It’s inescapable. Lately, many news outlets have reported multiple claims of racist incidents. These stories, usually the main ones, highlight the use of racial slurs as common jargon and highlight the relevance of racism in our society. However, it seems that the news portrays every event as a racially motivated one when scrolling through the vast majority of the stories. While racism is undoubtedly prevalent in our society, the media’s constant reporting of racist events downplays the actual importance of the issue, especially when the accused “racists” do not appear to actually possess malicious intent.

The media’s main intention is to interest and entice their viewers. Every journalist has the duty of reporting accurately, but many news stations slant stories to convey a certain idea.

Often, the media capitalizes on stories where the two parties are of different races. This ensures that the act immediately becomes one centered on race. It seems that the perfect equation for a breaking news story is one minority individual as the victim and a Caucasian as the aggressor. A story that involves aggression between two races is immediately propelled to top news story while those without are lost in the jumble with others, competing for public attention.

A black lot attendant identified two individuals on their key slip as having “jungle fever”, a slur used to denote a biracial couple. However, when  multiple stations reported the story, they casually omitted the race of the lot attendant, letting everyone assume the man was white. Atlanta reporters use racism as a scapegoat for rush-hour traffic. News anchors claim health care opposition was an act of societal racism, as if the discontent with the bill was from white leaders only.

Now, when real hate crimes occur, we are less likely to believe the severity of the event because of how often racism is reported. Racism has escalated in the past decade; statistics show that it has nearly doubled with the onset of social media. But when news stories fail to report the race of both parties because it ruins the effect that they intend. Rather, it portrays the United States  as country that still wholly participates in racist ideals, negating the positive image we have paved for ourselves.

The race issue is not black-and-white but if we continue to report it that way, we’ll see the gray area for racism grow a lot larger.