Parkland Student Criticizes Media for “Not Giving Black Students a Voice” in Coverage

David Hogg, one of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, recently participated in an Axios event centered on the national gun control debate. That discussion covered many topics, including mental health, InfoWars, and the current atmosphere at his high school, but Hogg also repeatedly brought up racial injustice as part of the talk.

Asked about the biggest mistake the media made in their coverage of the shooting, Hogg answered, “Not giving black students a voice. My school is about 25 percent black, but the way we’re covered doesn’t reflect that.”

This disparity was clear on high-profile coverage such as the TIME Magazine cover:

Parkland students featured on Time Magazine cover: “Enough” https://t.co/fXmHTRmZNR pic.twitter.com/VJPLy7cHDr

— The Hill (@thehill) March 22, 2018

However, the actual March For Our Lives showed an admirable commitment to inclusion, inviting speakers from a variety of racial and geographic backgrounds to speak about the ways that America’s gun violence epidemic manifests in their specific neighborhoods. Gun violence disproportionately affects communities of color, so they should be at the forefront of the discussion.

In the rest of the Axios talk, Hogg also pushed back against the right-wing suggestion that, rather than instituting stricter gun control, the United States should have more officers and security in schools—with some even suggesting that we arm teachers with guns. According to Axios’s write-up of the event, “Hogg said that his concern with having more resource officers in the school is ‘racial disparity between the black and white students,’ and that the solution should instead be common-sense gun laws.” Nationally, black students are far more likely to be suspended, physically punished, or seen as “troublemakers” by their teachers, and handing those same teachers firearms could only make that disparity worse.

People love to crap on millennials and Generation Z, but if the older generations were half as aware of these issues as the young are, our society would be a whole lot closer to equality and safety.

(via The Root; image: RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images)

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