On Black Representation in the Media

This Just In: It Is Not Okay

Graphic Jennifer Aedy

Newsflash: white people struggle to empathize with Black people because we are not depicted as actual people within the mainstream media.

After years of subtle (or not so subtle) conditioning by outlets such as TV and print media, in this white-dominated society, Black people are seen as disruptive, violent pests, who most likely deserve whatever trouble they get into.

From what the news feeds us, it’s in Black DNA to amount to nothing but delinquents.

Canada likes to act like this peaceful, all-race loving, utopian paradise—but Black people are calling bullshit on all y’all. In 2010, the Toronto Star collected six years worth of police data reports, showing that young Black males were 2.5 times more likely to be randomly stopped by police.

Shocker—but I digress.

I read the biggest local news headlines in our media outlets almost every day. So, like everyone else, I watched in the past few weeks as a new teen was reported missing every few days in Montreal and Laval.

Most of them were white girls, so naturally their pictures were plastered across most major Montreal media outlets. But one of the reported runaways in Montreal was a young Black girl, and I only remember seeing her face twice.

Of course, people of colour are used to the lack of attention that missing or dead white people receive in the news, so I wasn’t that offended. After 22 years, you grow accustomed to this shit—not on purpose, of course, but it happens.

One day, I was distracting myself from some overdue schoolwork by scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed and saw the four separate Journal de Montréal headlines about these missing girls, collaged together, side by side. The Facebook caption read, “Find the mistake.”

Reading each headline one by one, they all pretty much mimicked each other: “Young Girl Missing/Runs Away,” that is, until I reached the last headline.

It read “Une ado aux mauvaises fréquentations portée disparue à Montréal,” and I laughed. I laughed because that loaded, suggestive headline was sprawled across the photo of the only missing teen that was Black. I laughed—not because it was funny, but because it was just so predictable, I wasn’t even mad.

These four girls were from different places—both Montreal and Laval—and went missing under separate, unrelated circumstances. Yet, the white teens earned themselves an appropriate headline because they have the “complexion of perfection.”

The Black teen? Well, her mistakes and shortcomings are the first thing the public learns of her. After years of seeing racism like this, you really just don’t expect anything else from the media.

From what I understand, all of these girls shared very similar checkered pasts—but then again, who really cares? The point is they’re all missing and need to be found. It seems like that was the case made for all of them, except the young Black girl.

As a Black girl myself, with English being my first language, I’m noticing how topics of racial injustice are reaching the forefront these days.

As uncomfortable as it is, I feel grateful as fuck, because I can finally talk about my Black girl problems outside of the Black community and have people listen and try to understand in the hopes of contributing to a solution. Fan-fucking-tastic! Still, I live in Quebec and I can’t help but notice how far behind Quebecois media is.

As we recently learned from Louis Morissette, who advocated for the use of blackface in a Véro magazine article, some Quebecers don’t even want Black people to depict Black characters.

With that sort of opinion casually being published in Quebecois publications, it’s no wonder they struggle to empathize for our missing children in their press. Our existence is so unimportant, what’s one more Black “ado aux mauvaise fréquentations” gone missing to them? Probably a relief.