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Racism And Discrimination On Tv. Is The American Media

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Racism and Discrimination on TV 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, and outright discrimination. 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. …show more content…

The fact that they used an African American kid for 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 imagery has led to discrimination against African Americans because they are looked at like they are criminals when that is not the case. Discrimination is when a group of people is denied the same rights and opportunities because of prejudice (Schaefer 2015). Something that is disturbing 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 are denied opportunities and their rights are taken away during the normal operations of society. Lastly, that 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

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