Masters Thesis: The Color of Moral Panic is Black

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The Color of Moral Panic is Black: Racial Violence and Police Brutality
in the Contemporary United States
by
Chelsea Larson
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Program in Social & Cultural Analysis
New York University
May 2016
Thesis Reader #1: David Dent
Thesis Reader #2: Michael Ralph

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................3
PREFACE.......................................................................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................7
CHAPTER ONE: Concern ..........................................................................................................13
CHAPTER TWO: Hostility.........................................................................................................22
CHAPTER THREE: Disproportionality, Volatility, and Consensus..........................................30
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................40
NOTES..........................................................................................................................................47
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................57

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ABSTRACT
This thesis focuses on a contemporary US moral panic over issues of racial violence and
police brutality. It begins with a preface and introduction in which I introduce the phenomenon
as well as the current unrest in the United States due to recent violent racialized encounters
between individual police and black victims. The first chapter looks at concern as the initial
necessary characteristic for a moral panic’s existence, while the second chapter deals with
hostility in relation to concern as the second agreed-upon tenet of moral panic. The third chapter
addresses three additional characteristics of moral panic and considers disproportionality,
volatility, and consensus as a group because moral panic scholars do not all agree that these final
three are absolutely necessary to a moral panic’s occurrence. This thesis closes with a conclusion
which suggests a sixth potential characteristic, namely the influence of media and social media,
before returning to the stories of police violence with which The Color of Moral Panic is Black
began.

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PREFACE
There’s a certain compulsion, as a white woman who is also a member of the upper
middle class, to include a sort of disclaimer-cum-acknowledgment regarding my work on moral
panic and issues of racial violence in America. It is not my intention to offend—though the
sensitivity of the topics addressed here makes this a difficult intention to maintain. Nor am I
interested in pitting people of color against the police force in a battle of black versus blue.1
Such
a divisive approach to issues of race violence and brutality is both unhelpful and unproductive,
and villainizing any particular group does not, in any way, enrich my arguments.
With a nod to the lyrics used as titles throughout The Color of Moral Panic is Black,2
here I also acknowledge my privilege—or, since some argue that the term privilege still implies
some modicum of deservedness, my status as a beneficiary. My whiteness, such that it is, is
arbitrary and I could have been born a member of any other race just as easily as I was born a
member of the white one. In his song “White Privilege II,” white hip-hop artist Macklemore
contemplates this subject and raps that his privilege, and also mine, is protected by a white
supremacy so pervasive that it is everywhere, present in “the soil, the foundation, the cement,
and the flag.”3
This fact has remained steadfastly in mind as I researched, outlined, and wrote for
this project. Frankly, I could not have ignored this privilege even if I wanted to, and the deeper I
delved into these violent encounters, the harder it was to forget.
As an academic this continued compulsion produces a third acknowledgement, of which
there are multiple parts. The first is that my expertise lies much more in the way of moral panic
than police brutality. As such there are doubtless a great number of scholars whose work on this
issue I overlook. This is not done maliciously or carelessly; it is more likely that I have not been
exposed to their scholarship during my time as a student of social and cultural analysis and

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cannot write insightfully on that which I have not read. The next part of this disclaimer is simply
recognition that there have been many more black lives lost and black bodies beaten than I can
possibly acknowledge here. My focus on Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and a select few others
does is not to suggest a situational hierarchy of victimization or to imply anything about
individuals themselves; I could just as easily have shifted away from specifically police-related
violence and written more extensively about Trayvon Martin or Renisha McBride.
Third, in the following, the terms black people, people of color, and marginalized groups
are used interchangeably. The meanings of these words are not the same and do not generally
refer to the same groups of people. As my focus, however, is mostly on black people and their
violent encounters with the police, I have chosen to use the additional identifiers of people of
color and marginalized groups to provide variety for the reader and to remind, on occasion, that
black people are not the only victims of these racialized issues. Finally, my status as an academic
prompts me to recognize that America does not refer solely to the United States, despite popular
usage of the term being applied in that way. Here I work diligently to use either the United States
or US American; nevertheless I am sure there are instances in which something was missed in
the revisions. As such, America, when used in The Color of Moral Panic is Black, refers to the
United States alone.
It has been said that “every scholarly project begins with an inspiration.”4
Originally,
before this project became one of racial violence and police brutality, my master’s focus was on
the moral panic which arises out of threats to the mythologized US American dream. Yet
Macklemore dethrones that ideal just as brusquely; “the one thing the American dream fails to
mention,” he tells his listener, is that he—and I—are “many steps ahead to begin with.”5
It feels

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impossible, inappropriate even, to write about this dream when so many US Americans do not
truly have access to it. Perhaps my inspiration finds its roots in this awareness.
If such is the case, however, then that inspiration is also necessarily two-fold. I am an
American citizen who did not grow up in the United States, and as a foreigner living in China I
was subject to my own uncomfortable encounters with race and bigotry. When I returned to the
US for college, I was surprised and appalled to find those experiences discounted by a handful of
my peers who believed that if an act of racism was not oppression or aggression by a white
person onto or toward a black person, then it was not racism at all. My project’s inspiration, or at
least one half of it, lies with those people and their blindness toward their own prejudices; in
writing this, I hope to unearth and better understand mine.

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INTRODUCTION
America is a nation bound together by moral panics…and race or antiblackness is often what
anchors these fits of moralism. – David J. Leonard6
What does it mean…to live in a body that is both scared and scary? – Brit Bennett7
“The House That Needs the Help the Most”8
On an early March morning of 1991 Rodney King drove too fast under the influence. The
beating he got for this crime at the hands of the LAPD—and the acquittal that three of the four
complicit officers received—sparked six days of violence in Los Angeles and smaller riots in
other cities across the US.
Summer 2014, over the span of mere weeks, Eric Garner and Michael Brown lost their
lives to the same institution of state control which broke Rodney King’s body two decades
earlier. History seemed to repeat itself when the grand juries over both cases decided not to
indict either of the officers involved in the fatalities. From the streets of Ferguson, Missouri to
major US cities like New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.,
protests turned to riots that spread nationwide in a tangible manifestation of Americans’
malcontent.
The details of these events are chillingly similar. King, Garner, and Brown were all black;
their aggressors, all white. All officers involved obtained legal absolution under a judiciary
system that consistently marginalizes people of color and other minorities. Each encounter
sparked waves of righteous anger which grew into social, cultural, and political movements
almost too big to ignore. Yet on the eve of a potentially historic election, that is exactly what
seems to be happening. Black Lives Matter has given way to #FeelTheBern and
#CantStumpTheTrump. Like the breaking of Rodney King’s body 25 years before, the violent

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experiences of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have been swept under a proverbial rug that has
many younger millennials mistakenly thinking the present unrest around race-related violence in
the United States is something new.
Sadly, issues of, and citizen unrest in relation to, police violence in the United States are
long-standing and involved. As Jon Stewart lamented in an opening monologue delivered on The
Daily Show a few months after the Eric Garner and Michael Brown grand jury decisions of
December 2014, “These cyclical eruptions appear like tragedy cicadas: depressing in their
similarity, predictability, and intractability.”9
Stewart was not surprised that media coverage of
the Baltimore and Ferguson riots mirrored similar treatment of the 1992 Rodney King riots in
Los Angeles, merely critical of media’s “tendency to search for the most sensational images at
the expense of context.”10
Eric Garner and Michael Brown’s violent encounters with the police
should be subject to the same critique; without context—historical or otherwise—these cases risk
being taken as individual instances of racialized brutality rather than a systematic victimization
of the marginalized by the state.
This is not to say that there have not been other victims. Trayvon Martin’s 2012 death
immediately comes to mind, though he was killed by a member of the local neighborhood watch
rather than a state-legitimated police officer.11
In 2013 Renisha McBride was shot in Detroit
while apparently seeking assistance following a car accident. The homeowner claimed he was
reacting in self-defense; civil rights activists claim otherwise: that McBride, who was unarmed
and black, was a victim of racial profiling by her white shooter.12
A decade prior, and only days
after Rodney King’s beating in March 1991, teenager Latasha Harlins was likewise shot and
killed after a minor altercation with a Korean liquor store owner. Community outrage over her

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death helped fuel the fire behind the Rodney King riots and prompted the founding of a justice
committee in Harlins’ name.13
Each of these deaths was violent and unnecessary, and speaks to what UCLA author and
historian Brenda Stevenson calls “this damaged arena of the criminal justice system.” 14
She sees
no way out for minority groups who are already too often victimized by mechanisms of state
control such as mass incarceration or institutionalized racial profiling. Stevenson attributes this
marginalization to “social barriers.”15
In what follows, I identify and expound moral panic,
particularly over race violence and police brutality in the United States, as one such barrier.
“It’s Your Fault If You Run”
Moral panic is a phenomenon of fear. The brainchild of criminology, sociology, and
deviancy theory, moral panic arises when an in-group (us) is presented as morally upright in
contrast to a socially deviant and potentially dangerous out-group (them).16
This process of social
categorization is divisive, and often misdirected. History speaks to moments of moral panic in
which minority groups have been marginalized by the “us” versus “them” mentality and made
into folk devils whose only crime was being “visible reminders of what we should not be.”17
Folk devils come from Stanley Cohen, who appropriates the identifying term in his
groundbreaking text, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers.
There a folk devil describes people or groups whose performance of deviancy or delinquency
somehow becomes threatening to social morals. Cohen’s use of folk devils is expansive: events,
episodes, and social, cultural, or economic conditions can emerge as threatening through
deviance as well. It is important for Cohen, however, to clarify that to be identified as a folk
devil—and therefore also a threat to society—one must first undergo a process of becoming.

