Yes, teen is literally in the word, but you know that the implication is not “an adult legally responsible for their actions” and the choice of how to describe an alleged criminal is not applied similarly to white and black subjects. A 15 year old black boy will be described as a “black male” while a legally adult white man will be a “teen” until the day of their 20th birthday.
Yes, assumptions they imagine were made. If they can point to stats in a study of headline wordings that would be great, but as it is they might as well assert that “teen” implies Martian. The terminology probably came right off the police report, we don’t know - all this does is express an attitude that this is a sign of unspecified entities being racist.
It’s not a journalism specific thing, it’s a broad bias to view black children as older than their white peers called “adultification”. But the way you approached this seemingly new concept doesn’t come across as someone looking to learn more about a phenomenon someone referenced but didn’t cite but as someone who thinks most references to prejudices are just made up.
I don’t know the name for the kind of bias you’re expressing there - maybe you do - where you assume that anything that isn’t overtly supportive of your POV must be opposition, because it’s a binary world where everybody who eosn’t actively agree with you probably disagrees. That’s the mentality of cults like MAGA and is super common on reddit. I really wish we could avoid it here.
Regarding adultification - it’s definitely not just a racism issue. For example, trying minors as adults in court is something I’ve always been adamantly against. To me it’s like saying what the hell let’s try shoplifters as arsonists, because fuck reality. But my real issue here is threadjacking - we’re talking about some crazy 18-yo with a machete, and somebody postulates that hypothetically if he were black there would be racism happening. Well fine, how about posting an instance of that and we’ll discuss it. You could say if the kid were gay maybe the headline would say “Gay teen” because maybe headlines are like that I dunno - and that would be annoying because his sexual orientation shouldn’t matter, but why should we turn the discussion to that?
Anyway, on the black adultification - here’s the first result I get googling “teen arrested”: a shooting in Orlando - spoiler, the suspect is black, and he’s a “teen” not a “black male”. Oh well. Gotta be cherry picking right? No, like I said, first thing that came up. It’s just one data point so it means nothing - but it’s more data than anybody has given for the theory that if the kid this thread is about were black, the headline would be different.
The irony is, my real irritation was with the threadjacking. Some white kid goes apeshit with a machete and somehow we’re discussing racism. I feel like a European complaining about irrelevant mentions of Trump (which I think is a valid complaint, I’m sick of the motherfucker). If somebody wants to discuss black adultification, which might be a great subject, they can post a study or an article or something and I’ll look at it like everybody else, because actual information would be interesting. I’m just not interested in somebody saying “Hypothetically if this situation were different, something I want to complain about would happen.”
Yes, teen is literally in the word, but you know that the implication is not “an adult legally responsible for their actions” and the choice of how to describe an alleged criminal is not applied similarly to white and black subjects. A 15 year old black boy will be described as a “black male” while a legally adult white man will be a “teen” until the day of their 20th birthday.
“My assumptions are universal assumptions” is one of the many things here I wish we could have left to fester on reddit.
I think they are pointing out the apparent assumptions of the headline.
Yes, assumptions they imagine were made. If they can point to stats in a study of headline wordings that would be great, but as it is they might as well assert that “teen” implies Martian. The terminology probably came right off the police report, we don’t know - all this does is express an attitude that this is a sign of unspecified entities being racist.
It’s not a journalism specific thing, it’s a broad bias to view black children as older than their white peers called “adultification”. But the way you approached this seemingly new concept doesn’t come across as someone looking to learn more about a phenomenon someone referenced but didn’t cite but as someone who thinks most references to prejudices are just made up.
I don’t know the name for the kind of bias you’re expressing there - maybe you do - where you assume that anything that isn’t overtly supportive of your POV must be opposition, because it’s a binary world where everybody who eosn’t actively agree with you probably disagrees. That’s the mentality of cults like MAGA and is super common on reddit. I really wish we could avoid it here.
Regarding adultification - it’s definitely not just a racism issue. For example, trying minors as adults in court is something I’ve always been adamantly against. To me it’s like saying what the hell let’s try shoplifters as arsonists, because fuck reality. But my real issue here is threadjacking - we’re talking about some crazy 18-yo with a machete, and somebody postulates that hypothetically if he were black there would be racism happening. Well fine, how about posting an instance of that and we’ll discuss it. You could say if the kid were gay maybe the headline would say “Gay teen” because maybe headlines are like that I dunno - and that would be annoying because his sexual orientation shouldn’t matter, but why should we turn the discussion to that?
Anyway, on the black adultification - here’s the first result I get googling “teen arrested”: a shooting in Orlando - spoiler, the suspect is black, and he’s a “teen” not a “black male”. Oh well. Gotta be cherry picking right? No, like I said, first thing that came up. It’s just one data point so it means nothing - but it’s more data than anybody has given for the theory that if the kid this thread is about were black, the headline would be different.
The irony is, my real irritation was with the threadjacking. Some white kid goes apeshit with a machete and somehow we’re discussing racism. I feel like a European complaining about irrelevant mentions of Trump (which I think is a valid complaint, I’m sick of the motherfucker). If somebody wants to discuss black adultification, which might be a great subject, they can post a study or an article or something and I’ll look at it like everybody else, because actual information would be interesting. I’m just not interested in somebody saying “Hypothetically if this situation were different, something I want to complain about would happen.”