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starwomyn 70F
5469 posts
9/15/2019 11:50 am

Last Read:
9/29/2021 8:18 pm

Deliberate Propaganda, Yellow Journalism and White Privilege (C&P)

Soon after a university cheating scandal recently broke, a meme declared that “White privilege is REAL,” and gave three examples presumably illustrating that premise. The first shows a photo of actress Felicity Huffman and states that “Feds will seek 4 months jail time for Felicity Huffman for bribing her into college.” This is contrasted with two photos of African-American women, captioned with “Tanya McDowell got 12 years for sending her to the wrong school district,” and “Kelley Williams-Bolar got 3 years and $30K fine for sending her daughters to the wrong district.”

It seems to be a sobering and damning indictment of racism in the criminal justice system But is it true? To assess the accuracy of the claims, let’s take a closer look at the cases mentioned.

Kelley Williams-Bolar

In 2007 Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar wanted her daughters to enroll in the nearby Copley-Fairlawn School District. The problem was that they lived in Akron, and her were not eligible to attend school in Copley-Fairlawn. Still, the promise of a highly-ranked school district was strong, so she falsified her address on school documents so they could be enrolled.

When school officials confronted her about the discrepancy, she asked her father, who did live within the Copley-Fairlawn district, to file additional documents stating that her lived with him. Because school districts are funded with money paid by taxpayers within each district for residents of that district, Williams-Bolar was accused of fraud and cheating the system—an accusation she did not deny.

When caught, school officials asked her to repay the district $30,000, the value of the back tuition that her daughters had unfairly received over the years. She refused, resulting in her arrest and two convictions for records tampering. Williams-Bolar did not “get three years and a $30,000 fine” for her actions; she was sentenced to ten days in county jail, and served nine of them.

Whatever one may think of Williams-Bolar’s motivations, it’s not clear why this would be an example to contrast with “white privilege.” Given the very real and rampant racism that exists against people of color, singling this case out as a textbook example of a black woman abused by the system is curious. This is not a case where the full force of the law came down on a hapless black woman who’d committed a minor infraction.

Local authorities gave her every opportunity to avoid trouble, and in fact Ohio governor John Kasich reduced her convictions from felonies to misdemeanors specifically so that they would not jeopardize her chances of getting a teaching license—something rarely done for anyone, black or white. When asked whether she felt that she’d been treated differently by the school district or police because of her race, Williams-Bolar replied, “I cannot answer that. I just know that my situation happened for what I did…. I don’t think it happened because of the color of my skin.”

Tanya McDowell

Tanya McDowell, a 34-year-old Bridgeport, Connecticut woman, chose to send her five year old to Brookside Elementary School despite the fact that he was ineligible to attend. McDowell was in fact sentenced to prison—but not specifically for sending her to the wrong school. She was charged with first-degree larceny and several counts of selling crack cocaine and marijuana. As the judge in her case noted, “This case is about the convictions for the sale of narcotics to an undercover police officer. I think you understand that because that is really the essence of what has gotten you into the predicament you find yourself today.” Thus McDowell did not in fact “get 12 years for sending her to the wrong school district.”

McDowell faced more than 15 years in prison if convicted on all counts. She was sentenced to twelve years on drug and larceny charges, which was suspended after she served five of them. She eventually served a total of three years after being released in 2017, two years early. The sentence was not imposed upon her by a judge or jury, but was instead the result of plea deal she and her lawyer agreed to.

As with Williams-Bolar, it’s hard to see McDowell’s case as an example of excessive and harsh penalties being levied on black women by a white-biased justice system whose only crime is wanting their to get a good education. In both of these cases those in power demonstrated sympathy and compassion, and the women didn’t serve anywhere near what was claimed. One can argue that the sentences were too harsh to begin with, but Williams-Bolar serving nine days (instead of three years) and McDowell serving three years (of a twelve year sentence for charges including drug dealing)—don’t seem to clearly demonstrate black women being harshly penalized at every turn, nor ones that starkly contrast with Felicity Huffman’s white privilege.

As of today Huffman has not been sentenced, but if she is indeed given four months of jail time (as the prosecutors recommended) then Huffman’s sentence would actually be twelve times longer than that of Williams-Bolar. Huffman’s wealthy white privilege is certainly real, but in this case it didn’t seem to have helped reduce her sentence as compared to the poorer African-American women listed. Also, it’s important to note the Huffman, like McDowell, negotiated and accepted her sentence in a plea deal, and thus would get a lighter sentence than Williams-Bolar—or one of Huffman’s wealthy white female peers who may yet be found guilty in a criminal trial, such as actress Lori Loughlin. As noted, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison to begin with; it would be more informative to see a black woman in Huffman’s situation or a white woman in Williams-Bolar’s.

