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Slavery is over, but mass media is still maiming blacks
by Jordan Cooper

At any point in someone’s life they’re going to be deemed not healthy by a doctor, family member, friend, or other citizen. However, the American media has continued a storyline that portrays African-Americans as being unfit, unkept, and immature for anything that is seen as respectable in society.

Yet, in the description of black people in general in this country, you won’t hear a peep about whether they received an education, own a business, or have a job. In the media routinely you’ll hear about the bad things that all human beings encumber in a life. For an example, former Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll was ousted because of accusations she was being a bad steward of public power in a dubious business deal. The media didn’t utter a phrase about her having two master’s degrees before she was elected to statewide office though.

Alvin Greene, the first black nominated to U.S. Senate in South Carolina was looked at as a fluke, even though he graduated from a college that has more academic prestige than every HBCU in America based on statistics. Former South Carolina Senator Robert Ford was largely represented by the media as a pawn for then-Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell, even though he was arrested 73 times in the Civil Rights Movement.

So, we’ve often been seen as mishandlers of public office and being lucky, rather than as blessed and properly prepared for the positions God puts us in. It’s hard for kids to find a role model in the media and they’re the ones that need it the most.

And the demeaning coverage doesn’t stop there. UNC grad Rick Fox was depicted as a womanizer and unfaithful father than a success story from an immigrant family and public Ivy. College of William and Mary grad Darren Sharper is being cast as a vile villain even though he graduated from the second oldest college in the US and went to more pro bowls than several HOF’ers.

It needs to be more widely communicated that there are less black people in college than in prison and less than 15 percent of blacks hold college degrees in America. We should be encouraging more people to go to college and be good Americans as the people mentioned earlier did and are. I’m not saying these people haven’t done immoral things as we all have — but they deserve respect as sinners, citizens, and human beings to be praised for the good they did, and forgiven for the sins they committed.

We shouldn’t be an America of disqualifiers, belittling attitudes, and denigrating dispositions. We need to continue to be an America of grace, giving, and genuineness to the imperfect identities that God made us within.

Jordan Thomas Cooper is a 2015 graduate of the University of South Carolina with a degree in History and a 2010 graduate of the Real Estate School of Success in Irmo. He is the first African-American to serve in both the governor and lieutenant governor’s office as an aide and first to serve in the Inspector General’s Office in S.C. (Haley) He is also the first to serve in the top three offices in the gubernatorial line of succession in South Carolina (Haley, Bauer, McConnell). He happens to be the second black presidential campaign speechwriter in American History and the first for a GOP presidential campaign (Bush 2015). He also played football for Coach Steve Spurrier.

graphic via shutterstock.com