On Monday, overnight hero Charles Ramsey signed a contract for a celebrity speaking circuit where the Cleveland native could earn as much as $10,000 per appearance.
Mr. Ramsey gained national recognition after he helped rescue Amanda Berry, who was allegedly held captive with two other women by Ariel Castro in a home in Ramsey’s neighborhood.
Since the incident occurred on May 6, Ramsey has been bombarded with press, all in a frenzy to hear his wild story about how he came about to save the women.
And let’s be honest, Mr. Ramsey is a colorful character and that trait was obvious in his interviews. The issue here, however, is the exploitation of a man who up until this week, wanted nothing more than seclusion from the experience he underwent. Yet, the press continually pushed to give him award money and poke fun of his mannerisms and his occupation as a dishwasher at a restaurant.
Actually, up until three weeks after the incident, Mr. Ramsey’s job was the only description the public really received.
And despite his resistance to reward money or even free burgers for life from a Cleveland restaurant, Ramsey still found himself in the public eye. There were YouTube parodies made about his epic account of the story, T-Shirts featuring slogans from his recount, and even a video game displaying Ramsey and Castro spewing hamburgers at each other.
All of this was done without Ramsey’s consent to use his name.
Why? It was done as stereotype perpetuation for entertainment purposes, all because he revealed that he stopped eating a Big Mac before going to Berry’s aid.
It’s the ugly pink elephant in the room—no one really wants to discuss it, but it’s inevitable and ignoring the issue won’t help. Media is so present and ongoing that racial nuances sometimes escape us. We as an audience often became unresponsive to the images and text we receive. Think of it as an information overload where we’re so wrapped up in what we see on the surface that we forget the they real harm below the surface.
Mr. Ramsey is not the first victim of this. We see Antoine Dodson, a Huntsville resident who expressed his anger with an intruder who allegedly attempted to rape his sister by climbing through her apartment window. Or Sweet Brown, the women who retold her story of escaping an apartment fire and famously coined the slogan “Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That.”
Sweet Brown’s famous words became an internet sensation, eventually leading to an auto-tuned song that garnered more than two million views on Youtube (and still growing). Brown also has a reality show and movie in the works. Dodson received an iTunes deal for his auto-tuned remix of his news recount. Were these internet celebrities entertaining? Yes. That’s what comedy essentially is—exaggerated elements from our ordinary realities. But let’s not get carried away with the underlying intention of all of this promotion—it’s still perpetuating a stereotype of a certain group of people, and in this case, black individuals from low income environments. It doesn’t have to be a race argument. In the past few years America has been entranced with people fitting the stereotypical lower-income demographic. For instance, “Honey Boo Boo” and “Buckwild” both surround people from small Southern towns, a constant source of reality entertainment for primetime television.
We’ve all been guilty of perpetuating some stereotype, whether it was laughing at the exploitation of a certain group or forwarding an email or website link that did the action. This probably won’t stop in our media as long as this type of commentary continues to attract an audience. People viewing such stories means money. We can attempt to make ourselves more aware of what’s being displayed on the media, but honestly, what is observation without action? Passivity never transformed anything, and it certainly won’t transform the way our media displays certain groups of people.
After the huge media frenzy, Mr. Ramsey was more likely coerced to finally submit to the endorsement deal. What he’ll be doing exactly is still tentative, but I certainly hope it’s not something more exploitative than what he has already endured. I hope our media, and social conscious, are better than that.