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Cohen writes that moral panic occurs when a particular person, group of persons, etc, “emerges
to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. [emphasis added]”18
In short, those
who society deems folk devils are not always, if ever, inherently deviant actors. It is first
necessary that some facet of their appearance or behavior is perceived as threatening; once that
fear is projected onto the apparently deviant actors, they then become the dangerously
unpredictable folk devil to society’s stable morality. Cohen calls this becoming process
symbolization, which can begin with a single word.19
Citing place-name examples such as Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, Cohen argues that
symbolization occurs when a word or term usually considered neutral take on complex symbolic
meaning to represent ideas and emotions which exist outside the standard definition. He outlines
this becoming process as beginning with a word that becomes symbolic of deviant or delinquent
status; objects then emerge to symbolize that word; finally, those objects become associated with,
and symbolic of, the deviant, delinquent status, thereby removing the neutrality of the original
word and replacing it with negative meaning. Symbolization, for Cohen’s purposes, turned Mods,
originally a way of identifying varying “consumer styles,”20
into a word which essentially meant
folk devil.
For the purposes of my argument here, and as an intellectually stimulating exercise,
consider symbolization in the context of race. Through this process race, or more specifically,
Blackness, is taken to mean more than the color of a person’s skin. Blackness so deneutralized
implicates black people as folk devils seamlessly such that the initial distinction between folk
devils as deviant actors and the word Blackness itself disappears. After symbolization, to be
black is to be a folk devil which is, in turn, to be both delinquent and deviant; and deviance, of
course, is to be feared. Writer Brittney Cooper addresses this negative association. In reference

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to her own Blackness she writes, “Blackness rolls off the tongue in just that certain way when I
say it loud and proud. [emphasis original]”21
Yet—and despite her own insistence that she
generally has no problem with white people using the term—Cooper also admits that white usage
of “Black” as an identifier becomes problematic “when it rolls off white tongues like an
accusation.”22
But what exactly are black people being accused of here? And what happens when
the tables turn: when black people are given the opportunity to become the accusers and
symbolization given a different identity to vilify?
In a collection of open letters to his son entitled Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi
Coates tells his child that the destruction of the black body is a US American tradition—a
perverse heritage even;23
that the police have the authority to enact this national heritage;24
that
his father participated in the same morbid tradition, saying “Either I can beat him, or the
police.”25
For Coates the police are not symbols of security; instead, the police, through
symbolization, are become the folk devils. Their deviance is manifest in aggression, violence,
and brutality, all of which is inflicted upon the defenseless black body, and all at the behest of
the systemically oppressive state.
What conclusions can be made, then, about this process of symbolization that so easily
takes a term and turns it evil? Somehow symbolization places Blackness and police on a
comparable level of identity victimized by the very process that makes it simultaneously the
villain. In my investigation of the contemporary moral panic over racial violence and police
brutality, I am unfortunately forced to choose between the two, selecting one as the folk devils
necessary for moral panic’s existence while leaving the other free of negative connotations, of
projected fear, and of blame. As such, though the Blackness of black people is clearly negatively
appropriated by symbolization, the folk devils referred to here are the police. Cohen stipulates

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that the differences between the upright social citizens and the folk devils must be visible; like
the visibility of Blackness as it shows in the color of a person’s skin, police are also visually
distinguishable as folk devils by their badges, when brandished, and their uniform blues.
It is important to keep in mind, however, that the line between folk devils and folk heroes
is “blurred and transgressive.”26
The fact that society fears a particular group as folk devils does
not necessarily mean those fears are well-founded or in any way legitimate; most who get
viewed as societal folk devils do not deserve the title, or the accompanying fear. Applied here,
this logic implies that the police and deviant acts of physical brutality and racialized violence are
not always mutually exclusive. To put a new spin on an old phrase, in other words,
symbolization makes fools of us all.27
“All That Negative Stuff Isn’t Cool”
The designation of the police as the folk devil in this case—rather than black people—has
little impact without moral panic as the larger context which grows from initial fear over
deviancy as performed by a projected folk devil. However, fear, at least as it has been used up to
this point, is technically a misnomer with regard to moral panic—though I would argue my usage
is relatively unproblematic since Blackness and the violence of police power are feared alike.
Indeed, Cohen prefers concern to fear: he consistently uses the term when referring to society’s
opinion on folk devils, and adamantly establishes concern as an essential characteristic of the
moral panic phenomenon.
Yet concern, as Cohen identifies it—or fear, as I do—is not the only feature of a moral
panic’s occurrence. Cohen and others, notably Birmingham School cultural theorist Stuart Hall,
claim four additional characteristics which emerge in the course of a standard moral panic.

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Essentially, should there occur an uprising of social concern during which these accompanying
traits are not present, these scholars generally agree that the instance cannot be classified as a
moral panic, despite the existence of a vilified folk devil.
“The Color of Moral Panic is Black” considers each of these characteristics, including
concern, within the context of the current US moral panic over racial violence and police
brutality. The first two chapters of this thesis look at concern and hostility as the two traits of
moral panic on which most academics of the subject can agree.28
Chapter 3 covers the remaining
characteristics—disproportionality, volatility, and consensus—while the conclusion briefly
examines the case for media as an additional characteristic and ends with a return to the socio-
racial issues with which this thesis began.
These chapters share a focus on social reactions to police action, particularly around the
cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Together they tell a cautionary story about what can
happen when society succumbs to its fear of the folk devil—and how dangerous it is when that
folk devil is a tool of the very structure meant to protect society in the first place.

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CHAPTER ONE
Concern
The President has got great affection for the city of Chicago and I know, like other citizens of
that fine city, [he] is concerned. – Josh Earnest, on the shooting of Laquan McDonald29
“A Reason to Take Up Arms”30
As a recurring social phenomenon, moral panic has occurred not only during times of
great fear, but also around situations which can be classified as morally offensive. Historically
speaking, public concern over moral panic-inciting issues generally centered on taboos; more
particularly, sexual deviance and substance abuse feature heavily in the work of moral panic
scholars. On sexual deviance, sociologist Mary deYoung holds that resultant moral panics are
not at all about the sex itself and instead act as diversions “from very real problems that affect
human beings.”31
Likewise, criminologist Jock Young writes that moral panic about substance
abuse reinforces the Thomas theorem of sociology that “a situation defined as real in a society
will be real in its consequences.”32
The current moral panic over racial violence and police brutality arises from concern over
taboo just as evidently as it arises from fear. Today’s moral panic finds its beginnings in a
combination of the two, and is a direct result of fear over episodes of excessive police violence
which then broadened into widespread concern that such instances were evidence of a larger
social epidemic rather than individual moments of unnecessary physical force. Taboo enters the
equation in the identification of the police as the folk devils of this narrative. A 1996
Independent Committee of Inquiry into the Role and Responsibilities of the Police concluded the
following:
The purpose of the police is to uphold the law fairly and firmly; to prevent crime; to
pursue and bring to justice those who break the law; to keep the Queen’s peace; to protect,

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help and reassure the community; and to be seen to do this with integrity, common sense
and sound judgment.33
The committee’s focus was the UK, but the fundamental principles of fairness, prevention,
justice, peace, protection, and integrity are equally applicable to police in the American context.
Who, then, were the LAPD officers protecting34
when they beat Rodney King in 1991?
Where, too, was the courtesy and respect35
when Officer Daniel Pantaleo broke NYPD policy
and put Eric Garner in a chokehold? Cohen’s folk devil, as expanded upon by Stuart Hall, is the
person or persons on to whom “all our fears about what might undermine our fragile securities
are projected.”36
Despite its lofty principles, the American state has given its police officers
seemingly free reign to wreak havoc on the bodies of its black subjects;37
what social taboo is
more worthy of concern—is more threatening to the fragility of physical security—than this?
Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda’s book Moral Panics: The Social Construction
of Deviance also recognizes the intimate ties between concern and fear.38
These authors posit
that concern does not always manifest as fear. I argue, however, that the concern driving the
contemporary moral panic over racial violence and police brutality is necessarily an instance of
concern as fear. Goode and Ben-Yehuda also write that concern must be observable in the public
sphere. They present social movement activity as a potential outlet for evidence of this concern;
likewise, in what follows I consider the fears and concerns of participants—both black
demonstrators and white/non-black allies—in the Black Lives Matter movement to show that the
fear of today’s moral panic is indeed measurable in concrete ways.
“Some of Us Scared”
What are you afraid of? This is the question writer and photographer Katie G. Nelson
asked Black Lives Matter activists at a North Minneapolis demonstration little more than a week

