Channel 5 Football: Black vs. White

Sunday afternoon football: Fox Channel 5 does is again.


Watching The Redskins vs. the Giants' Sunday afternoon football game January 2, 2011 brought to the sports hungry-public an experience in watching the rudiments of prejudice unfolding.

If I didn't know better, viewing this sports event would have seened like a battle between the all Black team, the Redskins, against the all White team, the Giants, dominated by quarterback (no space between Manning who is White.

During the entire two hours of my viewing I saw only Caucasian faces in full prolonged frontal view while the few Black men shown on the screen were presented in profiles.

There was one view of a line of several Black men sitting on the bench, with an underlying impression that these men were lazy. All were Redskin team players. In contrast, no Giant player was presented sitting down. The Giant team players and coaches were seen standing, talking, making the game look like an active, energy-driven sports event..

And the pictures that appeared on the screen made it seem as if the officials, the coaches, and the referees were predominantly White men. If this is true, this reenforces the notion of insidious prejuduce not just in the filming of the game, but in the game itself.

The Fox channel 5 presentation, containing the deliberate one-sided filming of the game, is an example of insidious prejudice, a way of subliminal influence on people without their full awareness of what is being done to them.

This view of the bad Black Redskins vs. the good White Giants team is pure fantasy, a creation of virtual Fox reality.

The only real element in this Sunday afternoon football game filming was the prejudice that Fox brought to the viewing public without restraint.

Linda Zises