Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes

Well known Journalist, Robert Fisk, in his essay The Media Stereotype Muslims as Terrorists, describes racism in the Muslim and Jew community. Fisk’s purpose is to convey the idea to stop the stereotyping of racism. He adopts imitative tone in order to get the point across. This article is effective because he uses appeals and tones efficiently to get the reader’s attention.

Greetings! Our names are Ryan Ford and Mohit Desai, and we are students in grade nine at Mahwah High School. To elaborate, we are investigating and researching the topics in and surrounding the concepts of prejudice, bias and the concept of identity with the application of some prime events. Now, we are very engrossed in the subject of history, day by day, as we both have a robust passion for history. As a result, we are striving and growing students of Honors World History, due in part because of the accolades of years past. Consequently, this has become one of the reason for our interests in the themes of stereotypes present in influential events that have encompassed the past. Hence, we are very pleased to get into contact with you, as you

Media is a powerful resource, reaching vast audiences by means of television, radio, press and Internet. Its purpose is to broadcast information and entertain the target audience. It plays a significant role in social and cultural interpretations because it can influence and manipulate the audience’s views by broadcasting a certain message. In order for the media to get a message across to a wide variety of cultures they use stereotypes, which evoke certain associations and are usually universally understood and accepted. Nowadays the media uses traditional gender stereotypical roles that suggest how males and females should behave in society.

Similarly, the mass media construct and reinforce social stereotypes around ethnicity, particularly through their stereotypical images and portrayal of ethnic groups performing certain roles in society. Sociological approaches which attach particular importance to racism emphasise the limitations imposed on ethnic minorities by such hostility and discrimination (Haralambos and Holborn, 1995, p.688). The attention is

This study examines stereotyping of Arab Muslims in the New York Times for the past forty years. Theorists suggest that stereotyping of a minority group effects the public's opinion of that group. Other communication media theorists say that only under extreme conditions will the negative stereotypes reflect the publics' opinions of the portrayed minority group. The parallel theory between propaganda and stereotyping by the mass media is examined. Theorists including Thomson, (1977) & Myers, (1992), related to mass media effects strongly agree claiming that repetitive and non-contradictive images in the media are an effective form of propaganda. The research

However, the power has shifted slowly to the portrayers of our world: the media. Although stereotypes have been part of human existence, they have only recently (in terms of human existence) been so exuberantly highlighted by the institutional organization of the media. Their power so diversified, informally controlling, the belief that we are being restricted of freedom to an average American would be preposterous. The media functions in a simple manner; it is allowed to highlight which information is passed onto the general public, picking and choosing which stereotypes to heighten; never before has a single structure has controlled so much power. A stereotype has defined a series of experiences that help determine a situation/person, but it becomes dangerous when the experience is not an experience, but instead an experience of another, propaganda to fit a mold of one's imagination. This limits which knowledge can be accessed and requires a difficulty in deconstructing the stereotypes composed by the media. Just as explored by the personal experience of the media had to underscore a stereotype against the brown body constructing us as a threat to society. Due to the incident of 9/11 every individual that looks similar to the terrorist of the original plot has been inspected ever so closely creating an atmosphere of harassment and stigmatism. Ever since 9/11, the

This study examines how local television news stations may be responsible for stereotypes of minorities. Minorities are mostly represented negatively rather than positively in many local news stations. While whites are portrayed more positively than negatively. To compare these explanations 15 weeks of research on sociological papers about local news stations was done. Along with 15 weeks of monitoring two news stations from Cincinnati, Ohio; Fox19 (WXIX) and CBS12 (WKRC). Stereotypes portrayed by News Stations is extremely serious because ideological statements and images can affect belief and create negative social meanings that affect society unconsciously. This can possibly cause unconscious racism, negative political production, and false

