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Essay On Media Influence On American Culture

Decent Essays

In today’s society, media is present in our lives 24/7 allowing it to have a major influence on our culture in both positive and negative ways. The article “Television, Black Americans, and the American Dream” explained how Black Americans have been represented in the media and television. The media has shifted our understanding of racial inequality away from a structured process. This makes it seem as though racial inequality is “natural and universal rather than as result of social and political struggles over power” (Gray, p. 431). This is illustrated in the CBS News documentary The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America by following the lives of underclass, single parents. It highlights drugs, riots, and teenage pregnancy to show that …show more content…

The article begins by describing the National Review cover that featured President Clinton, the first lady, and Vice President Al Gore all in yellowface. The article was meant to show the political corruption during Clinton’s campaign since he solicited donations from the Asian community in return for favors. The National Review did not make it seem as though Clinton was at fault, instead, they created the image that Asian money had polluted the political process. For many years and still to this day to some extent, Asians have been seen as a pollutant to American society, or they are perceived to be out of place and therefore have been cast as an economic, social, and sexual burden to the American society. Matthew Fong is one example of this. He was a fourth generation Californian who ran for secretary of state. During his campaign, he was asked if his loyalties were divided between the United States and China, just because of his appearance. Even though the events described happened over twenty years ago, there were still issues surrounding race in the past election. One example is Pepe the Frog. This started out as an innocent online comic that turned into a meme and eventually became offensive and racist as the alt-right began to use Pepe. The number of offensive Pepe memes grew in number before eventually disappearing from the everyday person's

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