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after the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark, and just one day after a small group of white supremacists
opened fire on the peacefully protesting crowd.39
Like her subjects, the responses Nelson
received were varied, yet a common thread throughout was fear of physical harm, specifically at
the hands of law enforcement personnel as an act of racial violence.
“I’m mostly just afraid of…the way that the police look at us,” Stacey Rosanna told
Nelson.40
Stacey is the only Black Lives Matter activist for whom Nelson did not include a
photograph; as such any indicators as to Stacey’s race and ethnicity, or even gender, are difficult
to distinguish. Perhaps this is what makes Stacey’s next words so powerful: “They [the police]
don’t look at you like you’re human.”41
What matters in Stacey’s response is the reinforcement
and reminder of a shared identity across racial divides. In short, Stacey’s race, ethnicity, and
gender are irrelevant because Stacey is human and deserves to be treated as such by the police.
This is a particularly poignant fear given the British committee’s stance on the role and
responsibilities of the police. It is at least difficult to acknowledge the police as acting fairly or
with integrity given Stacey’s response alone. The fears of the other North Minneapolis
demonstrators, however, echo Stacey’s quite clearly. Saijen Weihe, for instance, is most afraid of
police who are “here to protect peaceful people and… [are] not doing their job.”42
Similarly,
Allie Turay admitted that what he fears the most is death by law enforcement officer, and “that’s
the honest-to-God truth.”43
In this moment Allie seems compelled to try and convince Nelson
that his fear is valid and true; it is almost as if he thinks she will not believe him, or that Nelson
will say what so many others have said: Not all police are “racist killers;”44
why are you afraid?
Such counter-arguments to growing concern over police brutality in the United States
suggest that instances of racialized violence, particularly at the hands of the police, are mere
instances of individual racism rather than institutionalized discrimination. They belittle the fears

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of people of color who feel they cannot turn to the police in time of need because, as one
Hispanic mother told her African-American children, these are “the people who kill us.”45
Concern that innocents will be harmed by the police is another fear shared by the Black Lives
Matter activists interviewed for Katie G. Nelson’s photography project. David Grady, likely
referring to the shooting a day earlier, was afraid of people with bad intentions and “malice in
their hearts”46
who had no problem hurting innocent protestors and residents of David’s
neighborhood alike. The woman with whom David is photographed, Kathleen Horton, said
something similar, though her fear expands from merely including the personal—“my people”—
to the larger social community—“all people”—whereas David outlines clear borders for the
extent of his concern.47
The problem, as Kathleen Horton sees it, is racial discrimination. She is scared of people
judging others based on skin color, and just wants “everything to be right.”48
The dichotomy
Kathleen reveals here—that of right and wrong—is a moral one and again reinforces Cohen’s
claim that folk devils behave in ways that are necessarily morally offensive to the larger society.
Here the police are seen as a tool of state control, charged with upholding social order; yet when
the legal authorization to do so leads to fatal encounters between the police and black victims
like Michael Brown or Eric Garner, the question of morality understandably enters the equation.
Death at the hands of the state has long been under moral review; on capital punishment
particularly, both academics and activists49
have been vehemently decrying the national death
penalty for nearly 50 years, since backlash against the criminal justice practice gained strength in
the mid-1970s. Death following racialized moments of police brutality, therefore, calls for an
equally moralizing platform from which activists of movements like Black Lives Matter can
build a socially, and ethically, validated argument against such violence. A key tenet of moral

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panic-inducing concern is that it is feverish and “not likely to last, even if the problem itself is of
long standing.”50
If, however, the cause of the fear experienced by people of color, but more
specifically members of the black community, becomes a moral issue, perhaps the concern
driving today’s moral panic over racial violence and police brutality will not be so fleeting.
“Some of Us Defensive”
Activists and allies alike can only hope for such a shift to occur. Issues of police brutality
and racial violence are, after all, systemic rather than isolated or anecdotal incidents. Yet, as
Allie Turay’s fear reminds, there exists a certain pervasive resiliency to the popular image of the
racist police as “the solitary rotten apple in the otherwise pristine bowl.”51
Such a narrative
implies that this concern is held only by people of color; in the same way, allies, particularly of
the Black Lives Matter movement, who use their “privilege, influence, and wealth”52
to speak
out in support of this fear and its validity are often overlooked as overcompensating.
“White Privilege II,” the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis track mentioned briefly in the
preface of this thesis, addresses allies and their concern. Hip hop artist Macklemore raps as the
white ally marching in a Black Lives Matter demonstration, and brings to light the white ally’s
own fear by asking “Is this awkward? Should I even be marching?”53
The awkwardness of his
participation conceivably arises from the acknowledgement that the participants in his imagined
protest are being corralled by “a line of police that look the same as me.”54
The “me”
Macklemore uses here refers to himself and other white/non-black allies who want to support but
do not quite know the best, or most effective, way to do so. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter
movement understand “White Privilege II” as a call “from white people to white people”55
to
live an anti-racist life and to show up for black lives.

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This explicit recognition and acceptance of white allies by Black Lives Matter
specifically alleviates some of the discomfort Macklemore mentions in his song. Yet it does not
do away with the unease entirely. Privilege is a space of discomfort precisely because it is
inherently protected by the violence and bigotry of white supremacy, which, as Macklemore
points out, “isn’t just a white dude in Idaho.”56
White supremacy is, rather, a systemic, and
therefore a constant and inescapable, reminder that people of color are marginalized and
oppressed in ways that white people are not, never were, and probably never will be.
This is not a fact that can be escaped or somehow made up for by participating in protests
and living an anti-racist life—however one might interpret that to look like. Race is an
uncomfortable subject and any conversation or behavior revolving around race is necessarily
going foster a similar sense of discomfort, particularly in the face of obvious racial bias and
unfair privilege. Macklemore asks, “‘Black lives matter’...is it okay for me [as a white ally] to
say?”57
When faced with their own privilege, other white allies might find themselves asking the
same question and wrestling with their discomfort in a similar way, namely wondering what is
acceptable to say, do, support, believe, “show up” for, and what is not? White allies must deal
with these questions on the same daily basis that black people confront their fear. As a black
writer quite provocatively puts it, “Well, white America: Welcome to our world.”58
“Equality: But Do You Really Mean It?”
Whether black or white, potential victim or sympathetic ally, supporters of and
participants with the Black Lives Matter movement are clearly concerned. The deviance of the
American police as a societal folk devil lies in the violent encounters they have with people of
color, in the issue’s larger, systemic roots, and in the widespread backlash such moments have

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received. Concern manifests as fear for members of the black community who suffer daily under
a system which demands its police treat black people as dangerous and unsafe, yet reacts with
excessive aggression when black people come to view and treat the police in a similar way.59
For
white allies of the Black Lives Matter, on the other hand, concern over the folk devil of today’s
moral panic stems largely from discomfort that an individual’s seemingly arbitrary whiteness
allows no small amount of privilege. This white privilege, birthed out of the bigotry and violence
of white supremacy, then implicates that individual in the same system that permits the police to
brutalize black bodies—the same system against which white allies then join movements like
Black Lives Matter to fight.
The compulsion for white people to become allies, to “show up” for black lives, and to
demonstrate their own lack of complicity is sometimes called white guilt. Macklemore’s
acknowledged awkwardness alludes to this concept. “We are not we,” the white protestor he raps
for realizes belatedly as he demonstrates with Black Lives Matter; later, when Macklemore uses
“we” once again, he speaks solely for white people as he wonders if the white ally’s concern is
just about being called racist or about racism itself.60
White guilt is seen by many conservative
political scholars as a “self-congratulating”61
way “to show that whites are kind and innocent of
racism.”62
If, however, white guilt, or even just a measure of compensating awareness, drives
white people to join the Black Lives Movement as allies and to adopt a concerned view of the
police as folk devils, where lies the problem?
Of course there is a certain relinquishment of personal responsibility by indulging
in white guilt; as such the concept remains problematic. Yet, as Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds his
son, “for 250 years black people were born into chains,”63
and no amount of sympathetic concern
is able to redeem that racially oppressive history or the white slaveholders so complicit in

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slavery’s pervasive reach. White guilt is not enough to make up for slavery, and protesting at a
Black Lives Matter demonstration is not enough to over shadow the fact that black bodies are
more susceptible to police violence than white bodies. Still, their concern is a start; and the spark
it generates, when combined with concern as fear that people of color are currently feeling, is
enough to ignite the second necessary characteristic of moral panic, and the one addressed in the
next chapter: hostility.

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CHAPTER TWO
Hostility
This is real for us. This is not a political game. This is not about your reelection. This is about
our lives. – Melina Abdullah to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti64
If it was me, and I was black, and this was happening in my community, I would be furious.
– Debora Aust65
“A Lot of Opinions…A Lot of Resentment”66
Anger comes in many forms. Though scholars emphasize different characteristics of
moral panic to fit their particular social context, there is general agreement that righteous anger,
when manifest as hostility toward the proverbial folk devil, is a necessary component of the
moral panic phenomenon.67
Goode and Ben-Yehuda particularly emphasize that this hostility
must reach “an increased level”68
to ignite a moral panic; in the case of today’s moral panic over
racial violence and police brutality, the necessity of increase accepts that such hostility is
preexisting and validates the fears and concerns of black Americans and white allies as a result.
Cohen’s comments on hostility as a necessary characteristic of moral panic are similarly
encouraging. He defines hostility as “moral outrage,” not just toward the folk devils themselves,
but also the agencies which “are ‘ultimately’ responsible (and may become folk devils
themselves).”69
Interestingly, the police fall under both categories as the embodying actor as well as the
enabling agency. In individual cases of racial violence, the police are the deviant actors; as tools
of a larger system which oppresses and discriminates against people of color, the police are also
responsible for their actions at the behest of the state. Cohen also writes that hostility arises when
“the political crisis of the state is displaced into softer targets.”70
Who are those so-called “softer
targets” here: The police being used as a scapegoat for America’s current political unrest? Or the

