How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

by Crystal Marie Fleming

In other words, mainstream media blackened the portrayal of poverty, depicting African Americans as impoverished more than twice as often as we would expect given their actual representation among the poor. Tellingly, Gilens also found that magazine stories about the “underclass” focused exclusively on the black poor.34 The overrepresentation of black poverty and the underrepresentation of white poverty have clear implications for public support for social safety nets and poverty programs. Polling data has demonstrated that whites are less likely to support policies to help the poor when they associate poverty with blackness.35 Given that whites do, as a rule, chronically overestimate the percentage of blacks in poverty and grossly underestimate the number of white folks in poverty, media distortions that are repeated day after day, year after year, are clearly implicated in the reproduction of racist stereotypes and the miseducation of the public.