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Is The American Media Racist? Watch American Television

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Is the American media racist? Watch American television and you might think so. It’s been over fifty years since the civil rights movement and unfortunately American television, at times, keeps racism and discrimination alive. Some of America’s longest running and most favorite television shows are riddled with negative stereotypes, hidden prejudices, outright discrimination, and race-baiting. Even worse, is the commercials that are on everyday television that demoralized and debase a whole race of people. Sadly, these companies and corporations sometimes don’t even realize that there is anything wrong with what they are showing on television. This shows how sad the state of our race relations are in this country. First, let’s look at …show more content…

The fact that they used an African American kid in this commercial is highly prejudice. Prejudice is when a negative attitude is felt against an entire group of people (Schaefer 2015). This advertisement gives that image that all African Americans are drug dealing monsters. This type of representation of African Americans has made them look like criminals when that is not always the case and that has led them to be discriminated against. Discrimination is when a group of people is denied the same rights and opportunities because of prejudice (Schaefer 2015). One disturbing fact about this advertisement and the group that was behind making it, Partnership for a drug free America, is that they were funded by over two hundred major American corporations. These types of images that were played on television and backed by so many large companies show that institutional discrimination is a problem in this nation. Institutional discrimination is when a group of people is denied opportunities and their rights are taken away during the normal operations of society. This brings me to my last example of racism in the media and that is the Willie Horton and the revolving door ads. Willie Horton was a prisoner in the Massachusetts prison system for murder. In 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program but did not return and a year later he raped a woman and physically assaulted her fiancé. Michael Dukakis was the governor during this

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