23
black lives taken by the police as they, as an extension of the state, muddle through a political
crisis of their own?
The rest of this second chapter considers the “softer targets” question as I argue for the
police as both the perpetrator and the victim. This does not de-implicate them from the
criminalizing system under which they operate, nor does it disidentify the police as the societal
folk devils of today’s moral panic. It does, however, consider the individual police officer as a
person, rather than a tool of his profession, and mirrors the fundamental proposition of the Black
Lives Matter movement, that “black lives matter, too. [emphasis added]”71
Yet this humanizing
of the folk devil does not remove the hostility either. What this chapter on hostility also aims to
expose, then, is the greater institutional context which surrounds and supports individual police
action, and the way in which this institutional structure lends itself to the increase of hostility
necessary for today’s moral panic.
“No Racist Police, No Rest ‘Til We’re Free”
A brief return to Katie G. Nelson’s photography project, “I’m Scared for My People,” is
helpful for entering anger, manifest as hostility, into the argument for police officers as
individual racists. Samantha Lorentz, a white woman photographed alongside Allie Turay whose
greatest fear is “dying at the hands of a law enforcement person,”72
does not actually use the
language of fear at all. Instead her response is an emphatic declaration that anger is valuable “as
long as you use it for something.” The closest she gets to being afraid of anything is again in
relation to anger, and is an admission of worry that “people stop at anger” without using it to
“get to a really compassionate place.”73
While hostility does not imply, and rarely actually

24
involves, the principles of compassion and hope that Samantha’s response promotes, the anger
she values does prove useful to hostility’s increase, at least for today’s moral panic.
“Cops are certainly seeing greater hostility growing toward them,” author Heather Mac
Donald commented on the recent upswing of violence against police. 74
She partially attributes
this response to high-ranking political authorities claiming “cops think that black lives are
cheap.”75
Mac Donald, however, also recognizes that media coverage of racial violence and
police-related brutality in the past few years perpetuates a narrative of the US as an intrinsically
racist society and the police as the “vanguard of that racism.”76
Institutional authorization aside,
it is indeed a plausible accusation that the individual folk devils of today’s moral panic are the
product of a larger social issue of fundamental racism.
Regardless, and despite this potential outlet for personal responsibility, the individual
police who inflict racial violence and brutality are no less implicated or deserving of the hostility
they receive from irate people of color or supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. That
officers like Daniel Pantaleo and Darren Wilson are the product of a racially biased society does
not make their violence more acceptable to their victims’ families or to other black people who
“feel less rather than more safe”77
in the presence of police. Reverend Al Sharpton, discredited,
for example, Darren Wilson’s story in the case of Michael Brown by saying that Wilson’s was
the “same excuse” that the men who killed Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis used; in other
words, that Wilson was apparently “in fear of his life” was not enough of a reason to fatally
shoot Michael Brown.78
Rev. Sharpton’s condemnation implies his own unspoken suspicion,
accusation even, that Michael Brown’s death was the result of Wilson’s personal racist beliefs.
This opinion is not unique to Rev. Sharpton, nor is it solely applicable to Michael Brown.
In fact, Eric Garner’s killer, Officer Daniel Pantaleo, was previously sued multiple times for

25
“allegedly violating the constitutional rights of black men,” and the NYPD as a whole “faced
accusations of racism and racial profiling” with regard to Pantaleo’s treatment of Eric Garner in
particular. 79
Most recently, the San Francisco Police Department has been embroiled in a “racist
texting scandal,”80
the Fort Lauderdale Police Department was forced to fire some of its
individual officers over a similar issue,81
and an NYPD message board was flooded with racist
comments by “former and current New York City cops” in response to the shooting of unarmed
black man Walter Scott.82
The message board allows its members to post anonymously as long
as the NYPD ID used when signing up is valid, and the ensuing responses to the Walter Scott
shooting were particularly violent and bigoted toward minorities;83
this is likely due to their
anonymity on the message board and implies that there are many more secretly racist police
officers than ensuing scandals over text messages or the number of black fatalities might suggest.
Hostility in response to such explicit individual racism, then, comes as no surprise. A
CNN poll conducted in late 2015 records that “1 out of 5 African-Americans said that they were
treated unfairly because of their race in dealings with the police.”84
This statistic is particularly
prevalent in comparison to the mere 3% of whites who felt they had received similarly racist
treatment. As Melina Abdullah told LA mayor Eric Garcetti, however, the issue of racial
violence inflicted on black people by the police cannot be accurately encompassed by media
polls or neat academic summations of the problem because “this is about our [black] lives.”85
There is real and tangible danger that black people are subject to whenever they perform
mundane daily tasks like “driving while black” or “walking while black.”86
This danger, in turn,
manifests as concern through fear and hostility, both of which contribute to today’s moral panic
over racial violence and police brutality. Black Americans should not feel afraid for their own
safety at the hands of the men and women meant to protect that safety; as such, the anger from

26
which this moral panic hostility is birthed is not only understandable, but also as necessarily
institutionalized as the racism of the police themselves.
“Designed For Us to Be Indifferent”
Darren Wilson was not indicted for fatally shooting Michael Brown. Daniel Pantaleo,
whose chokehold resulted in the death of Eric Garner, was not indicted either. “It was not my
expectation,” Ta-Nehisi Coates admits, “that anyone would ever be punished.”87
The son to
whom Coates writes, however, is “young and still believed”88
in the justice of a system that
Coates has long stopped looking to for protection and equal treatment. Coates understands that
the folk devils responsible for the deaths of black men and women through racial violence and
police brutality are merely “enforcing the whims of our country;”89
while the racism of
individual police officers is immediately responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric
Garner, and others, their personal sentiments are not the only cause of such violence.
Activist and minister Malcolm X voiced similar conclusions about institutionalized
racism in the United States during an interview with Mike Wallace in June 1964. Malcolm notes
that a purposeful misrepresentation of black people as “prone towards violence” gives “the
police the impression that they can then go and brutalize” members of the black community.90
Victimized members of the Harlem community that Malcolm specifically refers to in these
comments were resentful toward this overwhelming police response, and felt like they were
“living in a police state.” Malcolm then explicitly says “they became hostile toward the
policeman,” and thereby reinforces the concept of hostility toward the police as the folk devil.
He saw the issue of racial violence and police brutality as systemic; half a decade later, and much
like Ta-Nehisi Coates, activists of the Black Lives Matter movement wholeheartedly agree.

27
“Racial domination is a collective process,” Duke University’s Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
says, “and we are all in this game.”91
Bonilla-Silva was one of four participants in the University
of South Carolina Upstate’s fall 2015 speaker series, Black Lives Matter: Race Relations in the
21st
Century;92
his sentiments echo those of Aislinn Pulley, who is not only a community
organizer in Chicago, but also a prominent name in the Black Lives Matter movement. Pulley
declined a White House invitation to discuss civil-rights issues with President Obama during the
last Black History Month of his second and final term because she felt the meeting was “a sham”
in which she “could not, with any integrity, participate.”93
In her own words, Pulley refused to
participate in a meeting that “would only serve to legitimize the false narrative that the
government is working to end police brutality and the institutional racism that fuels it.”94
Similarly, Black Lives Matter demonstrations have “exposed Ferguson as a case study of
structural racism in America.”95
More than the condemning words of any movement founder, the
protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri in the days following the fatal shooting of Michael
Brown speak to the hostility black people and their allies feel toward such institutional racism. In
fact, according to 2015 co-recipient of the Howard Zinn Freedom to Write Award Johnetta Elzie,
Ferguson is “the cradle” of the Black Lives Matter movement which, unlike the organization, has
no human founders. The movement itself is rather “a response to the virulent anti-Black racism
that permeates…society,” and a “call to action” as its supporters work toward “a world where
Black lives are no longer systemically and intentionally targeted for demise.”96
“Injustice Anywhere, Injustice Everywhere”
The racism against which contemporary America struggles is individual and institutional,
and combating that prejudice on both levels necessarily demands the anger of Samantha Lorentz

28
and the hostility of Malcolm X. Such a manifestation of anger as hostility is one of only two
agreed upon characteristics of moral panic; without hostility, moral panic does not occur, and
without moral panic, issues such as racial violence and police brutality continue to persist
without appropriate reaction or treatment. More specifically, without hostility toward the folk
devil of the police to provoke today’s moral panic, the police will continue to act upon individual
feelings of racism toward black people, while the larger institution of the state will likewise
continue its systemic discrimination of people of color by allowing those officers legal sanction
without consequence.
To recapitulate my take on Stanley Cohen’s argument that hostility, as a characteristic of
moral panic, is often reflective of larger state unrest, the police folk devils operate not only as the
concrete manifestation of the state’s institutional political crisis, but also as individual state
actors whose behavior violates black bodies via personal racist beliefs. On a particular basis,
police officers were shown to enact violence against people of color, whether through text
conversations and the anonymity of message boards or the more drastic use of a non-regulation
chokehold and five shots to a fleeing black back. Conversely, the police as the folk devil was
implicated in a greater system of racial prejudice and injustice which lets white officers off
without an indictment and trains them to be “more aggressive and less accommodating” when
interacting with black people.97
That racism in America is systemic is a belief widely held by
activist-leaders with the Black Lives Matter movement, and is largely responsible for the
hostility felt toward the folk devils of today’s moral panic.
Yet hostility is not solely responsible when it comes to igniting a moral panic over any
issue; concern over the police’s treatment of black people might, in fact, be seen as a sort of
precursor to the necessary hostility. Similarly, the remaining characteristics, addressed as a group

29
in the following chapter, grow directly out of that hostility and concern. On this, Cohen
concludes that moral panic, at least in part, occurs when “public concern is not directly
proportionate to objective harm.”98
In other words, moral panics such as the one currently
surrounding racial violence and police brutality arise when the level of the first two
characteristics is disproportional to the actual damage done by the folk devil’s deviance. This
tenet of disproportionality is addressed, along with volatility and consensus, in Chapter 3.

