"Tone policing is the act of invalidating or derailing a call out/call in/discussion based on your reaction to the incident...

Tone policing doesn't have to be race-related. But, in the wake of George Floyd's death last May and the summer's Black Lives Matter protests, tone policing in a racial context took center stage. Protests in cities across the U.S. were tainted by mainstream media's depctions of acts such as vandalism and arson as widespread.

African Americans are disproportionately represented in news stories about poverty, and these stories tend to paint a picture that is particularly likely to reinforce stereotypes and make it hard to identify with black males.

For example, low-income blacks in news stories are more likely to live in slums or urban areas, as opposed to rural areas, than real-world averages would suggest; more likely be entirely unemployed and “idle”; and so forth. The idle black male on the street corner is not the “true face” of poverty in America, but he is the dominant one in media portrayal.