ABSTRACT
This chapter provides context on the social function of race in mass media culture. It extends a conversation in The Huffington Post, regarding their article entitled, "When the Media Treats White Suspects and Killers Better than Black Victims". Media is a biased institution. The cultural production of media's presence is filled with racial and ideological politics. There is an oxymoronic contradiction of narrative discourses in media that frames and fixates what author calling the "innocence of white guilt" and the "guilt of black innocence", regarding white and black youth. The innocence and normalcy of whiteness is what gives dangerousness and criminality of blackness its identity formation in media. Subsequently, how we understand and identify the ways in which becoming black and male within urban youth culture is positioned in relation to the absent and ever present norm, whiteness. The conclusion focuses on the political implications of these differentiated media texts along racial lines for educators.