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CHAPTER THREE
Disproportionality, Volatility, and Consensus
Every 28 hours, an unarmed black person is killed. – Marc Lamont Hill99
Is racism on the rise in the United States…Or is it a problem that’s been blown out of proportion?
– Catherine E. Shoichet100
“To Take a Stance”101
Despite the enormity of racial violence and police brutality as an issue worthy of moral
panic, some still believe that racism is not a problem in the United States today. Others
acknowledge institutional racism’s existence but hold that it is not the only issue of violence
worthy of attention; “black on black violence,” for instance, is often cited as equally
concerning.102
Yet a third stance exists that not only is racism, and race-related police violence, a
pressing issue, but also that “something should be done.”103
These three positions on
contemporary racism in America directly mirror the remaining necessary characteristics of moral
panic: disproportionality, volatility, and consensus.
In what follows I address each of these characteristics separately but choose not to give
each its own chapter as concern and hostility are the only two on which there is agreement “on
the whole.”104
Disproportionality, volatility, and consensus, conversely, might be emphasized
and gain relative importance depending on the nature of the individual moral panic itself; the
lack of general scholarly concurrence about these characteristics, then, regulates them to a single
chapter in which I consider each through the lens of the social opinion they represent. I close this
third chapter, however, with an argument that all three traits are necessary and exist in today’s
moral panic, even though the viewpoints they echo may seem mutually exclusive.

31
“99% of the Time”
Marc Lamont Hill revised his claim, removing “unarmed” from his statement that every
28 hours a black person is killed by the police.105
Some, particularly moral panic academics
Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, might call Hill a “claims-maker” who cites “wildly
exaggerated” figures and statistics to make a false claim about the moral panic issue.106
Larry
Elder, Hill’s opponent in the CNN debate where Hill first made the incorrect statement, would
likely agree with Goode and Ben-Yehuda, especially since Elder belongs to the group of few
who believe that racism is not a note-worthy problem in the United States. Yet Goode and Ben-
Yehuda also write that “some statements are more likely to be true than others” and so they
“smuggle no objectivist assumptions into the study of subjective claims.”107
Elder’s own claim,
then, that racism is not a major problem, should perhaps be subject to the same treatment as
Hill’s, particularly considering the problematic encounters black men and women have had with
the police over the past few years.
“The concept of the moral panic rests on disproportion, [emphasis original]” Goode and
Ben-Yehuda conclude.108
In light of disproportionality’s importance, these thinkers outline five
criteria of the characteristic to better understand how it works within society during a moral
panic outbreak. Within the context of today’s moral panic and with a nod to those who believe
racism is not an issue, these criteria lend themselves to that misconception while simultaneously
supporting the fact that moral panic over such apparently non-existent racism actually occurs.
An implicit assumption in the use of moral panic around this issue is the first criterion of
exaggerated harm. Thompson’s work on moral panic supports the relevance of exaggerated harm
to disproportionality. He refers to Goode and Ben-Yehuda and writes that disproportionality

32
exists when those affected believe that “the threat or danger is more substantial than is warranted
by a realistic appraisal.”109
As far as the particular moral panic highlighted here, exaggerated
harm is most relevant when applied to Black Lives Matter.
Cries of “I can’t breathe” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!” reflect a feverish unrest which
have many, particularly whites, concerned about what the movement stands for. In response to
this concern, Black Lives Matter released a comprehensive list of “11 major misconceptions
about the black lives matter movement;” included was the denial that the movement hates white
people and police officers, that it “doesn’t care about black-on-black crime,” and that it is “not
actually a movement at all.”110
Whether these corrections are true is irrelevant to the question of
disproportionality. Instead, what matters is the fact that such a list even exists, and that the Black
Lives Matter movement considered its creation a necessity. Clearly, at least where moral panic is
concerned, the assumption of exaggerated harm affects not only society’s opinions on the folk
devils’ deviance, but also the potential victims of that deviant behavior.
Additional criteria for disproportionality as set out by Goode and Ben-Yehuda are the
notions of “invented figures” and “the proliferation of ‘tall tales’.”111
Though these scholars have
little to say on the first of these two criteria, the second offers a little more insight into
disproportionality. The “tall tales” Goode and Ben-Yehuda reference are told in moments when
“statistics are not supplied, but a legend is narrated as having happened anyway.”112
The
“invisible movements” identified by Malcolm X in his interview with Mike Wallace exemplify
this criterion well.113
Malcolm is asked about the movements in Harlem which apparently no one
knows about, but he skillfully avoids the question by turning the attention, and blame, toward the
corrupt police. He even unintentionally backtracks, confusing his own statement by mentioning
“the force that is so visible in the Harlem community” [emphasis added]. Additionally, an article

33
in the Washington Post notes that protesters’ penchant for “twisting facts and calling cops blood-
thirsty murders” is harmful and “makes already difficult work harder;”114
here, too, “tall tales”
have a pervasive affect.
The myth of black on black crime as less important to the issues of violence plaguing
America today straddles the gap between the “tall tales” criterion and the fourth, which Goode
and Ben-Yehuda call “comparisons across conditions.”115
That black on black crime is not a
notable problem is the tall tale in this case, not that it actually is. Similarly, as Goode and Ben-
Yehuda suggest, “if the attention that is paid to a specific condition is vastly greater than that
paid to another [equally harmful] condition,”116
there exists disproportionality with regard to the
condition first mentioned. The damage caused by black on black crime is “no greater than, or
less than”117
the threat of racial violence and police brutality, yet it is racialized police violence
which dominates news media and social media alike.
Fifth, and finally, is the disproportionality criterion of “changes over time.”118
This
Goode and Ben-Yehuda observe when there is no “corresponding increase in objective
seriousness” about a moral panic issue, but “the attention paid…at one point in time is vastly
greater than that paid…during a previous or later time.”119
Interestingly, this last criterion is
essentially the same as the larger moral panic characteristic of volatility, addressed in the
following section. Considered here with much less depth, Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s final
necessity for disproportionality relates to Black Lives Matter’s rise in popularity and import after
the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014. The hashtag which birthed the movement in July
2013, however, was first a reaction to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of Trayvon
Martin, and the issue of police violence dates back even further.120

34
Black Lives Matter aside, even concern and hostility toward racial violence and police
brutality was not widely held by the current generation, despite, for example, the fatal shooting
of Oscar Grant by a transit police officer. “Grant died nineteen days before Barack Obama’s first
Inauguration”121
in 2009, yet it is Eric Garner and Michael Brown who first come to mind when
people begin to identify racial violence and police brutality in the US as an issue. One black
man’s death at the hands of the police is as deserving of serious consideration and concern as any
other; why, then, was Trayvon Martin the spark which ignited dialogue on racial violence, and
Eric Garner and Michael Brown the first victims to really emphasize the deadly nature of police
brutality? Disproportionality, Goode and Ben-Yehuda would respond. Yet volatility, as I argue
below, is at play here too.
“Not Authentic; Just a Gimmick”
While not all those who study moral panic concur on volatility’s necessity as a
characteristic of moral panic, there is still the general assumption that “moral panics are likely to
appear suddenly and be short-lived,” even if the problem itself, as well as the high levels of
related hostility and concern, are “of long standing.” 122
Thompson identifies moral panic as
necessarily volatile because it is “similar to crazes, scares and other such forms of collective
behavior.”123
Moral panic, then, might be thought of as an extreme version of groupthink, which
“occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of
‘mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment’.”124
The so-called “faulty decisions,” in
this case, would be both the belief that racism is not an issue in the US today, and the belief that
it actually is.

35
Essentially, volatility is a necessary characteristic of moral panic because the word panic
itself is eruptive and implies an instantaneous reaction in moments of fear. For those who deign
to acknowledge institutional racism but do not admit to the issue’s prevalence today, this notion
of volatility helps, rather, than hinders, their argument. “Much like fads,” Goode and Ben-
Yehuda recognize, moral panics “erupt suddenly and usually unexpectedly, and, in like manner,
fairly swiftly subside and disappear.”125
As such, any moral panic arising from the issue of racial
violence and police brutality must necessarily behave in the same way; it cannot, therefore, be
truly as horrible a problem as it is recently made out to be since it will soon die down as quickly
as it arose. This argument, however, does not account for Thompson’s admission that moral
panic ebbs and flows even if the root problem remains.
With the US on the cusp of a historic presidential election, the lack of recent attention
toward the joint issue of racial violence and police brutality is unfortunate, but not unsurprising.
This is not to say, of course, that issues of police violence, state force, and racial discrimination
have not come up in the discourses of the present presidential race. Democratic candidate
hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders believes “we owe a debt of gratitude to the Black Lives Matter
movement,”126
while an opponent from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Senator Ted
Cruz, feels that the movement’s protests are “literally suggesting and embracing and celebrating
the murder of police officers.”127
While Cruz does not claim that institutional racism is not an
issue, his take on the popular social folk devil of the police is definitely as inflammatory as the
protests he’s decrying.
Even if the 2016 presidential elections push the current moral panic aside, however, the
same racial inequality which prompted the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the Rodney King
riots in the early 1990s, and even the Black Lives Matter movement today, will not simply

