Boy v. man: The role of perception and the attribution of blame in court proceedings by LaNina N. Cooke

“…In the case of this analysis, teenage murder victim Jordan Davis was described as a man and characterized as an adult aggressor and deserving of blame. …”
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Editor’s Note: Sounding the Break: Music Studies and the Political by Tom Wetmore

“…A related “formidability bias” fuels further fantasies of black bodies as unduly threatening, sonically excessive, and aurally deficient, establishing a fine line between the respectable sound of the resilient black voice and the menacing unruliness of disrespectable black noise. In the murder of Jordan Davis, the perceived noisiness of rap music and the fantasy of black menace in the ears and eyes of gun-wielding software developer Michael Dunn crystallized into “the self-defense justification of only choice—kill” (116). …”
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