III. MISSING NARRATIVES

One frustrating misperception is the idea that Black kids in Chicago don’t march or protest gun violence in their communities, or they only do so after police shootings, Pope said. “The reality is Chicagoans all the time are protesting gun violence and working with intervention groups on the ground to prevent gun violence,” he said. “A lot of Chicago kids are leading the way with that. … So the outside perception — and even the headlines that you see on local TV stations in Chicago — doesn’t reflect that reality because the reality is these kids are doing some amazing work. They’re passionate about their community.”

Half of the participants gave examples of organizations and work that they think have been left uncovered. Abdus-Saboor pointed to a group called GoodKidsMadCity-Englewood that works to stop violence while promoting mental health, wellness and restorative justice. Organizations fighting gun violence or trying to make steps toward change don’t get covered, Abdus-Saboor said. Another example is Moms Against Senseless Killings, a group that keeps watch daily to prevent shootings, McGhee said. The everyday work to stop violence deserves coverage because it’s working, he added, but national news outlets only cover shootings, not their absence.

Overall, participants want to see more positive stories about their communities. Singleton would specifically like to see more coverage of the work that community nonprofits are doing. “I think sometimes it gets overlooked and taken for granted, and as a result, we have to fight for the little resources that are provided throughout our city,” he said. In the desire to avoid promotion and advocacy, which is often seen as antithetical to journalism and a bad news bias that affects journalists and audiences, news organizations could be missing good stories worth covering.

Success Stories

Several participants said people have to see and hear more accessible success stories about boys and young men of color beyond the football star, basketball star or musician. “There are 900,000 stories that need to be told that isn’t entertainer or athlete,” Singleton said, such as “the young men getting the scholarships, being the first ones [in their families] to graduate from college.” Nole also said he would love to see more coverage of Black businesses and real estate.

Participants did not suggest that the media should focus exclusively on “feelgood” narratives and ignore stories about gun violence and the like. Rather, they highlighted the need for empathy and contextualization. Participants expressed a desire for greater representation in response to the dominant stereotypes about Black men and the absence of nuance or context from news coverage. Black men do not see themselves or their experiences depicted with humanity and authenticity in the media; what they see offered up as worthy of their community’s attention is either depraved or unattainable. These depictions also help shape the expectations of the communities in which they must live and operate.

Solutions:

Several participants also said they want information about solutions and for the media to hold up stories of people and groups who are addressing problems. As media consumers, they want to understand the true needs of their communities and where people can go to find (or contribute) resources. This information is missing in the community, Johnson said. “You could have all the great programs — I work at programs, so I know about so much stuff happening but your average person has no idea. You have to bring them resources, so the communication can reach people because they’re not reading the newspapers and they’re not getting the flyers.”

And in the case of successes or more negative stories, we also need more stories about “how we got there,” Johnson continued. Honest reporting about what’s working and what isn’t can help the community make progress, he said. We need people to tell “the truth about what it’s going to take so that we don’t have to keep having these stories. There’s some real truth and there’s some real solutions, but it takes a certain level of bravery and courageousness to really upend this system to make a real change,” he said.

Participants said they want to see the model behind the success stories of young men of color so that others in the community can see a path to similar successes. Harvey explained that this means “just telling the stories about community. It’s us getting an understanding of who our neighbor is. It’s getting an understanding of how these systems that affect us affect the next person and how we can change them or how somebody else is already working on change and how we could support that.”

Other important narratives that participants said are missing from media portrayals include:

Strength and Resilience

“I believe the narrative that boys and young men of color are brave, courageous, beautiful and gifted,” Singleton said. “I use a motto in Champs that we say we’re born to win in every situation in life.” Singleton shared that his grandfather came to Chicago from Mississippi in 1921, and — according to the census — nobody in his household could read or write. “He came here looking for opportunities, and he didn’t find many opportunities,” he said. “The power is if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. I’m a product of greatness; I’m a product of strength, and I like to believe that narrative versus what I tend to see in mainstream media.”

McGhee described hearing many stories of extraordinary resilience amid a “constant barrage of pain.”

“I’ve talked to a lot of people, a lot of parents of people when things have happened, a tragedy has happened to their child, and you hear just kind of how they were a survivor for so long,” he said. “It kind of constantly builds up, and you see that all the people who have made it in Chicago, it takes strength. It takes a lot more than just having some income behind you. It takes a lot to survive.”

Last year, Singleton, who was a youth pastor at the New Beginnings Church of Chicago, said he reached out to someone he had known as a kid who was now 20 years old. Singleton found out that the man had been shot right in front of the church and was in the hospital. He moved to the suburbs with his mom, and then a few months later, Singleton got a call from the mom after her son was shot eight times off an expressway.

Singleton spoke with the young man on the phone from the hospital room and remained in close touch. “He’s still alive. He’s gone through so much trauma, and the best thing I can do for him now is to get him to a counselor,” Singleton said. “This is the stuff we’re dealing with on a daily basis with young men we’re working with.”

Resourcefulness

Johnson, who worked in a juvenile detention center in Chicago for 12 years, said, “The story written about [young men of color] is not their story.” “What you see is not who they are,” he said. “Even though they appear tough and hard, man, they are gentle and sweet and kind and intelligent and vibrant and funny and smart. … They know how to take lemons and make lemonade out of any situation.” He described resourcefulness, creativity and a penchant for engineering and rigging things together. “Those are the stories that I think are really important.”

Johnson also told a story of a young man he met at the juvenile detention facility who became, as he put it, his “paradigm shift.” Johnson told the young men that all he had to do was go to school, and he didn’t have to sell drugs. “He stopped me in my tracks and said, ‘What would you do?’ He told me his story about his mother and father [being] incarcerated. … His mother was an addict. They lived in vacant buildings.” At 9 years old, men on his block started paying him to be a lookout. “With that money, he paid rent and got a place for them to stay and clothed his little sister and put food on the table. He said, ‘What would you do?’ That made me stop and think about every judgment and everything that I had even thought before.” People’s paths and where they end up don’t define who they are, Johnson said.

When he was a high school teacher, Nole said a student brought a gun to the classroom. He discovered that the student was selling the gun because he wanted to put food on the table. While it’s harmful to have any type of weapon in school, Nole said, “these are boys and young men of color that are literally trying to survive in the inner city of Chicago.”

Redemption

Olivia Obineme, the now former manager of partnerships and local content at the Better Government Association, said it’s OK to tell stories that show that Black men are also flawed and deserve second chances. “We see that rehabilitation happens in the public eye for our other racial counterparts, and we get to see what redemption looks like and what hope looks like, what future looks like for someone who is non-Black and nonmale, … and we don’t get to see that a lot when it comes to Black males. The empathy for Black men isn’t there because, in terms of media, we don’t show a lot of that transformation.”

More on respondents’ suggestions for improvements and changes to the media’s approach is detailed in Section V of this report.