36
disappear. Cohen quotes Thompson as writing that “moral panics are succeeding each other more
rapidly;” if such is true, it is only a matter of time before the election hype again makes room for
coverage of issues surrounding racialized police violence. Unfortunately, this prediction is
predicated on the assumption that encounters between the police and members of the black
community will continue to be violent, regardless of the attention, or lack thereof, that this issue
receives. With this, the chapter turns toward consensus as the fifth and final necessary
characteristic of moral panic.
“What If I Stay Silent?”
Disproportionality assumes a certain amount of exaggeration around the moral panic
issue, and volatility expects an eruption in concern and hostility that will quickly disappear.
Consensus, then, is widespread agreement “that the beliefs or actions being denounced [are] not
insulated entities…but integral parts of society.”128
This definition, taken from Cohen’s Folk
Devils and Moral Panics, is further developed by Cohen’s point that “the majority of elite and
influential groups, especially the mass media,” should be in consensus on whatever issue
prompted the moral panic in the first place.129
For today’s moral panic in particular, consensus
means general acknowledgement that racism is not only an issue, but also that it is serious
enough to warrant some reactionary measures against the police folk devils who perpetrate the
problem.
Consensus, as Goode and Ben-Yehuda understand it, is a shared understanding that the
folk devil “threat is real, serious, and caused by the wrongdoing group members and their
behavior.”130
This take on consensus, like Cohen’s, places the folk devil at the center of the
agreement, and the moral panic as a whole. The police, as the deviant actors of today’s moral

37
panic, are therefore central to the belief that racism in the United States is both institutional and
evident in police brutality. As mentioned previously, this characteristic of consensus mirrors the
third stance on systemic racism, and Cohen explicitly writes that “if there was no
institutionalized racism in the police, there could not be in the wider society.”131
Here
institutional racism acts in a similar way to consensus by starting with a central group and
spreading outward to affect society; given that institutional racism is an issue around which
consensus exists, the similarities between the moral panic issue and the moral panic
characteristic are unsurprising.
A recent USA Today poll, done in cooperation with the Pew Research Center, reports
that “Americans by nearly 3-1” believed Daniel Pantaleo should have been indicted.132
Similar
evidence for the existence of consensus around today’s moral panic comes in a poll done by
CNN which claims that 49% of the surveyed Americans say “racism is ‘a big problem’ in society
today.”133
While this finding places belief in institutional racism at a little less than half, what
this poll shows is that “across the board, in every demographic surveyed, there are increasing
percentages of people who say racism is a big problem.”134
Aside from the consensus these examples clearly display, a key factor of the consensus
characteristic, namely the notion that something should be done, is supported by an additional
statistic taken from the USA Today poll. Nearly nine out of 10 Americans, the report claims,
“say it would be a good idea for more police officers to wear body cameras;”135
here, however,
the general consensus is that such body cameras, as an example of what’s being done to combat
racial violence and police brutality, are not doing enough.136
Dash cameras in police cars are
seen as a similarly ineffective solution for the long term,137
and an opinion blog piece in the

38
Huffington Post critiques Ta-Nehisi Coates’ demand for reparations as one which, like the use of
cameras, “will not help.”138
Government crime-prevention programs such as ‘Stop and Frisk’ and ‘Broken Windows’
are equally inept at stopping the crime of racial violence, particularly since a federal judge called
the first program “indirect racial profiling,”139
and the creator of the theory behind the second has
denounced its poor policing tactics.140
In short, consensus is not only the agreement that an issue
deserving of concern and hostility currently exists, but is also the concurrence that something
must be done to diminish the threat of the issue or the folk devil; under that umbrella, there is the
additional detail that, if what is being done does not seem effective enough to combat the
problem at hand, consensus also exists around this discontent with the present solution.
“March, Protest, Scream and Shout”
Though disproportionality, volatility, and consensus are discounted by various moral
panic scholars, it is clear that all three characteristics are present and active in today’s moral
panic over racial violence and police brutality. Disproportionality, as we have seen, can be found
in incorrect narratives that institutionalized racism in the US is either not as problematic as the
media and Black Lives Matter claim, or else does not exist at all. Volatility around this issue
suggests that, though a moral panic’s fervency might soon lose its steam, the problem it
surrounds is no less pervasive or existent. In terms of today’s racial panic, this characteristic
perhaps explains Black Lives Matter’s slow ascent into public notice, as well as the quick media
switchover from covering stories of police violence to following presidential hopefuls on the
campaign trail. Consensus, finally, is an agreement throughout much of society that, in this
particular case, police violence is a truly horrible issue plaguing the US today. To take this

39
consensus one step further, there is also concurrence that something more should be done to stop
such violence.
What these three characteristics have in common, aside from the lack of academic
agreement on their relevance to a moral panic’s occurrence, is the relevance of media to their
existence. Concern and hostility too, require media to validate, consolidate, and accurately direct
society’s fears and resultant anger toward the deviant folk devil. The conclusion of “The Color of
Moral Panic is Black” considers media as a potential sixth characteristic in its first half; the
second half recapitulates the main points addressed in Chapters 1 through 3 and ends with a
return to the select cases of police violence which opened the introduction.

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CONCLUSION
Like thousands of other black men and women who wear blue, I exist in two worlds. – Anwar
Sanders141
I’m just less and less afraid of standing anybody down because there’s just too many of us.
– Irna Landrum142
“Hashtag and Seem Like You’re Down”143
DeRay Mckesson officially declared that he was running for Baltimore’s mayoral seat a
mere 30 minutes before the deadline; he won just 3% of the vote, but managed to raise “more
money faster than any local race in the country.”144
What made Mckesson’s campaign so wildly
successful? Why did his ability to raise money not directly equate to political victory? This
success is perhaps attributable to Mckesson’s heavy reliance on social media and the internet to
carry his campaign. As an article in the Huffington Post recognizes, however, “the love he
received online…did not translate into votes;”145
might it also be asked, then, whether
Mckesson’s emphasis on the media was part of his ultimate lack of success in the polls?
Similarly, the Black Lives Matter movement, which, ironically, found its beginnings in
social media, has a strong online presence. The movement’s leaders are quick to use media and
the internet to express their stance on particular current events which relate to black lives and
racial violence. One media writer notes that, while civil rights protestors in the 1960s were
backed by “the power of television,” it is social media which powers Black Lives Matter.146
The
fact that videos on the internet have the potential to go viral, and that many, if not all, of the
video recordings of recent moments of police brutality against black people have done just that,
likely also adds to the quick surge of Black Lives Matter’s popularity. The viral power of Black

41
Lives Matter indeed lends itself to the existence of the current moral panic over racial violence
and police brutality.
Communication theorist Marshall McLuhan is credited with the first modern use of the
term moral panic; interestingly this usage occurs in his media theory book Understanding Media:
The Extensions of Man.147
Stanley Cohen writes in a footnote of his own text—Folk Devils and
Moral Panics—that both he and Jock Young, another moral panic and deviance scholar,
“probably picked it [moral panic] up from…Understanding Media.”148
McLuhan’s mention of
moral panic is brief; he writes only that highly literate people have difficulty accepting the
contemporary impact of “electric media” without “getting into a moral panic.”149
Stuart Hall also
focuses heavily on media in his Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. He
claims that “the media do not simply and transparently report events which are ‘naturally’
newsworthy in themselves” [emphasis original];150
Hall also argues that the media was
instrumentally necessary in the sudden growth of the 1970s moral panic over mugging in Britain.
Goode and Ben-Yehuda likewise call media “a central and foundational feature of the
moral panic” which is, perhaps, also moral panic’s “principal active agent.”151
Notably, however,
these authors failed to include a chapter on the subject in their book’s first edition which was
originally published in 1994. This might be the result of moral panic academics’ skepticism
toward media as an essential characteristic of the phenomenon’s occurrence. Though Cohen
admits that the “very reporting of certain ‘facts’ can be sufficient to generate concern, anxiety,
indignation or panic,”152
Angela McRobbie and Sarah L. Thornton argue nearly 30 years later
that every stage “in the process of constructing a moral panic…should be revised” with more
attention paid to “the consequences of the great expansion of the media.”153

42
To consider the sudden public popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement through
this potential characteristic of moral panic, it is helpful to briefly turn to moral panic over fear of
transnational difference. In 2005, Rahma Bavelaar wrote against Dutch professor Ineke Sluiter’s
remarks that “one can speak of a ‘moral panic’ when there is a common perception among the
citizens of a nation that ‘societal values’ are threatened.”154
More specifically, Bavelaar takes
issue with Sluiter’s solution to the problem of moral panic because he feels Sluiter makes two
problematic assumptions: “that the ‘problem’ primarily lies with the ‘other’;” and “that every
citizen has access to the public debate and can thus communicate with others on an equal
footing.”155
With the rise of social media in particular over the decade since Bavelaar wrote this,
however, his critique of Sluiter’s second assumption is perhaps no longer as viable.
Sharon Krause combines both Black Lives Matter and Sluiter’s second so-called solution
in the third chapter of her book Freedom Beyond Sovereignty. There she draws on experiences of
the marginalized to explore “the vitalities of human agency under conditions of systematic social
inequality;”156
she identifies counterpublic conversation as one such factor for sustaining this
vitality. Counterpublic conversation, as Krause conceives it, is “the communicative exchanges
within marginalized groups that support mutual understanding.”157
Like Sluiter, Krause holds
that conversation is a key tool of power for marginalized peoples to survive in an unequal and
unjust state; activist members of these marginalized groups today have taken this advice and
“talk about the tools of mass communication all the time” because their plan of attack against
institutionalized inequality is a “media strategy.”158
Despite Bavelaar’s seemingly dated critique,
access to at least one form of social media is indeed increasingly widespread, thereby making
Krause’s suggestion and Sluiter’s tentative solution to moral panic also increasingly relevant.

