Fission Strategy’s Cheryl Contee recently appeared on MSNBC with Thomas Roberts to discuss the media and societal reaction to Charles Ramsey and Angel Cordero in the wake of the rescue of three women in Cleveland who had been held hostage for years. She also wrote an article about the issue for the Huffington Post, “Race, Class, Charles Ramsey and the Cleveland Kidnap Rescue.”

Cheryl addresses the Twitter users and others across the Internet that openly mocked the heroism of Ramsey because he referenced his McDonald’s meal and was missing teeth. She asserts that these people unfairly characterized one of the heroes of the situation because of his race and class. There are also heroes involved that were not recognized by the media, and Cheryl says on MSNBC there is “an even darker underclass of people that are unseen and unheard when they perform heroic acts.”

Cheryl argues that the media downplayed the role of one of the rescuers, Angel Cordero, because he was soft-spoken and did not speak English as his primary language. “It speaks to the darkness of the shadow cast on our nation's immigrant community and to the media's preference for sensationalism.”

“The Cleveland rescue story is like chocolate chip ice cream,” she says. “[There’s] so much to celebrate yet studded with America's worst blights when it comes to how lower income communities, especially those who are black and brown and female, are treated by law enforcement and the media.”

For more, you can view the video above or read Cheryl’s full post on Huffington Post here.