Last Blog

This class has made me increasingly aware of the ways race, ethnicity, and gender are portrayed throughout the American media. Not a day goes by that I don’t continue to analyze every commercial I listen to or see and every news story that I observe.
I have learned that race is only a social construct in order for society to be able to categorize people because of their physical similarities and differences. This categorization has become a “downfall” to the ideals that American society likes to think it practices. It conveys that there is an alternate reality to American society and its belief that “racial” lines have been blurred into omission. Watching the Tim Wise video has brought a lot of things to light for me about the country I live in. I have shown this video to a number of people in hopes to convey Tim Wise’s opinions about the side effects of being a minority in America today.
Media outlets are not perfect reflections of their community but are reflections of a white majority of a nation, not necessarily a white majority of a city (which is not always the case). Races in TV shows and movies are usually cast in stereotypical roles of a criminal, gangster, comedic relief, or “token” friend. Very few movies have a cast predominantly made of minority races, and the ones that are don’t usually gain much public attention except to those of the corresponding minority. Sadly, the way that minorities are portrayed throughout the news media for the most part, up-play social stereotypes of minorities and often convey them in a poor light. These portrayals are unfair to viewers of the same “race” because they believe it is a direct reflection or a perceived reflection of how every person of that “race” behaves. Even though stereotypes are arguably untrue to real life. They have a damaging effect to minorities by influencing the minds of both minorities and the majority to believe these stereotypes because there is a disturbing lack of diversity training in this country. So many people never truly interact with others of a differing ethnicity because of the developed stereotypical ideal they have created because of the media’s flawed minority portrayal.
Gender in America’s media outlets is also portrayed differently and cause debilitating effects to the two genders. Add gender and minorities in the media and you’ve got a college class devoted to trying to dispel the stereotypes and educate those pre-media professionals of the downfalls of mass-communication in America, in hopes to create professionals who have an ethical view of media and hopefully continue the slow transition to a diversity-loving society.
Women are often portrayed as objects or “bitches.” And this stereotypical and condemning portrayal causes a wave of social/psychological problems with women in America. Teen pregnancy is on the rise, as well as the predominance of eating disorders and horrible distorted ideas of how a woman and man’s body should look like.
The media of today, although increasingly better than it used to be, is still a long ways away. The only promising part of TV shows today is the evidence of racial acceptance in children’s shows. Hopefully this trend will continue and the youth of today will be even more socially accepting of physical and cultural differences that make up this country and the people around them.
One crucial thing that I have also learned from this class is that diversity is necessary otherwise our media culture would not have the richness that it has and its potential richness it could have, as well. I hope that progress will be made on the problems of minority representation in the media because there would be so much American society would miss out on.