Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons Faculty Scholarship 2016 Thugs, Crooks, and Rebellious Negroes: Racist and Racialized Media Coverage of Michael Brown and the Ferguson Demonstrations Bryan Adamson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Bryan Adamson, Thugs, Crooks, and Rebellious Negroes: Racist and Racialized Media Coverage of Michael Brown and the Ferguson Demonstrations, 32 HARV. J. RACIAL & ETHNIC JUST. 189 (2016). https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty/747 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "THUGS," "CROOKS," AND "REBELLIOUS NEGROES": RACIST AND RACIALIZED MEDIA COVERAGE OF MICHAEL BROWN AND THE FERGUSON DEMONSTRATIONS Bryan Adamson* IwrRODUCTION At approximately 1:30 p.m. CST on August 9, 2014, when the news broke of a shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, one disturbing picture was the first still image most of us saw.' A Black male body is lying face down on the street. The picture is foregrounded by the familiar yellow "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" barrier tape. One need not cross to see what is there. A wide stream of blood has run down the barely perceptible slope of the roadway. The male's shirt is gathered up above his torso; his under- wear is showing, and the waist of his pants is at mid-thigh. The body's arms and legs are contorted around and beneath him in a manner no live person could will themselves to assume. This is a Black body. A police officer stands near Michael Brown's body, looking down toward it. Brown would remain there, in that position-on the asphalt pavement of Canfield Drive on a Saturday at high noon in the midst of a Missouri summer-for four and one half hours.2 Brown's killing by Wilson sparked an initial series of demonstrations that was seen and heard around the world.3 Those demonstrations were * Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law. I'd like to thank Di- ana Chen for her incomparable research support, Brittany Torrance, and Benjamin J. Page. 1. See, e.g., Jim Dalrymple II, Police In Missouri Reportedly Shot And Killed An Unarmed Teenager Saturday, BuzzFEED (Aug. 10, 2014), https://www.buzzfeed.com/ jimdalrympleii/police-in-missouri-reportedly-shot-and-killed-an-unarmed-tee ?utm term=.svAA0080w#.kf7ZllXo3; CNN, Witness Describes Michael Brown Shoot- ing, YouTUBE (Aug. 18, 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F-ba5KwPA; CNN, Conflicting Versions of Michael Brown Shooting, YouTUBE (Aug. 15, 2014), https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB-Ehh28Yr8. 2. See Julie Bosman & Joseph Goldstein, Timeline for a Body: 4 Hours in the Middle of a FergusonStreet, N.Y. TIMEs (Aug. 23,2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/ us/michael-brown-a-bodys-timeline-4-hours-on-a-ferguson-street.html. 3. See, e.g., Holly Yan & Steve Almasy, London Is Latest City to See Protests as Ferguson Dismay Spreads, CNN (Nov. 26, 2014), http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/na- tional-ferguson-demonstrations/; Ellen Wulfhorst et al., More Than 400 Arrested as Ferguson Protests Spread to Other U.S. Cities, REUTERS (Nov. 26, 2014), http:// 190 HARVARD JRNL ON RACIAL & ETHNIC JUSTICE W VOL. 32, 2016 revived just less than four months later when a grand jury issued a "no bill"4 against Wilson, determining that he would not face criminal charges for his actions.5 Despite the grand jury's decision, the Ferguson tragedy ushered in a sardonic, but ultimately apocryphal protest cry ("Hands Up! Don't Shoot!"), and fortified the #BlackLivesMatter movement.6 With the deaths of Black boys and men by law enforcement occurring with an alarming frequency,7 new activism has emerged. There are now sustained calls for reforms to the criminal justice system-particularly to confront systemic issues of mass incarceration,8 grand jury procedures,9 and carceral debt.1o Activists are also demanding extensive changes to police hyper-militarization,11 the use of body cameras, 12 police internal af- fairs investigatory conflicts of interest,13 and to the ways in which com- munities of color are policed in general.14 Importantly, renewed activism has also brought needed media attention to the violence institutional www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-missouri-shooting-idUSKCNOJ80PR20141126; As- sociated Press, Thousands Rally Across US in Solidarity with Ferguson, N.Y. PosT (Aug. 14, 2014), http://nypost.com/2014/08/14/protesters-rally-in-times-square-in-soli- darity-with-ferguson/. 4. A "no bill" is a grand jury's notation that insufficient evidence exists for an indict- ment on a criminal charge. See Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014). 