Collective Memory and Racial Politics: Media Coverage of Black Resistance to Police Violence in New York, 1997-2000

Academic research on Black protests often relies on elite mainstream White-centric news sources and neglects events between the 1960s and the 2010s. We compare the coverage by the New York Times and two Black newspapers of four episodes of protests about police violence in New York in the late 1990s: the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999, which led to many protests over two years and was discussed in hundreds of news articles, and three overlapping episodes about the torture of Abner Louima in 1997 and the killings of Malcolm Ferguson and Patrick Dorismond in 2000. We find that the New York Times emphasized partisan politics as protest motivations, quoted police extensively and often printed material sympathetic to police, and typically portrayed protesters as angry or motivated by politics. Black newspapers emphasized long-term systemic problems with police, moral condemnation of police violence, the connection of current protests with past oppression and struggles, the involvement of youth, and Black immigrants’ growing awareness of anti-Blackness. Our findings elucidate that centering a “Black gaze” provides an important balance to White-centric sources and demonstrates the continuity of the Black movement in its opposition to police violence.