Hellhounds by Leon Litwack - Research Paper Example

“” Hellhounds” by Leon Litwack makes me realize the degree of hatred and prejudice the Blacks had to face in the 20th century.  The chapter makes me surprised by the fact that the Whites were more compassionate toward “mad dogs” than towards the “black beasts”. The extreme levels of cruelty meted out to Hose by the people “educated in America” is more barbarous than any savages could manage to do. After reading the entire chapter, I feel that media has the power to spread or mitigate prejudices. In my opinion, once the media is prejudiced, the whole society is prejudiced, and individual voices, rational thinking, and even religion go unheard once the media moves the mob.

In the case of Hose, the media had an active role, knocking down individual voices of concern, and spreading words contradictory to reality, igniting hatred in the public mind. I was taken aback by the fact that though the wife of the killed revealed in the investigation that Hose committed the murder in self-protection and that there was no rape, no one including the media or government gave attention to the same. I feel that the main reason for this extreme aggression and shameless activities is the self-interest of the media to offer the Whites the kind of news they loved to hear about the Blacks. As the chapter reveals, so many Blacks met their end almost in the same way.

To sum up, I would like to say that government, media, and religion are the only forces powerful enough to make mass movements. Once they are prejudiced, the whole society remains prejudiced. Once this happens, moral values and rational thinking disappear from the minds of even the so-called educated and civilized people.