INTRODUCTION In eighth grade, you hear about the terrors and atrocities that happened in the Second World War. You grip with your inner feelings, wondering how any human being can draw themselves toward the extermination of another, let alone an entire group of them. Only one word stays burned in your head, to remember as if it in itself is reference to pure evil: Nazi. Face it. Anything that word touches turns into a scapegoat, with heavy bias and long index finger pointing at it. And why not? The Nazis were Hitler's army of darkness, sent out to take over the world with a violent prejudice toward anyone not loyal or part of the Aryan race. So surely, anything marked as Nazi, whether it was any kind of person, object, or place, must surely be the Furher incarnated. After all, that's what I had been educated to think. Well, there is a funny thing about someone's belief structure as time goes by; it has the tendency to torn and tattered a little, as an anomaly slips by. Kids, today's anomaly: Nazi Skinhead. Now I don't exactly where I heard it first, but when I heard the words Nazi Skinhead uttered for the first time, my mind clicked and I was automatically biased toward them. After hearing the word Skinhead a couple more times and the horrible things these people were apparently doing I know longer needed the word Nazi in front of it. After all, since I was told that these skinheads were all Nazis, why waste my breath on extra syllables. So, now I was biased against skinheads until one day. I was surfing the net, looking at punk band's sites for tour dates, when I came to the site of a punk band known as the Dropkick Murphys. I was just browsing their site when I read some information where they declared that they were skinheads! For a second I actually thought they were racists or Nazis, but in review of their site and lyrics proved that they were not in anyway racist and actually pro-minority and pro-unity. So now, I didn't know what to think; who was telling the truth? Are all Skin Here we go ladies and gents: QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES Questions: Has the media accurately portrayed Skinheads as racists? „h Hypothesis #1. The media has indeed accurately portrayed Skinheads, because all Skinheads are white Nazis. „h Hypothesis #2. Skinheads are accurately portrayed as racists, because they commit a lot of hate crimes. „h Hypothesis #3. The media has inaccurately portrayed Skinheads, because the media lies and exaggerates about skinheads a lot. BIBLIOGRAPHY REVIEW OF RESEARCH Hypothesis #1: The media has indeed accurately portrayed Skinheads, because all Skinheads are white Nazis. My first hypothesis was researched through several web sites involving the roots of Skinhead ideology and people that exist today, with a little of the history. My first source I used was the history section on the homepage from the Queer Skinhead Brotherhood, a following of Skins that openly invite homosexuals among their ranks. Though it is a site with obviously a lot of bias, it is on server that has been paid for and an organization rather then one author produces it. It is also free of cursing and random attacks on other groups of people. Anyway, this site states quite the opposites of my first hypothesis. It says that the first group of Skinheads emerged from both White mods, (a type of English greaser) and Black Rudeboys, (Outlaws heavily into ska music). It also continues to go on, saying that even though at times, it appeared that some of the Skins at the beginning were targeting South Asian and Homosexuals, they did not do it to any degree more then any other group of White British people at the time. My next source is from The Ska Music History Book, which appears to be a pretty good source. Not only does it hold no affiliation with any Skinhead organizations, it is part of a report written by a university student, who was studying the subject. It is also free of cursing and of misspellings. "If musical style such as Ska was originally a Jamaican product why in the world would skinheads gather around?" suggests the source, (Chapter 2), and then it goes into depth, on how the whole scene was started. The author tells us that in the beginning, Black and White skinheads merged together not just because of musical taste, but because they were on the same level. After World War 2, the English people were thrown into poverty, so both poor Black and white people were forced to work in low paying factory jobs and to basically get along to survive. Thus, they created skinhead culture as a movement for the working class as a whole, not a Nazi/racist movement. My last source for this hypothesis is probably my weakest source. This one comes from a site called Ska Bowlerama and it seems the guy has a big bias for skinheads. This is a personal site, and it even contains a little violence, but it has a lot of information in it. He says, "Original Skinheads were not racist!" He then goes on to re-iterrate that point several times in his research, but he does bring some new information into the light. He brings up the fact that a group of non-racist skinheads belong to an orginaztion called SHARP, (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice), and that the Nazi Boneheads are not in anyway affiliated with traditional skinheads. Hypothesis #2: Skinheads are accurately portrayed as racists, because they commit a lot of hate crimes. On this hypothesis, my first source is a news story called, "A light in Montana: How One town said no to hate." It appears to have some heavy bias on the anti-racist side, but all in all, it is a professionally written news story. In other word, there is no swearing, or attacks on the opposition. Well, this article is kind of dissappointing, because it lacked any real evidence that there was skinhead activity in these series of hate crimes. The amount of Nazi anti-semitic evidence was huge, with descriptions of swastikas being painted on houses and threats being made to Jewish families. However, the word skinhead is only used once and there is no incriminating evidence against them, such as no descriptions of steel-toed, bald-headed, working class men slashing a Jewish mans tires. Hypothesis #3: The media has inaccurately portrayed Skinheads, because the media lies and exaggerates about skinheads a lot. The first source I picked for this hypothesis comes from a web page called the truth about skinheads. Though the page appears to favor skinheads with some bias, the writer is not a skinhead and not affiliated with any skinhead organizations, plus, the page is neatly edited and free of any violent attacks on any oppressors of his topic. When reading this author's article on Skinheads, I again found some the same historically information all ready placed in this paper. This time, I also found information on the bad mediated coverage that skinheads have been given. He talks about how a writer named Gary Bushell use to focus his articles for Spin and Rolling Stone magazine on the negativity of Oi/Skin Music. Thus, by doing this, he gave skinheads a bad name and helped bring the image of the violent racists they are well known for today. My second source for this hypothesis comes from a report posted online that researched by a girl about the same age as myself. She does appear to hold some bias for skinheads, because she is a rudegirl and a ska fan, but she, herself, is not a skinhead, she has a lot of quotes she used from other sources, and she has no violent swearing or attacks toward any types of people. She says that the media is not telling all aspects of the truth, because they only publicize stories about Nazi Boneheads, the racist skinhead groups, and not the anti-racist ones. Thus, by all this bad press and complete ignorance of the bigger picture, the traditional and non-racist skinheads are reaping the residuals. www.eden.rutgers.edu/~hreschak/skasite/bk2_6.html 1 www.io.com/~qsb/words/faq/skin.html 2 www.skabowlerama.homestead.com/wave2~main.html 3 http://www.education.mcgill.ca/455-410-03/abdou/hatecrimes5-menorah.htm 4 http://www.erols.com/rosseroo/music/skinhead.html 7 http://www.gurlpages.com/skashley81/blech.html 8 Members |Bio| Shows | Lyrics | Links | Contact | Message Board |Misc ]