The "Whitening" of Occupy Wall Street

Rush Limbaugh called occupiers: "Lazy, Spoiled Rotten, 99 Percent White Kids." Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin described the movement as "mostly white." Several newspapers ran front page stories highlighting an alleged lack of diversity within the occupy movement. Slowly, it seems, a media consensus is building around the narrative that the Occupy movement does not represent minorities, including the Latino community.

Yet across the country the reality is quite different. From Los Angeles to New York, Latino presence has been felt and heard loud and clear. Carrying different banners, from labor to immigration-all with the common theme of fighting corporate greed and abuse-the movement is much more diverse than what is seen on TV or what is read in the headlines. So why is it that the media is downplaying our communities' involvement? The occupiers themselves have a thought or two on this:

It is for no other reason that news media distrust is on the rise. It effectively contravenes what the Occupy movement is supposed to be all about. So it comes to no surprise that the likes of Limbaugh and Buchannan are driving the narrative of what this movement is and what it is not. They build the frame and corporate media follows.

Their interest is to present a lazy, disorganized, unclear, isolated, small, ethnically monotone movement-one which they advocate as bound to quickly dilute. The key element here is that it is precisely this media that is working actively to dilute it. By effectively censoring Latino voices, for example, from within the movement they portray Occupy as not "really" representing the majority (or the 99%). The goal is clear: Marginalize the movement and show that it is merely a "few" causing a raucous. Exactly what Limbaugh, Malkin, Buchannan truly want. Media is being hijacked by the same elements which Occupiers are riling against.

Undoubtedly the next step will be a blackout. They will present it as an "old story," something that "wasn't real" and that is no longer "worth covering." This will be to their detriment, of course, not only because the movement is very much "real" but because it doesn't really need the publicity that corporate media alleges to provide. Occupiers are diverse, savvy and motivated enough to democratize media in itself.

 

 

 

Follow Axel W. Caballero on Twitter: www.twitter.com/axelwcaballero

Comments

[mira chancleta]

02:49 PM on 11/04/2011

as white as a dancing taco shell in the light of day?

[Xiomi13]

11:19 AM on 11/04/2011

How come media doesn't talk about the "White" tea party movement? Is it just a given and no reason to critique. There are some valid critiques of OWS, but that does not dilute the fact that the demands have been on the agenda of People of Color for a long time, and that we helped get to this moment!

[GeneralBulldog]

10:06 AM on 11/04/2011

Truth is the media doesn't want to deal with OWS, they rather stick to whatever yellow journalism headline of the minute there is and pretend the movement is just a phase. Fact is the movement is sticking it to people in power but more importantly sticking it to the investors of these news companies and their corporate owners.

[JerseyGirl921]

11:56 AM on 11/04/2011

"Sticking it to people in power"? They are still getting their bonuses. You want to know who you are "sticking it" to? The middle american who has worked for these companies for 15 years who is getting laid off in a mad scramble to cut costs. A year from now the Wall Street firms are going to hire brand new MBA graduates from Ivy League schools because they will 1) be facing a difficult job market and 2) want to get their foot in the door at a big bank so when the market does turn around, they will be the first to move into the lucrative positions. That's why you don't see MD level people getting laid off in all these cuts. It's the guy who worked in the mailroom for 35 years (true story) because they can hire a 25 year old to do the same job for 1/3 of the pay.

I'm not advocating for or against OWS. If we want to change the way Wall Street does business, then we need Washington to put tougher regulations in place. The WH held a mock panel to see how regulators would deal with a potential bank failure in the post-Lehman, Dodd-Frank world. The outcome was identical to what happened in 2008.

Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/11/02/in-a-lehman-do-over-fake-bank-still-proves-too-big-to-fail/#ixzz1ckgzEto0

If OWS wants change, then they should try occupying Washington.