History ETDs
Publication Date
Spring 4-15-2022
Abstract
Building upon French philosopher Michel Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, I argue that throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the news media and resulting culture nurtured and reinforced the postcolonial narratives that associated Blackness with criminality. I analyze the national newspaper coverage for their narrative portrayal of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). The national media and U.S. government targeted the BPP and Black Power politics to discredit them and the overall movement for Black Liberation. I argue that this media-state project only intensified during the 1970s and into the 1980s with the country’s turn to neoliberalism and several presidential administrations’ draconian policies that surveiled and punished Black Americans. The War on Drugs, and soaring rates of mass incarceration set the stage for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The same project evolved to other BLM to maintain the white supremacist hierarchy in the contemporary United States.
Level of Degree
Masters
Degree Name
History
Department Name
History
First Committee Member (Chair)
Tiffany N. Florvil
Second Committee Member
L. Durwood Ball
Third Committee Member
Jason S. Smith
Language
English
Keywords
Black Power, Black Panther Party, News Media, 1960s, Black Lives Matter
Document Type
Thesis
Recommended Citation
Leishman, Caitlin Grace. ""For all you know, I might be a Black Panther": How the News Media Cultivated White Anxiety in the United States and became a Modern Panopticon for Black Power." (2022). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/302
