Racist TV show 'Bait Car'

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

So I am at my significant other's cousins' house and they have cable TV and we start watching this show 'Bait Car' on TruTV. "Not reality. Actuality." Right...

Anyways, the premise of the show is this: leave a car running with the keys in the ignition in a ghetto community and wait until someone hops in and drives away. The car has cameras inside and the engine can be shut off by remote control.

Now in the episode we were watching, in every single case the thieves are young black males wearing the most stereotypical "gangsta" clothing imaginable. In numerous cases the guys who are sagging their pants are leaning into the car and the inside door camera just somehow happens to be centered right on their asses. I wonder how many people watching this at home are interacting with the program and shouting, "pull up your pants, you loser!!" or something to that effect. And none of the "criminals" (maybe paid actors??) have their faces blurred out. At least in "Cops" a significant number of the people decline to have their identities disclosed and their faces are blurred out, but if this is real, why the hell would these guys agree to have their image put out there? The show of course tries to cloak its racism by in each case presenting a black cop who is "in" on the sting operation, but in every single case, the "criminals" are black men. Now as conscious people we were at least aware that this show is trying to brainwash us, but I just wanted to see if literally every case would reinforce the same stereotypes, so at the same time we're switching back and forth between this and The Glee Project finale and the black kid decides to cross-dress for his final performance... and now I am just being reminded of this whole phenomenon in the entertainment industry* and I am struck by these diametrically opposed discourses on "the black man" exhibited between 'The Glee Project' and 'Bait Car' and the weirdly dissonant effect of channel flipping between both at the same time...

The 'Bait Car' website has this video where the cop explaining the premise says, "People here stealing cars, doesn't matter what color you are" and then goes on, "it's an interesting demographic, the individual that steals a car" *cut to shot of dude in a do-rag*. He then concludes, "what we're doing out there with the bait cars [is] targeting the right areas, catching the right people".

Seriously, I hate how TV's brainwashing bullshit is enforcing narratives which are accepted as truth. "Not reality. Actuality." goddamnit. This is not culture, this is thought reform!

* "The funny thing about black men in dresses"

If the humor in minstrelsy arises in part from the reversal of class aspirations, then white men adopting the comic appearance of black women represents the ultimate topsy-turvy world. We consider upward mobility natural (even if we frown on strategies for advancement that include, say, passing for white), but downward mobility is crazy. And so a black man who plays the role of a black woman is also taking part in the ridicule of people who in some respects lie further down the social pecking order, in terms of gender if not economic power, mimicking discrimination by whites against people of color.

Minstrelsy has long been considered one of the most insulting forms of oppression, the classic addition of insult to injury. But it continues to occupy a strange position in American entertainment history: Though it originated with white performers, black performers eventually cornered the market on blackface after emancipation. By the beginning of the 20th century, the industry had morphed into a steady employer of unmasked black vaudevillians and set black performers on the road to mainstream acceptance. Like the blues, its history demonstrates the ability of black American artists to transform shame and pain into lucrative and significant new forms.

While many Americans still find minstrelsy appalling, it somehow never goes out of style. Nearly every year, a controversy erupts at an American college when white students decide to dress as blacks for Halloween.

[Euronymous]

I've watched it a couple of times and it is rather pathetic how a lot of people think this is true and honest acts of justice. Entrappment, and sheer racism is what TruTV is all about.

[Zealot]

I'm not from America so I wouldn't know, but I presume that ghettos are usually inhabited by ethnic minorities, making it impossible for the thief to be a white person. To be honest, the car would be stolen no matter what community it was parked in so maybe they should try to do it in a white community, unless of course the goal is to enforce racist stereotypes which is what I think you are trying to say.