The Color Line : Mass Media And Systemic Racism

In the United States of America, the media has become the breeding grounds of extreme hypersensitivity to race. The media has caused a lot of racial tension in many ways, including spicing up stories that weren’t actually racist. Sometimes people spread the wrong facts through media so the actual story becomes distorted. Sometimes, books will use harsh words to create a long lasting effect on the reader. Authors will use their choice of words to strike a certain emotion in the reader to create a point, but some readers get so caught up in the word they lose the meaning. Today’s media has created extreme hypersensitivity to race in many ways including distorted stories and distorted understandings.

In “Teaching Resistance: The Racial Politics of Mass Media,” bell hooks focus her message on the role of the media when depicting black and white characters, how it negatively makes an impact on the public, and how white and black people see each other. Although racism began centuries before mass media could spread stereotypes, media’s artful approach to the masses has been useful to continue what has long existed. Mass media’s contents are so subtle and morphed into jokes and entertainable means, that the public becomes easily distracted and over time, they unconsciously absolve stereotypes and false ideas. The fight against these channels has long ago started, and as hooks states in her article, people should turn to “low-risk small acts that can become major interventions.” She suggests boycotts and protest letters that will bring awareness and will be used to gradually deconstruct the negative ideas media strongly built.

Dubois explores in the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk entitled “Of our Spiritual Strivings”. The theory describes an individual particularly African Americans, and their sensation of feelings as if their identity is divided between being black and American, thus making it hard for one to have a unified identity. In the beginning of the chapter DuBois diagnoses the most serious problem of the United States in the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. The color line represents the divide between the black and white races. The line was installed and systematized by de jure racism.

I was watching the news, when the footage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster came on. The news reporters were showing a black man walking in flooded waters near a market with a bag full of food and labeled him a “thief”. Social media in the United States has portrayed people of different racial backgrounds differently and unequally in recent years. In the essays “Theories and Constructs of Race” and “Loot or Find: Fact or Frame?” the authors discuss in both essays about issues with racial equality in our world today. Authors Linda Holtzman and Leon Sharpe discuss in the first essay racial schemes are created through prejudices and the telling and retelling of stories. While, authors Cheryl I. Harris and Devon W. Carbado discuss in their essay about the issue of “colorblindness” in social media. Holtzman is a professor of communications and journalism at Webster University, while Sharpe is a professor at Webster as well. Similarly, Harris and Carbado are professors at UCLA’s School of Law and have addressed widely on race, gender, civil rights and constitutional issues. Both essays do a good job at explaining their ideas and supporting them with evidence of racial discrimination in our world today. The authors from both essays organize their ideas and summarize them, which helps understand the main idea of racism, discrimination and racial inequalities in today’s society.

Media bias is displayed repeatedly in news coverage of black tragedies and in the persecution of black bodies. From protest following the non indictments of cop killing unarmed black men to the uninformed persecution of the BlackLivesMatter movement, mainstream media is constantly standing in opposition to anything that threatens the status quo. My five articles assessed said media bias, and if that bias whether negative or positive affected the African-American community.

What can we do better for our country instead of making a mockery towards the blacks who are poorly educated, and have severe economic issues by not providing equal opportunities and not providing schools for them? And could these actions really lead blacks to crime, violence, and laziness? W.E.B Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folks provides his readers a second – hand experience of what racism and segregation was like during the late eighteen hundred. In addition, he presents major themes such as double – consciousness, the color – line, and most important “the Veil”. The importance of “The Veil” describes the real-life experience of what life is like for an African American living in a nation that is divided up into two race groups and receiving terrible treatments. In Du Bois’ “introduction” he states that the greatest problem that blacks face during the twentieth Century was the color – line. The main reason that the color – line is such a problem during the twentieth Century is because it’s tough for the blacks to achieve

Many famous individuals of color in our history have hoped to one day live in a nation without the feeling of a segregation between different ethnicities. Unfortunately, these hopes have still not come to fruition in our society today. The United States is still rocked by the idea that one pigment of color is superior to another. This discrimination is caused by a lack of education in our generation and an aversion to difference that has been passed down from our ancestors. Rick Wormeli in “Let’s Talk About Racism in Schools” argues “The violence among U.S. residents of different colors, cultures, religions, and political groups has heated to new levels. Social media may have exacerbated the divisive rhetoric and fanned the flames of hatred more than in past decades, but the intense distrust and contempt, and the inability to resolve these feelings in a civil manner, didn’t start with social media. They are the new normal for many.” (citation). The movie Crash, accurately depicts these problems that we have seen with racism in our country for the past hundred years and more abundantly today. In this essay, I will be discussing how the movie crash helps reveal the fact that racism is multicultural, how racism affects the crime rates in our younger generations, and how the nation can begin to heal from racism.

