Essay on Racism in the Media: Misrepresentation of Minorities

Television quickly supports racial stereotypes which massively strengthens audiences existing viewpoints of individual races. Asians, African Americans and Latino Americans are usually described on television in standard ways. Latin Americans have been the recipient of decisions in popular shows using the following famous stereotypes. For example, Latino-Americans are oversexed, maids, violent, and law-breaking criminals. Sofia Verga plays as the main character in Modern Family as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett. She is a Columbian, and she states it at least once per show and has very particular "Columbian behavior." In a show called Devious Maids, all of the Latino American women on there are maids and sneaky and sleeping with their bosses or other taken men to make it, it overly sexualizes the Latino women as a culture.

"White man kills child.""Black woman caught stealing." Race is often misused in the media and in everyday life. Race in the media is always stated clearly when informing about social and political events, and has a tendency to bias peoples perspectives. I believe this empowerment of race is a huge problem in our society.

Television is a complex site of power where African Americans themselves have enacted these aforementioned stereotypes, particularly in the situation comedy genre. African

These shows include: “Modern Family”, “Meet the Browns” and “Glee”. With all the shows being of different networks, I feel like these shows will give me a wide representation of how race is being represented on sitcoms in the 21st century and whether or not media content reflects the realities of the social world.

The representation of race has been fabricated through media can be seen throughout history that has come to encourage the idea of white supremacy and justification of inequality. This representation of race is used to make others as inferior used as an objective in defending the negative treatment of blacks and protection whiteness as the ideal.

As our young country has developed over the years we have become the most diverse nation in the world.

That is a great question one that I ask myself daily. However, the media continues to demonstrate a division between races. Even the news reports to viewers only what they want society to know. They report partial story, and part truth. It’s disheartening how the media portrays racism to society and how racism continues to grow.

Representation is understood in relation to realism, which is the extent of which a media text is credible to its audience in terms of experiences, emotions and events as opposed to texts which are simply imaginary. In contemporary society, news programmes and documentaries are assumed to be realistic and reliable in terms of the sources of their information. However, it could be suggested that they convey a version of reality that is unsurprisingly selective and heavily biased towards the people who created them. This could be a reason for the creation of racial stereotypes within different news organisations. This essay will therefore discuss racial stereotypes which are present within the news and also to what extent news organisations perpetuate the notion of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Throughout the course, we have learned many different communication topics – most of which have struck a great interest in me. But, the one topic that I found the most interesting was Media Literacy because of not only how in depth it can be, but also how much of an impact it can actually have on everyday lives. In the article Intervening in the Media’s Influence on Stereotypes of Race and Ethnicity: The Role of Media Literacy Education by Erica Scharrer and Srividya Ramasubramanian, they review research conducted to see how media literacy in education affects individuals thought process and creates stereotypes. The two research questions Scharrer and Ramasubramanian wanted to answer was, “can media consumers’ examination of the principles and practices behind media production, media content, and media reception facilitate critical analysis of media’s treatment of underrepresented social groups and open up their views of race and ethnicity?” and, “Might media literacy education help to increase knowledge and/or shape attitude about media’s roles and practices pertaining to race and ethnicity?” (172). These topics were discussed mostly in chapters 9 and 11, as well as chapter 10.

The effect also presses at parents who may find it difficult to convince their children that racism is not acceptable and that Black and White are merely colors. Some may even find it hard to accept their personal appearance and embrace their heritage. While others may be turned off from mainstream media and seek a more diverse source of news on the internet, or give up on the press

Stephen Balkaran is a profound writer in his field of studies. He also teaches Political Science and African American Studies at Central Connecticut State University, where he initiated, developed and coordinates a Civil Rights Project. For this article Balkaran main focus point is the fact that the media has done an excellent job on how whites perceive Africans. He starts off by touching on several theories such as “Marxist class theory” and “Segmentation Theory” together with the fact that the media has done a great job by dividing the working class and stereotyping young African-American males as gangsters or drug dealers in addition to the riots, and how the media brings them across. He finally closes off by showing some interesting statistics that

Now a days, the media has a great influence on racism. When someone seeing or hear something online, on t.v, the radio, or even the newspaper, they tend to believe what they see, or read. When it comes to races on the media, the media it's selve reflex badly on those races. When people see or hear something about a black person, chinese person, mexican, or even an indian person, it's usually something bad, and then they start thinking negativly about those races. People tend to rely on the media to learn, and they are learning to be

            The newspaper, social media, and news networks are all outlets that people use every day to find out what is happening in the world. Now a day you can hardly turn on the television without seeing a crime between one race and another where one race is being victimized even if they are the ones that did not committ the crime. In today’s society, it is hard for to find someone who hasn’t been affected by racism in some form or another. The media often uses current issues and relevant events and connects them to racism to strike fear in their viewers. Changing the story of severe crimes is another way media corrupts the news, and finally, although media often displays racism in the news, not every story published involving two races is one that has a bad intention. Times are changing, but racism is not, unfortunately it was present in the media one hundred years ago and it will be present one hundred years in the future.

The newspaper, social media, and news networks are all outlets that people use every day to find out what is happening in the world. Now a day you can hardy turn on the TV without seeing a crime between one race and another where one race is being victimized even if they are the one that committed the crime. In today’s society, it is hard for to find someone who hasn’t been affected by racism in some form or another. The media often uses the times and relevant events and connect them to racism to struck fear in their viewers. Changing the story of severe crimes is another way media corrupts the news, and finally although media often displays racism in the news, not every story published involving two races is one that has a bad intention. Times are changing but racism is not, unfortunately it was present in the media one hundred years ago and it will be present one hundred years in the future.

The stereotypes of race allow the audience to adopt a narrative based on emotion and cultural experiences which undermine the factual basis of the event and leads to manipulation of the narrative.