Shirley Samuels, professor of art history and visual culture at Cornell University, comments on the controversy over the Rolling Stone Magazine cover featuring the Boston Bomber.
She says: "The outrage that has erupted over the Boston Bomber cover of Rolling Stone Magazine reflects the same unconscious stereotyping we saw in the Trayvon Martin case. In that case, the image of a hoodie eclipsed the individuality of any face within it. A Rolling Stone cover has an equal power of persuasion, but here the expectation is that such a cover will be occupied only by celebrities. The presumption of the space of the hoodie is that it can only be occupied by a criminal."
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