5. Jeremy Kohler, Statement of St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, ST. Louis POST-DISPATCH (Nov. 24, 2014), http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/ crime-and-courts/statement-of-st-louis-prosecuting-attomey-robert-p-mcculloch/ article_2becfef3-9b4b-5ele-9043-f586f389ef91.html. 6. See Darrius D. Hills & Tommy J. Curry, Cries of the Unheard: State Violence, Black Bodies, and Martin Luther King's Black Power, 3 AFRICANA RELIGIONs 453, 454 (2015); see generally SuE BRADFORD EDWARDS & DuCHEss HARRIs, SPECIAL REPORTs: BLACK LIvEs MATTER (2015); Elizabeth Day, #Blacklivesmatter: The Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement, THE GUARDIAN (Jul. 19, 2015), http://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2015/jul/19/blacklivesmatter-birth-civil-rights-movement. 7. See infra notes 38-45 and accompanying text. 8. See, e.g., Anthony A. Braga, Better Policing Can Improve Legitimacy and Reduce Mass Incarceration, 129 HARv. L. REv. FORUM 233, 235 (2016); Ava Gruber, Race to Incarcer- ate: Punitive Impulse and the Bid to Repeal Stand Your Ground, 68 U. MIAmi L. REv. 961, 966-67 (2014); John F. Pfaff, The Complicated Economics of Prison Reform, 114 MICH. L. REv. 951, 952 (2016). 9. See, e.g., Kris Henning, Status, Race and the Rule of Law in the Grand Jury, 58 How. L.J. 833, 843 (2015). 10. See, e.g., Ann Cammett, Shadow Citizens: Felony Disenfranchisement and the Criminal- ization of Debt, 117 PENN ST. L. REV. 349, 378 (2012). 11. See, e.g., Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud, The Dismantling of Dissent: Militarizationand the Right to Peaceably Assemble, 101 CORNELL L. REv. 777, 782 (2016); Karena Rahall, The Green to Blue Pipeline: Defense Contractors and the Police Industrial Complex, 36 CAR- Dozo L. REv. 1785, 1788 (2015). 12. See, e.g., Brian Liebman, The Watchman Blinded: Does the North CarolinaPublic Records Law Frustrate the Purpose of Police Cameras?, 94 N.C. L. REv. 344, 378 (2015); Zach Newman, "Hands Up, Don't Shoot": Policing, Fatal Force, and Equal Protection in the Age of Colorblindness, 43 HAsTINGS CONST. L.Q. 117, 120 (2015). 13. See, e.g., Kami Chavis Simmons, New Governance and the "New Paradigm" Of Police Accountability: A Democratic Approach to Police Reform, 59 CATH. U. L. REv. 373, 400 (2010). 14. See, e.g., Rachel A. Harmon, FederalPrograms and The Real Costs Of Policing, 90 N.Y.U. L. REv. 870, 959 (2015); Newman, supra note 12, at 151-60; Mieka Brand Polanco, Punishment and the State: Imprisonment, Transgressions, Scapegoats, and the Contribu- RACIST AND RACIALIZED MEDIA COVERAGE U 191 forces have visited upon other groups, especially Black women.s Myriad examples exist under which other historically marginalized groups such as Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans experience similarly distorted media representations.16 Brown's death and the ensuing dem- onstrations exemplified the racially biased ways in which news narratives about Blacks are constructed. Consequently, mass media institutions warrant scrutiny and reform. In recounting the Ferguson events, the media provided audiences with a framework through which to judge Brown, Wilson, and the protes- tors. Through ascription of racial or ethnic identities to crime narratives, and the intentional exploitation of negative stereotypes and identities, the media committed itself to perpetuating both racialized and racist con- structions of Blacks-even those engaged in legitimate dissent.7 That framework constructed Brown and the protestors as thugs, with the dem- onstrators bent on creating chaos and disorder. The media hewed to a pro-majoritarian orthodoxy that privileged stability over dissent, and al- lowed audiences to ignore the role structural racism and bias may have played in Brown's death and the grievances demonstrators sought to surface. The media relies heavily upon criminal and law enforcement institu- tions (police departments, courts systems) for its news content. Simulta- neously, those institutions co-acted with mass media organizations to deliver their intended narratives for news consumption. The interdepen- dence rendered the police and court system perspectives implicit in all crime news reporting. tions of Anthropology: An Introduction, 38 PoLAR: POL. & LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REV. 200, 202 (2015). , 15. See Sikivu Hutchinson, Do All Black Lives Matter? Feminism, Humanism & State Vio- lence, THE HuMANsT (June 23, 2015), http://thehumanist.com/magazine/july-au- gust-2015/features/do-all-black-lives-matter-feminism-humanism-and-state- violence; Treva B. Lindsey, A "Herstorical"Approach to Black Violability, 41 FEMINIST STUDrEs 232, 232-237 (2015) (discussing how coverage and activism around Black women's deaths while in law enforcement custody has received substantially less attention). 16. See, e.g., Eileen E.S. Bjornstrom et al., Race and Ethnic Representations of Lawbreakers and Victims in Crime News: A National Study of Television Coverage, 57 Soc. PROBS. 269 (2010), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2904566/; Min Huh, Me- dia Representation of Asian Americans and Asian Native New Yorkers' Hybrid Persona, CUNY ACADEMIC WoRKs (2016), http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcon- tent.cgi?article=2381&context=GC etds.