Abstract
Abstract
This study uses Shohat and Stam's notion of multicultural spectatorship to examine the relationship of local news media and secondary urban education. A specific local news spectacle, the videotaped handcuffing and arrest of Pharon Crosby, an African American teenager in downtown Cincinnati, is the primary focus of analysis. Broadcast and newspaper stories are interwoven with interview excerpts from community members, students, educators, and reporters to explore the multilayered webs of meaning that construct limitations and possibilities for urban education in the public imaginary. Although the mediated arrest of Crosby opened up a space for community members to discuss race and injustice, it ultimately advanced a tighter linkage between the police department and the public schools. The potential of urban schools to serve as democratic sites was overshadowed. Instead, a discourse heightening the commonsense understanding of urban schools as appendages to the state penal system was subtly disseminated throughout the community.
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