Racial Profiling During California Wildfires

(Image from Scientific American)

In light of the recent wildfires in southern California, I have been constantly refreshing my social media platforms to get the most recent insights into local fires and get updates on evacuation plans. 

However, I was appalled to see a now-deleted post by X user @TheRISEofROD who uploaded a video of two black men carrying bags out of a house with billowing smoke in the background. The caption read: “The usual suspects are looting again.” This post gained hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets before a Community Note fact-checked the context of the video—and discovered that it was actually two Samaritans helping a woman and her family evacuate by lending helping hands in moving their belongings. 

This alienates not just people who may already have ingrained negative stereotypes but also the good samaritans who wanted to help their neighbors evacuate safely. 

Additionally, this incident was covered on a few websites such as Newsweek and Black Enterprise, but not covered by other news outlets such as Fox News. Instead, Fox News reported on the suspected profiles of those who committed burglaries in evacuated neighborhoods with mugshots—which were all people of color. Rather than reporting on the insidious rise of misinformation and fear mongering circulating in vulnerable communities, they shed the spotlight on what people have been vigilant against the most. 

It’s also notable that this post showed up on my feed when I didn’t follow that user or interact with content like that on a regular basis—imagine how this type of casual discrimination may come across a young user and influence their thinking on social media apps. This type of indoctrination is all too easy to come by, almost as if promoted. 

While it makes perfect sense that news outlets highlight suspected criminals, it skews the narrative to show only the wrongdoings instead of informing citizens that there are increases of biased individuals accusing innocent people of doing crime when the accused are simply trying to help their fellow neighbors. It creates division, suspicion, and downplays the spirit of community. This speaks to not only causal media bias by citizens and official news outlets, but also how proliferated racial scapegoating is. 

Gardeners who were helping clear debris from streets have also been viewed with suspicion in communities for being “looters”—contributing to the idea that there exists a certain look to “belong” in a neighborhood. Residents going back home to retrieve their belongings are being intercepted by other neighbors and questioned about providing evidence of their residency—adding to their mental and emotional stress. It is understandable and admirable that residents want to protect their neighborhood—but not if the suspicion disproportionately relies on racial profiling. 

ARCC also talks more in-depth about racism in the media in this recording with Community in Action and racial bias in media in DeepDive.

The creation of fake posts using out-of-context images has never been a more clear indicator that racism is used as a tool to divide, separate, and create antagonism within vulnerable communities. It is incredibly important for communities to come together and help each other rebuild what was lost, not view each other as potential threats and enemies.