Thursday, November 01, 2018

Anthropology And Sociology

The regular appearance of "we" versus "they" reporting is so laughably obvious in lifestyle/trend/real estate/gentrification stories (white people are always "discovering" neighborhoods, like the modern day Chris Columbuses that they are), but it also comes out a lot in basically any coverage of minority/immigration issues. Often it's subtle, but subtle doesn't make it better. I don't know how "objective" reporters can be so unaware of this in how they write.

It's also present in all the "real America" and "Trump voters still like Trump" stories. Or really any time someone from the New York Times gets off the lower half of the island. It's one of the maddening things about those stories. Who are they for? Nobody is interested in them - neither the subjects nor the audience of the newspaper - and nobody is placated by them. They're condescending.