Chapter 15 Holding up a Mirror to a Classless Society, Ray Suarez

Holding up a mirror to a classless society

The United States for many years has tried to portray itself as a classless society where a democracy makes everyone is subject to fair treatment, equality, and freedom. Yet in this chapter titled " Holding up a mirror to a classless society" , shows an example where America is not a place of equality but the opposite. The distaste for, and condescension toward, the poor in a lot of conventional news reporting can sometimes be jaw droopingly obvious (pg 364). An example of this given in the reading was when a reporter describes a person who is killed on his stoop as being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This is done without ever unpacking the idea that the place where you live could be so deadly that living there could put you in the fatally wrong place to be (pg 364). The news is filled with stories like these where a lot of reporting results in morality plays and assumptions. The fact that the information being sent to millions of homes is filtered in a biased position affects the political, educational, and personal choices of many people who are easily persuaded by the media. I strongly believe that a less bias position should be created in todays media in an effort to portray the reality of our communities, disadvantages and the consequences of these inequalities. People deserve the truth, and our communities are not only black and white but a gradated scale of schemes which are often influenced by our environment, policies, and power.