Stereotype is a classification of an individual based on improper information or assumptions. In this 21st century, we claim to have a changed mindset that there is no discrimination between boys and girls. However, if a girl wants to be an engineer or a boy wants to open a beauty salon, we hesitate our inactive mindset by asking them to do what stereotypically a boy or a girl are supposed to do. This shows that discrimination still overcomes and will till human exists. Studies shows that media plays a major role by helping us take various decisions of our lives. Where, stereotyping is also being followed by media. Media presents everything to the common people and effect them. In such case, if media is gender stereotype, we cannot expect our society to be uncaring towards gender. This study is a review of media and

What is an Arab? In a great number of movies Hollywood provides the answer to this question: Arabs are cruel murderers, sleazy rapists, religious fanatics, oil-rich dimwits, and abusers of women (Shaheen 2). This is how Hollywood shows Arabs to the world. Throughout the history we can trace the discrimination in several media industry against African-American, Jewish, and Hispanic people. However, in some North America’s media Arabs are depicted more negatively than any other nationality. Media shapes the public opinion, it is our window to the world. The misrepresentation and misperception of Arabs in North America’s media have led to political, religion, and culture conflict. The given paper will prove that the way media depicts Arabs negatively affected the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The media reinforces existing stereotypes thus leading to propaganda, it depicts a skewed representation of the genders and races. Content analyses have found that the media is saturated with gender and racial stereotypes, Entman and Rojecki (2000), for example, found 89% of black female film characters are shown using vulgar language, whereas only 17% of white women are. People are exposed to these misleading stereotypes daily. Evidence for exposure to the media was conducted by Collins and Shover (1993) who found that advertisements occupy almost 60% of the newspaper. Further research has suggested that these advertisements deeply influence people’s perceptions of each other -using the medias stereotypes as a template for different social groups.

Media plays an important role in developing an image of people from other countries or communities because many people have no personal contact with people from other countries and rely mainly on media for information about them (Harris). Unfortunately, media’s portrayal of different minorities is usually far from being accurate. They often misrepresent the reality thus promoting myths and stereotypes. Studies have found that media create and spread images of the society (DeFleur and DeFleur). Social representation as myths or reality has woven into the fabric of society mainly through mass media such as the television and cinema.

Generally, stereotypical representations tend to be harmless images but the issue rises from the lack of apathy from the public to refine theses stereotypes and this attitude comes with a range of consequences and impacts. Stereotypes are pervasive in the world and have devastating consequences. An example is people and the media being so quick to confuse Arabs, Muslims and Middle Easterners as the same.

Stereotyping and ethnocentrism both have concepts that are deeply intertwined in some type of way in society. Both concepts of stereotyping and ethnocentrism are both identified as being superior, dogmatic, bigotry, and is harmful and hurtful to the human spirit. Although stereotyping and ethnocentrism attitudes are different in ways of harmfulness, but they are both problems in our society today that needs our most extreme attention. In this essay, it targets to explain and make clear the definitions of stereotyping and ethnocentrism as well as compare, and contrast the concepts of both, provide concrete examples of how Muslims are being represented by local and/or national media in America, compare, and contrast Individualism and collectivism in the Muslim culture, and how mass-mediated stereotypes may affect communication when interacting with this cultural group.

Today everyone believes in some kind of stereotype. Stereotypes are always used to portray a certain type of person, nationality or religion. For example, when people think of blondes they imagine a person who is incapable of understanding the slightest knowledge, or when one thinks of a person who is from Iraq they automatically imagine a Muslim terrorist that they have seen on the media. The media in our world today represents the fire that is in the Plato’s Allegory of the cave, which was used to cast shadows, illustrating the unrealistic images and stereotypes of items and people.

As a result, people behave and think negatively under the bad impacts of media. Moreover, by overgeneralizing information about specific religions from media, people can have religious prejudices. For instance, in Chapter 8, “Framing Muslim – Americans before and after 9/11,” in the book Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government and the Public, the authors state that in the United States media, the Arab and Muslim Americans are described as terrorists (133). Also, people will keep a distance with Muslims, they don’t even want to work or to participate in social activities with the presence of Muslims. Clearly, after the event of September 11, Muslims became the victims of religious prejudices. In brief, leading prejudices about race and religion are one specific way that media influence people’s subconscious judgments.