cable TV, they earn a fee. This is when highly-bias opinion media really started to escalate. Cable news desperately needed a way to get you addicted to their program. They needed to make “news” into something more like a religion.
Media intentionally divided society because in a perfect world you don’t need them. So they made you need them. To no surprise, the more they divided society, the higher ratings increased. But they didn’t just focus on racism, all bad news became “the good news”, for them at least.
Media outlets like CNN and ABC have specifically said, and I quote, “we need to keep talking about racism”. Ironically, the more people talk about race, the more racist people become. Heck, the more we glamorize mass shootings, the more happen. It is not to say talking about racism is bad, it’s the way you talk about it that matters.
Media has divided people perfectly. They will forever create a constant army of racists, thus an endless cycle of bad news. You might never defeat racism until you defeat media—which is mostly an extension of government. Government is just a bunch of corporations that have infiltrated the government and pretend to be government. They are one and the same. Divide to conquer. They fear unity.