How to address it: Encourage students to discuss bias and bigotry head-on.
We should know, intuitively, that Kevin Hart’s past homophobic remarks hurt young gay people of color more than the resulting controversy hurt Kevin Hart-but those young people didn’t get Ellen’s endorsement or sympathetic interviews. We should know that being sexually assaulted is more harmful than being accused of sexual assault, but several senators equated the experiences of Ford and Kavanaugh, noting both were life-altering. We should know that being the victim of racism is more harmful than being accused of racism, but we’re talking more about how this most recent story has affected Sandmann than how it’s affected Phillips. Presenting these perspectives side-by-side runs the risk of suggesting that an accusation of racism, for example, is as bad as an act of racism. Problem 2: Presenting “both sides” often leads to false equivalences.Įspecially since the advent of online “call-out culture,” accusations of injury are often quickly followed by accounts of the damage those accusations have caused or will cause in the life of the accused. These questions help build critical reading skills, encouraging students to recognize when a report of an event gives more weight to those who already hold more power, or when journalists ignore the presence of a power imbalance altogether. Who shares a similar background to the majority of those who will adjudicate the situation (e.g., the media, lawmakers, historians)?.What privileges (race, gender, class, etc.) are at play?.You can also share critical questions students can use to analyze news stories through a social justice lens: To see these structures at work, students might compare the media’s representation of Sandmann to representations of teenage black or Latinx boys. Learning about settler-colonialism and white privilege can help students understand how these power systems developed and how they continue to shape common narratives today. How to address it: Make power dynamics visible.ĭiscuss the historical and contemporary impact of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and more. A Yale-educated man poised to take one of the most important positions in American governance, Kavanaugh was ultimately granted the benefit of the doubt. Senator after senator referred to Ford’s testimony as “credible.” However, after describing Kavanaugh’s testimony as credible as well, they voted in his favor. We may not know the truth of what happened in 1982, but we know the 2018 hearings reproduced a power imbalance. We saw a similar dynamic at play in the testimonies of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford. For many who read about the event, that power granted Sandmann more access to the benefit of the doubt and a presumption of good intentions. As a white, non-Latinx teenage boy with a private school education and access to a PR firm, Sandmann holds far more structural power than Phillips, even if he is only 16. Reading Sandmann’s and Phillips’ accounts side-by-side, it may seem easy to recognize the power imbalances at play in the confrontation. Problem 1: Stopping at “both sides” ignores imbalances in power. We have to give students the tools and skills they need to interrogate a “two-sided” story, identify the problems it presents and be ready to address them. We know that hearing multiple sides is the first step toward understanding a story, not the end goal. We know that every narrative carries with it a past that informs the multiple perspectives of events and a context we need to understand its impact. But as journalists increasingly shift the burden of truth-finding onto readers, it’s important to remember our students need more than “two sides” and time to talk. In a situation like this, where the stories of two sides are so widely available, it can be tempting to present students with the two different accounts and then step back to let them discuss or debate what happened. In media outlets like NBC News, NPR and USA Today, the version of events detailed in student Nick Sandmann’s statement is stacked on top of (or presented side-by-side with) the version explained in interviews by elder Nathan Phillips and other Native activists. That trap-in differing forms and degrees-has appeared again and again, most recently in the reporting of last week’s confrontation between a group of Black Israelites, students from Covington Catholic High School and an Omaha Tribe elder in Washington, D.C.
“It is the trap,” Jonathan Gold wrote for TT at the time, “of promoting false equivalence.” Ever since the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly-and the president recognized “very fine people on both sides”-educators have increasingly expressed concern with the danger of the story of “both sides.”
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