Mixed reactions followed the shooting death of Missouri teenager, Mike Brown, who was about to leave for college a couple of weeks before he was shot by police, leading to violent protests in his hometown [read report].
Now those riots have been ended by security agencies and the FBI have begun to investigate the shooting, but the portrayal of the teen in most media reports have led to a different kind of protest on social media.
On Twitter, the conversation has spawned a viral hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, started by Twitter user @CJ_Musick_Lawya "to make a statement on how the media draws a biased narrative when it comes to telling the stories of black men and women."
Remember how the hoodie suddenly got a bad rap after Trayvon Martin? Check out some positive and negative comparison pictures being shared under this hashtag that is turning out to be more powerful than the originator could have imagined.
The young participants in the hashtag share pictures that depict them as valedictorians, military personnel, soldiers, airforce men, marines, students, sisters, friends, daughters, friends, brothers, fathers and more.
These pictures are simply saying, black people may have another strand of their culture that is tagged hood, gangster, and painted negative by the mainstream media, but they are also ordinary people just like any other race. The Root sums up succintly;
The following images not only tell a truthful story but also prove that we, as black people, know what our narrative is, but we are also not blind to the fact that the media will, of course, be biased in showing the truth. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown is not only a sad commentary on what it means to be black in America but also shows that in order to have our own narrative correctly reported, we have to do the reporting ourselves.
So sad yet so true!
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