• Doug Holland@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The father’s black, the mother’s white, the prosecutor is a Republican, and this is North Carolina. And this is The New York Times, so the parents’ race isn’t even mentioned. Wouldn’t know it’s a mixed marriage if the paper hadn’t included a photo, but you can bet District Attorney Travis Page knows.

    • sartalon@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      But they did show several photographs of the parents throughout the article.

      And the article is written to highlight the ridiculousness of the charges and even highlights another situation where much more leniency was provided, showing a double standard.

      I felt pretty strongly the subtext was screaming racism. That can be much more effective then focusing on it.

      They would certainly get more people to read it and question the situation than starting out as “Racist DA uses his role to imprison parents, blaming them for gerting hit by SUV.”

      You and I both know, people would stop caring once they learned the races of the child and parents.

      But that way, maybe more people read a bit further, and maybe, just fucking maybe, empathized a bit before using the excuse that empathy is toxic.