Kristeen Irigoyen-Hernandez co-written with Rudy TwoMoon
Lady2Soothe Follow @OurVoicesEcho
Societal Engineering of repetitive media messages focusing on minorities, particularly Blacks as nefarious thugs fail to take into account the majority of penal inmates are comprised of non-violent offenders. Covert strategy applied through media cautionary tales reaching the largest potential audience’s constant barrage of psychological programming is designed to perpetuate a constant state of anxiety, fear and apprehension.
Most people are totally unaware of the level of manipulation by indoctrination they’re subjected through content delivery. Antisocial messages embedded within episodic situational programming encourage and change audience attitudes by altering emotional arousal patterns under the guise of entertainment intended to influence cerebral behavior. This systematic pattern dominates mass media which is dependent on advertising revenue and political support which the media are incapable from detaching.
Jurors have been pre-conditioned through media to view handcuffed Black men entering courtrooms dressed in orange as guilty by reason of skin color. In 1984, nineteen year old Black youth [1]Darryl Hunt, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was convicted of the rape and murder of Deborah Sykes despite the fact there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime. Darryl was sentenced by an all-white jury to life in prison. Ten years later DNA testing cleared Darryl, however even after being exonerated Darryl spent an additional nine years in prison. After 19 years Hunt was released in 2004.
[2]Mandatory sentencing policy data reflect Black offenders are incarcerated at 5.6 times the rate and receive considerably longer sentences than White offenders. Nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population is Black, and 1 out of every 12 Black males between the ages of 30 and 34 are behind bars, compared with 1 in 60 White males of the same age group; herein lays the contradiction of mind control; Widely published National statistics present these figures “With the help of politicians and news media, criminal and Black has become so interchangeable that social psychology experiments testing implicit racial bias have found Whites view Blacks as less trustworthy, more violent, and innately criminal.”[3]
Repetitious lies, distorted messages, faulty analogies and circular reasoning formulated by politicians, produced by corporate media, and generated though news, television and broadcast agencies as factual is the systematic broken record technique of brain washing. “mind control is possible through the covert exploitation of the unconscious rules that underlie and facilitate healthy human social interactions. Common social rules can be used to prey upon the unwary” [4]. If something is repeated often enough the brain is mentally restrained and prone to suggestion and cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality. To underestimate coercive persuasion by hypnotizing millions of people into believing most if not all Black men are thugs and criminals deserving of prison, and most if not all White men are decent and pure, deserving of second chances is not fair, nor is it balanced, impartial or constitutionally legal which does not allow for due process and equal protection or representation under the law.
Legal assistance and attorney affordability are not synonymous. At the present time there are roughly 650,000 people around the country currently locked down in local jails, and nearly 70 percent of them haven’t been convicted of any crime. Among those awaiting trial, many are stuck behind bars because they can’t afford bail, they’re products of a system which regularly forces legally innocent people to serve time. Black men customarily don’t have the funds to retain high powered legal counsel many Whites are afforded such as in the case of the Affluenza Kid Ethan Couch [5], therefore are subjected to inferior services of disinterested, overworked, incompetent or inexperienced underpaid court-appointed attorneys who typically invest less than 15 minutes reviewing charges and interviewing clients. Without quality representation there is virtually no chance of acquittal.
In the majority of movies and TV, Whites are the saviors, the leaders, the smartest, boldest, sincerest; portrayed fighting with words and logic. Blacks are portrayed as smack talking, drug dealing liars and thugs who fight with guns. White screenwriters haven’t developed Black characters in meaningful ways so their lives and deaths mean nothing, confirming Black lives really don’t matter. Media repeatedly controls our thoughts by using violent imagery.
How impartial and unbiased can a juror be whose been inundated by a system of media propaganda significantly influencing, disrupting and compromising their collective freedom of choice, and can this process be routed out or determined during Voir Dire?
When media’s mind controlling contempt for Black men manifests as acceptable practice, it clarifies the extensive mistreatment and the disproportionately 20% longer mandatory prison sentencing for Black defendants than White defendants.
[1] “Darryl Hunt.” – The Innocence Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
[2] Mauer, Marc, and Ryan S. King. Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration By Race and Ethnicity (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
[3] Cox, Robynn. “Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights.” Economic Policy Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
[4] Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Collins, 2007. Web.
[5] Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. Ethan Couch
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