43
Yet the capability of media, specifically social media in the context of today’s moral
panic over racial violence and police brutality, to be both a causal characteristic of moral panic
and a force behind moral panic’s volatility and disappearance is potentially problematic. As such,
it is understandable that moral panic scholars disagree on media’s relation to moral panic, as well
as whether media counts as a characteristic at all. The current moral panic’s rapid spread via
viral video and Black Lives Matter’s use of social media is a particularly prevalent example
which shows that media is instrumental to this moral panic’s beginning and its inevitable and
approaching end. A crusade, according to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, is “an organized campaign to
achieve a specific…goal;”159
likewise, the Black Lives Matter movement’s social media
campaign against racial violence and police brutality is doing much to achieve its civil rights
goals. In short, “hashtag activism online can have real-world consequences.”160
“No Justice, No Peace”
In an eerie parallel, Jock Young notes that moral panic “centers around the premise that a
situation defined as real in a society will be real in its consequences” [emphasis added].161
Little
seems more “real in its consequences” than death, particularly the deaths of Michael Brown and
Eric Garner at the hands of the police; the resultant moral panic occurring today over racial
violence and police brutality is, therefore, the so-called “real-world consequence” of media and
the five characteristics. The Color of Moral Panic is Black considers these characteristics as well
as media in the context of the police and violence against black lives. It tracks the emergence of
moral panic as a body of scholarly work and documents today’s in particular.
Chapter 1 looks at concern as a key tenet of moral panic’s existence. There I argue that
concern, in the context of today’s moral panic, is best understood as fear that individual black

44
people will become the next victim of police violence. White allies were additionally addressed
in this chapter; their concern, however, was less physically tangible than that of potential black
victims, and instead consisted of worry over US American inequality under systemic racism and
institutional inequality.
The characteristic addressed in Chapter 2, hostility, is articulated as contingent upon the
concern of the first chapter. Hostility’s relevance was contextualized to today’s moral panic with
a look the “softer targets” question found in Stanley Cohen’s work. The police, then, as the folk
devils of this contemporary moral panic, were examined as both the perpetrators of
individualized racial violence and the victims of an overarching system of oppression.
Disproportionality, volatility, and consensus were the joint subject of the third and final
chapter on moral panic’s necessary characteristics. These were considered in conjunction with
one another since moral panic scholars have only agreed on the first two as requirements for
moral panic while the three considered in this chapter are only accepted by some. Each potential
characteristic was examined as correlating to a specific social opinion on the existence of
institutional racism. Disproportionality, for instance, relates to the belief that racism is not a
major problem in the United States, if a problem at all. Similarly, volatility corresponds to those
who acknowledge the issue’s existence but hold other types of violence as equally despicable
and worthy of attention. Consensus is likewise paired with the belief that racism and race-related
police violence are not only pressing, but also that “something should be done” about the
issue.162
All five of these characteristics relate to one another in their shared ability to spark and
perpetuate a moral panic; yet media also connects them all. Media, as examined at the opening of
this conclusion, allows concern to spread into hostility through wider communication. It also

45
records that concern as fear in tangible ways which allows moral panic scholars to address the
disproportionality aspect of the particular moral panic-inducing issue. In terms of volatility, the
media allows for new issues to overtake the originally deviant one; this is particularly true for the
role of social media in bringing the issue of today’s moral panic to the public eye while also
eventually allowing the replacement of #BlackLivesMatter with #FeelTheBern and
#CantStumpTheTrump. Finally, consensus, like disproportionality, is measurable through media
and social media as society’s concern over a folk devil can be assessed in tweets and news
coverage alike.
The Color of Moral Panic is Black began with Rodney King, Eric Garner, and Michael
Brown; it seems only fitting, then, to return to the stories of these men and to end with them as
well. Though King’s violent encounter with the police did not end in a fatality, his beating
prompted riots much like the ones which happened in Ferguson and other US cities 20 years later
over the deaths of Garner and Brown. From those protests the popularity of the Black Lives
Matter movement grew exponentially; demonstrations were held around America, people
tweeted and retweeted the movement’s signature hashtag, and musical artists like Macklemore
and Ryan Lewis used the tools of their profession to share the message that “black lives matter,
too.”163
As President Obama put it in his Selma speech, America’s citizens believe that their
country “is a constant work in progress.”164
It requires, Obama notes, “the occasional disruption,
the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the status quo” because “that’s
America” and “that’s what makes [it] unique.” Black Lives Matter, it seems, has taken this
American character to heart and are following in the same footsteps as those activists who fought

46
for civil rights in the 1960s and the ones who fought for justice for Rodney King in the early
1990s.
In the introduction to The Color of Moral Panic is Black I argued that today’s moral
panic tells a cautionary tale of what happens when society succumbs to its fear of the deviant
folk devil. Yet Obama tells his listeners that “America is not some fragile thing.” Despite the
horrific violence suffered by Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others at the hands of the police,
Black Lives Matter exists to show that black lives are not fragile either. Black Lives Matter,
likewise, would not be as socially relevant without today’s moral panic over racial violence and
police brutality.

47
NOTES
PREFACE
1
See Lincoln A. Blades’ arguments on #BlueLivesMatter in response to #BlackLivesMatter.
Lincoln A. Blades, “Blue Lives Matter Billboards Don’t Honor Fallen Officers, They Discredit
Black Humanity,” 8 Oct. 2015, The Grio, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
2
Title taken from M. K., “The Color of Moral Panic Is Black: ‘Casual Cruelty’ and Black
Babies,” 05 Mar. 2013, Prison Culture, PIC, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
3
Macklemore, and Ryan Lewis, “White Privilege II,” This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, 26 Feb.
2016, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
4
Imani Perry, More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial
Inequality in the United States (New York: New York UP, 2011) xiii.
5
Macklemore, and Ryan Lewis.
INTRODUCTION
6
David J. Leonard, “Antiblack Racism and Moral Panics,” 20 Sep. 2014, The Black Scholar,
Mar.-Apr. 2016.
7
Brit Bennett, “Ta-Nehisi Coates and a Generation Waking Up,” 15 Jul. 2015, The New Yorker,
Mar.-Apr. 2016.
8
Section titles adapted from Macklemore, and Ryan Lewis, “White Privilege II,” This Unruly
Mess I’ve Made, 26 Feb. 2016, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
9
Nolan Feeney, “How Critiques of Baltimore Media Coverage Echo 1992,” 29 Apr. 2015, Time,
Mar.-Apr. 2016.
10
Feeney.
11
HaeYoun Park, Alan McLean, Graham Roberts, and Archie Tsie, “The Events Leading to the
Shooting of Trayvon Martin,” 01 Apr. 2012, The New York Times, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
12
Elizabeth Chuck, “Parents of Renisha McBride on Charges: ‘I Hope He Spends the Rest of His
Life in Jail’,” 15 Nov. 2013, NBC News, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See also: Michael Muskal, “Michigan
Prosecutors Consider Charges in Renisha McBride Shooting,” 12 Nov. 2013, Los Angeles Times,
Mar.-Apr. 2016.
13
Angel Jennings, “How the Killing of Latasha Harlins Changed South L.A., Long before Black
Lives Matter,” 18 Mar. 2016, Los Angeles Times, Mar.-Apr. 2016.

48
14
Jennings.
15
Jennings.
16
Saul McLeod, “Social Identity Theory,” 2008, Simply Psychology, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
17
Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers
(London: Routledge, 2002) 2.
18
Cohen 46.
19
Cohen 27.
20
Cohen 27.
21
Brittney Cooper, “‘It's the Blackness That Scares Everybody’: Why White People Favor
‘African-Americans’,” 4 Mar. 2015, Salon Media Group, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
22
Cooper.
23
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015) 103.
24
Coates 9.
25
Coates 16.
26
Jock Young, “Moral Panics and the Transgressive Other,” Crime, Media, Culture, 2011: 245-
58.
27
Original quote: “Time makes fools of us all,” attributed to Eric T. Bell.
28
Kenneth Thompson, Moral Panics (London: Routledge, 1998) 9.
CHAPTER ONE: Concern
29
Press Secretary Josh Earnest, White House Daily Press Briefing, 10 Dec. 2015, The White
House, Washington, D.C.
30
31
Cindy Kuzma, “Sex, Lies and Moral Panics,” 28 Sep. 2005, Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, 15 Dec. 2014.

49
32
Jock Young, “The Role of the Police as Amplifiers of Deviance, Negotiators of Reality and
Translators of Fantasy,” Images of Deviance (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) 27.
33
United Kingdom Police Foundation, “The Role and Responsibilities of the Police,” 1996, PSI:
Policy Studies Institute, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
34
Refers to the Los Angeles Police Department motto: “To Protect and to Serve”
35
Refers to the New York Police Department motto as visible on NYPD vehicles: “Courtesy,
Professionalism, Respect”
36
Stuart Hall, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (London: Macmillan,
1978) 161.
37
Coates 9.
38
Erich Goode, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance
(Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994) 37.
39
Katie G. Nelson, “‘I’m Scared for My People’: Minneapolis Black Lives Matter Activists on
What Terrifies Them Most,” 25 Nov. 2015, Quartz, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See also: Svati Kirsten
Narula, “Attackers Shot Several People at a Black Lives Matter Rally in Minneapolis,” 24 Nov.
2015, Quartz, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
40
Nelson.
41
Nelson.
42
Nelson.
43
Nelson.
44
Lindsay Wise, and Katy Moeller, “Police: ‘All of a Sudden We're All Racist Killers?’” 12 Dec.
2014, Portland Press Herald, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
45
Wise.
46
Nelson.
47
Nelson.
48
Nelson.
49
See National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, 2016, NCADP, Web.
50
Thompson 9.

