This week’s Assignment
This week’s readings and videos focus on how the news media solidifies society’s perception that normality is perpetuated by white males and threats to normality are perpetuated by non-whites and females. Similar dichotomies are found when looking at religion (Christian vs. others) and sexuality (hetero vs. LGBT). Protesting is what minority groups did to counter the power of straight, white, Anglo, Christian males, and that protesting was most often seen to be not-normal by the news media.
However, I would posit that in the age of Trump, protesting is now considered “normal” by a large percentage of the country and the media. Even if not everyone gets out and actively protests, the protests we see on television, such as the Women’s March on January 21, 2017 (the day after Trump’s inauguration) or the protests against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court are now the new normal, and the media cover them as such.
In other words, protests are no longer the exception to a normal order. They are the rule. Why do you think this is? Does it have something to do with race? Have white people co-opted the “right” to protest? Why or why not?