Mistake or Misinformation?

The fact that a widely-shared meme has factual errors is of course hardly surprising. Memes—especially ones with a political or social justice agenda—are often shared precisely because they generate outrage. The question is not whether white privilege is real; the question is whether the two specific examples given in this meme are valid examples by which to measure white privilege.

it’s virtually certain that whoever created the meme saw the accurate information but intentionally chose to mischaracterize it, in not one but both cases. This wasn’t a mistake, this was intentionally misleading information spread for a political purpose; in other words it’s propaganda.

The meme (at least in the versions I saw) was uncredited, as many memes are. It’s created to be indistinguishable from any number of similar social justice memes. (This could be avoided if social media platforms required that memes be identified, either in the image itself or via metadata, by who created them. People could still create anonymous memes, of course, but they could be prevented from being seen or shared.)

Of course few people bother to fact-check the information they see. That (often thankless) task is left to journalists, media literacy educators—and sometimes skeptics. As they say, a lie can go around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on, and nowhere is that truer than on social media. Clicking a Like or Share can take less than one second; researching and fact-checking can take hours. This is why critical thinking and media literacy are so important; they help us recognize when we are being manipulated and tricked into spreading misinformation.



Abracadabra


starwomyn 70F
8871 posts
9/15/2019 11:52 am

Gotta love Fake News Makers. They should be more conscientious

Abracadabra


MrsJoe 76F
17308 posts
9/15/2019 12:10 pm

This is one reason I seldom share political memes...... and sometimes, I do fact check them and tell my friend who had posted it that it isn't accurate and why.
The truth is often damning enough, but when someone embellishes it with an exaggeration or a lie, it negates the validity of an truth in it.
Sadly, many people only read memes or headlines and never dig any deeper.


Be a prism, spreading God's light and love, not a mirror reflecting the world's hatred.


dusty117 73M

9/15/2019 12:52 pm

Three women lied and cheated to get their children into preferred schools ...

I'm not familiar with the stories so the obvious question that comes to mind is … what happened to the children? Which children remained in their "preferred" school and which children got kicked out?


starwomyn 70F
8871 posts
9/15/2019 2:19 pm

    Quoting dusty117:
    Three women lied and cheated to get their children into preferred schools ...

    I'm not familiar with the stories so the obvious question that comes to mind is … what happened to the children? Which children remained in their "preferred" school and which children got kicked out?
Kelley Williams-Bolar was in college at the time that she was arrested. The children would actually go to the grandfather's home after school. Williams-Bolar graduated from college, got her teaching credentials and is currently a motivational speaker. From what I've seen from her FB profile, she is doing fine.

Tanya McDowell was homeless at the time and using a baby sitter's address for her son's school. She went to prison and the boy ended up in Foster Care.


Abracadabra


starwomyn 70F
8871 posts
9/15/2019 3:12 pm

    Quoting MrsJoe:
    This is one reason I seldom share political memes...... and sometimes, I do fact check them and tell my friend who had posted it that it isn't accurate and why.
    The truth is often damning enough, but when someone embellishes it with an exaggeration or a lie, it negates the validity of an truth in it.
    Sadly, many people only read memes or headlines and never dig any deeper.
I tend to carefully fact check with multiple sources and frequently the media falls short, quite deliberately. folks flash out the propaganda as fact and call you a racist if you dispute it.

Abracadabra


kneedtwoplease 68M
1189 posts
9/16/2019 5:28 am

once again, great blog


sparkleflit 76F
10271 posts
9/16/2019 3:47 pm

As I'm sure you realize, there is propaganda on both sides....


starwomyn 70F
8871 posts
9/16/2019 6:45 pm

    Quoting sparkleflit:
    As I'm sure you realize, there is propaganda on both sides....
Absolutely! One of my groups was talking about 4 months of jail time for Felicity Huffman for bribing to get her daughter into college. While two African-American women got 12 years and 3 years for sending thier children to schools in the wrong district.

The reality was that one woman got 5 years as part of a plea bargain for larceny, drug dealing and prostitution. The other woman got 9 days in jail and the governor reduced her felony charges to a misdemeanour.

There is also the story about Planned Parenthood selling baby parts. The real story is that most abortions are done within the first trimester with the majority of them being medically induced. This means the woman experiences what is like a heavy menstrual period in her home.

My brother and his wife had a child with anencephaly which was delivered at term. There was no way that this child could survive beyond birth but the organs were harvested. This is a practice done in hospitals for someone who is legally dead but the organs are donated. My brother and his wife were compensated for the organs that were harvested.



Abracadabra