50
51
Susan Bandes, “Tracing the Pattern of No Pattern: Stories of Police Brutality,” Loyola of Los
Angeles Law Review 2000-2001: 665-680.
52
“Macklemore’s 'White Privilege' and the Role of White Allies,” Jan. 2016, Black Lives Matter,
Mar.-Apr. 2016.
53
54
55
“Macklemore’s 'White Privilege' and the Role of White Allies.”
56
57
58
Keith Rushing, “White America, It's Time to Be Uncomfortable and OK With It,” 31 Jul. 2015,
The Huffington Post, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
59
“11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement,” Oct. 2015, Black Lives
Matter, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
60
61
George F. Will, “White Guilt, Deciphered,” 4 Jun. 2006, Newsweek, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
62
Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the
Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2006) 187.
63
Coates 70.
CHAPTER TWO: Hostility
64
Peter Jamison, and Kate Mather, “Facing Hostile Black Lives Matter Protesters, Garcetti's
South L.A. Forum Ends Abruptly,” 19 Oct. 2015, Los Angeles Times, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
65
Catherine E. Shoichet, “Racism is a 'Big Problem' to More Americans, Poll Finds,” 25 Nov.
2015, Cable News Network, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
66
67
Thompson 9.
68
Goode, and Ben-Yehuda 38.

51
69
Cohen xxii.
70
Cohen xxii.
71
“11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement.”
72
Nelson.
73
Nelson.
74
Greg Corombos, “‘Blue Lives Matter’: Cops See ‘growing Hostility’,” 19 Mar. 2016, WND,
WND Radio, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
75
Corombos.
76
Corombos.
77
78
Colin Campbell, “Al Sharpton Denounces Darren Wilson's 'Excuse' For Shooting Michael
Brown,” 18 Oct. 2014, Business Insider, Inc, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
79
Pamela Engel, “The NYPD Cop Who Put Eric Garner In A Chokehold Has A History Of
Allegedly Violating Black Men's Rights,” 08 Dec. 2016, Business Insider, Inc, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
80
Scott Glover, and Dan Simon, “Documents: Racist Texts Sent by San Francisco Cop,” 26 Apr.
2016, Cable News Network, 28 Apr. 2016.
81
Brian Hamacher, “Fort Lauderdale Cops Fired for Racist Texts, Video,” 21 Mar. 2015, NBC
News, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
82
Natasha Bertrand, “An NYPD Message Board Lit up with Racist Comments after the Shooting
of an Unarmed Black Man in South Carolina,” 08 Apr. 2015, Business Insider, Inc, Mar.-Apr.
2016.
83
Bertrand.
84
Wayne Drash, “Poll: 1 in 5 Blacks Have 'Unfair' Dealings with Police,” 30 Nov. 2015, Cable
News Network, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
85
Jamison, and Mather.
86
Drash.
87
Coates 11.
88
Coates 11.

52
89
Coates 8.
90
“Malcolm X,” Interview by Mike Wallace, 8 Jun. 1964, CBS News, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See also:
M. David, and Abu Hussein, “Malcolm X Knew the Answer to Police Brutality 50 Years Ago,”
21 Feb. 2015, Counter Current News, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
91
John Blake, “The New Threat: 'Racism without Racists'” 27 Nov. 2014, Cable News Network,
Mar.-Apr. 2016.
92
“Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Presents 'Racism in Post-Racial Times' During Black Lives Matter
Speaker Series,” 2 Oct. 2015, University of South Carolina Upstate, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See also:
“Black Lives Matter: Race Relations in the 21st Century Speaker Series,” Fall 2015, University
of South Carolina Upstate, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
93
Jelani Cobb, “The Matter of Black Lives,” 14 Mar. 2016, The New Yorker, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
94
Cobb.
95
Cobb.
96
“About Black Lives Matter,” n.d., Black Lives Matter, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
97
98
Cohen xxii.
CHAPTER THREE: Disproportionality, Volatility, and Consensus
99
Larry Elder, and Marc Lamont Hill, “Racism Is Not a Major Problem!” Interview by Brooke
Baldwin, 20 Aug. 2014, CNN, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
100
Shoichet.
101
102
Myriam Miedzian, “Black Lives Matter Today: So Why Does Ta Nehisi Coates Focus Only
On Tomorrow?” 5 Dec. 2015, The Huffington Post, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
103
Cohen xxii.
104
Thompson 9.
105
Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “The Viral Claim That a Black Person Is Killed by Police ‘every 28
Hours’,” 24 Dec. 2014, The Washington Post, Mar.-Apr. 2016.

53
106
107
108
109
Thompson 9.
110
111
112
113
M. David, and Abu Hussein, “Malcolm X Knew the Answer to Police Brutality 50 Years
Ago,” 21 Feb. 2015, Counter Current News, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
114
Sunil Dutta, “Hey Ferguson Protesters: Police Brutality Is Not the Problem,” 30 Dec. 2014,
The Washington Post, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
115
116
117
118
119
120
Cobb.
121
Cobb.
122
Thompson 9.
123
Thompson 10.
124
"What Is Groupthink?" n.d., Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See
also: Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink; a Psychological Study of Foreign-policy Decisions
and Fiascoes (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1972) 9.
125
Goode, and Ben-Yehuda 52-3.
126
Azi Paybarah, “In Brooklyn, Sanders Addresses Criminal Justice and Black Lives Matter,” 17
Apr. 2016, Capital New York, POLITICO New York, 21 Apr. 2016.

54
127
Kira Lerner, “Cruz: Black Lives Matter Is ‘Literally Suggesting And Embracing And
Celebrating The Murder Of Police’,” 14 Oct. 2015, Think Progress, 21 Apr. 2016.
128
Cohen xii.
129
Cohen xxii.
130
131
Cohen xi.
132
Susan Page, “Poll: Americans Back Charges in Eric Garner Death,” 09 Dec. 2014, USA
Today, Gannett, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
133
Shoichet.
134
Shoichet.
135
Page.
136
Patrick Howell O'Neill, “Cop Cameras Won't Solve Police Brutality, Activists Say after
Garner Killer Let Off,” 03 Dec. 2014, The Daily Dot, Daily Dot Politics, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See
also: Jordan LeBeau, “Here Is Why Body Cameras Aren’t Enough,” 30 Jul. 2015, Boston.com,
Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
137
Radley Balko, “Police Cameras Are Important, but They’re Useless without Policies to
Ensure They’re Used Properly,” 19 Aug. 2014, The Washington Post, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
138
Miedzian.
139
Chris Hoenig, “Judge: NYPD's 'Stop and Frisk' Policy Is Unconstitutional,” 14 Aug. 2013,
DiversityInc, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
140
George Kelling, “Don’t Blame My ‘Broken Windows’ Theory For Poor Policing,” 11 Aug.
2013, POLITICO Magazine, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See also: "How Racism Killed Eric Garner," 10
Dec. 2014, DiversityInc, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
CONCLUSION
141
Anwar Sanders, “Black Police Officer: I Live in Two Worlds,” 12 Dec. 2014, Cable News
Network, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
142
Nelson.

55
143
144
Darren Sands, “DeRay Mckesson's Mayoral Bid Falls Far Short,” 26 Apr. 2016, BuzzFeed,
26 Apr. 2016. See also: DeRay Mckesson, “I Am Running for Mayor of Baltimore,” 03 Feb.
2016, DeRay for Mayor, 26 Apr. 2016.
145
Julia Craven, “DeRay Mckesson Is Famous. Here’s Why That Didn’t Sway Baltimore Voters,”
27 Apr. 2016, Huffington Post, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
146
Conor Dillon, “How Social Media Jumpstarted the Black Lives Matter Movement,” 10 Aug.
2015, Deutsche Welle, Mar.-Apr. 2016. See also: Bijan Stephen, “How Black Lives Matter Uses
Social Media to Fight the Power,” Nov. 2015, Conde Nast Digital, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
147
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1964) 94.
148
Cohen xxxv.
149
McLuhan 94.
150
Hall 53.
151
Goode, and Ben-Yehuda ix.
152
Cohen 55.
153
Angela McRobbie, and Sarah L. Thornton, “Rethinking ‘Moral Panic’ for Multi-Mediated
Social Worlds,” The British Journal of Sociology 46.4 (1995): 559. JSTOR. Web. Dec. 2014.
154
Rahma Bavelaar, “‘Moral Panic’ and the Muslim,” 21 Sept. 2005, OnIslam.net, Dec. 2014.
155
Bavelaar.
156
Sharon L. Krause, Freedom Beyond Sovereignty: Reconstructing Liberal Individualism
(Chicago, IL: U of Chicago, 2015) 16.
157
Krause 17.
158
Bijan Stephen, “How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight the Power,” Nov.
2015, Conde Nast Digital, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
159
160
Brandon Ellington Patterson, “Black Lives Matter Is Killing It on Twitter,” 03 Mar. 2016,
Mother Jones, Mar.-Apr. 2016.

56
161
Young 99.
162
Cohen xxii.
163
“11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement,” Oct. 2015, Black Lives
Matter, Mar.-Apr. 2016.
164
James Fallows, “Finally I Hear a Politician Explain My Country Just the Way I Understand It,”
08 Mar. 2015, The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, Mar.-Apr. 2016.

57
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