Revisiting the ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic That Was Not [NY Times]
While I admire the excellent video on the subject by Retro Report (check them out), and that The New York Times admitted that they were responsible for propagating the idea, it’s bittersweet.
The Times revisited the subject in 2009 in piece titled “Crack Babies - The Epidemic That Wasn’t”, in it the author remarks,
Dr. Frank, the pediatrician in Boston, says cocaine-exposed children are often teased or stigmatized if others are aware of their exposure. If they develop physical symptoms or behavioral problems, doctors or teachers are sometimes too quick to blame the drug exposure and miss the real cause, like illness or abuse.
“Society’s expectations of the children,” she said, “and reaction to the mothers are completely guided not by the toxicity, but by the social meaning” of the drug.
The “crack baby” myth not only negatively influences the lived experiences of children in these societies but also those who are members of the community, and become the casualties of prejudices and politics.
As this 1995 Mother Jones piece highlights,
The crack baby quickly became a symbol for the biological determinism recently promulgated in its rawest form by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in The Bell Curve: These (mostly black) bug-eyed morons weren’t quite human—and no amount of attention could make them so. In the late ‘8os, some commentators predicted they would become America’s “biologic underclass.” By 1991, John Silber, president of Boston University, went so far as to lament the expenditure of so many health care dollars on “crack babies who won’t ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God.”
It’s tough to not notice how some myths influence the realities of particular groups, and how responses to these realities fuel the myths. It’s unfair.
Also Related: ‘Crack Babies’ Talk Back [2004]
How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism.
Paul Raeburn on a questionable paper alleging harmful effects from Roundup, the trade name of glyphosate, a widely used pesticide from Monsanto. [MIT KSJ Tracker]
Here’s Keith Kloor’s take on the paper (When Media Uncritically Cover Pseudoscience) which inspired the quote above from Raeburn. Keith quotes Andrew Kniss, University of Wyoming agronomist, who inquires, “Why are they [Reuters] calling it a ‘study’? There was absolutely no data.”
For the interested, here’s Reuters uncritical coverage of the ‘study’.
This is wonderful: An Illustrated Talk With Maurice Sendak (Drawings by Christoph Niemann) (by TheNewYorkTimes)
“Live your life, live your life, live your life.” Well said.
I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.
When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.
Jill Abramson, the editor of the paper, disagrees with this assessment. ”In our newsroom we are always conscious that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of the country or world. I disagree with Mr. Brisbane’s sweeping conclusions,” she told Politico.
He makes it seem as if it’s a bad thing, also this is the same paper that gives a platform to great progressives voices like David “Turd” Brooks, Nicholas “I couldn’t even be more racist if I tried” Kristof and Thomas “How do I still have a job?” Friedman. Yes that’s sarcasm. I’d rather magazines have a progressive voice than a “Ron Paul” or Tea Party narrative. Jesus.
Inez Gonzalez, executive vice president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, on Fox News Latino (via reallyfoxnews)
There’s also an interesting piece written by Mark Howard for Alternet that makes a similar point.
As I’ve said in the past, while I understand the need and market for such websites, I dislike that they often separate growing minorities from the conversations happening on the front pages. Websites such as Fox News Latino are a perfect example of the aforementioned.
(via huffpostpol)
Jose Antonio Vargas: Bright Lights Big Secret (via cosmopolitan-fascist)
The temporary solution seems to NBC Latino, Fox News Latino, Huff Post Latino, etc., but that’s a problematic umbrella term and it separates these growing minorities from the conversation happening on the front pages.