I would argue that Dana Mastro’s 2015 article titled ‘Why the Media’s Role in Issues of Race and Ethnicity Should be in the Spotlight’ makes an important contribution to our understanding of the media’s role in the construction of perceptions of racial and ethnic groups and how these perceptions effect the social position of the people that they are about .This is largely because the media plays a huge role in an individual’s daily lives and it is very difficult to avoid its influence, at least partly, due to its frequency at which it is consumed. Moreover it provides a very good overview of many of the issues regarding race and inequality which makes it very good for Its intended purpose, to encourage further research into the area as the writer sees it as important. First Mastro argues that ‘media exposure has been determined to play a meaningful role in matters ranging from the construction and maintenance of racial/ethnic cognitions (and emotions), to expectations about intergroup relations, to policy decision making, to perceptions of self and identity’ (Mastro,D.2015.pg.1/2) .

In 1863 the emancipation proclamation was signed giving African American citizens the right to vote. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act passed outlawing discrimination based on, among other qualities, race. Although progress in racial equality is evident, its slower than many assume. W.E.B. Du Bois (p.373) lamented, “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.” America’s culture of racial stereotyping and hidden racism is explored in Robin D. G. Kelly’s essay “Confessions of a nice negro, or why I shaved my Head”, and complimented by Du Bois’s pioneering theories regarding the color line, the veil, double consciousness, and standpoint epistemology found in “The Souls of Black folk” and “The Souls of White Folk.”

As society continues to advance, it is evident that technology is vital to the facilitation of everyday living. In today’s media, minorities are constantly being represented in a negative light. Those who fall victim to this tend to be Latinos and African Americans. In the news, there are many aired reports of acts of violence that are portrayed as being committed either by an African American or a Latino. Entertainment media also does its part in showing minorities through negative stereotypes and are underrepresented in important leading roles. Both tend to be seen as antagonist characters or minor characters, while others, such as Anglos usually play leading protagonist roles. Mass media has an influence on how society sees Latinos and African Americans because these perceptions of minorities are constantly shown. Sociological studies on the content analysis of mass media have confirmed that negative portrayal of minorities helps to perpetuate radical prejudices and sustain their low status. Furthermore, it is important for Latinos and African Americans to be given equal opportunities to be positively portrayed.

Racism and discrimination continue to be a prevalent problem in American society. Although minorities have made significant strides toward autonomy and equality, the images in media, specifically television, continue to misrepresent and manipulate the public opinion of blacks. It is no longer a blatant practice upheld by the law and celebrated with hangings and beatings, but instead it is a subtle practice that is perceived in the entertainment and media industries. Whether it’s appearing in disparaging roles or being negatively portrayed in newscasts, blacks continue to be the victims of an industry that relies on old ideas to appeal to the majority. The viscous cycle that is the unconscious racism of the media continues to not only be

When the ink stopped flowing on the Emancipation Proclamation, black men, women, and children breathed a sigh of relief. But did they rejoice? They couldn’t have, not if they still had to deal with the infinite hate that could force them into cages for people to laugh at. Talk is cheap, so it’s easy for people emphasize the numbers in the phrase, “It’s two-thousand-seventeen, why do we still fight for this?,” but it will never be enough to mask the presence of racism in this age. Not only do stereotype reinforcements exist in the real world, but it thrives in the virtual one; it ranges from Twitter to valid news sites, leaving a trail of crumbs behind it. Patriotic citizens of the United States proudly sing that their country is the “land of the free, and home of the brave,” but how is it that groups of “free” citizens can’t get equal representation in the media? It sure is brave of news sources to hide the good actions minorities take to defeat stereotypes and still sit privileged folk on the throne for doing things those minorities have been doing for centuries. On Twitter especially, it is easy to find news articles

Within the informative piece, “Recent Changes in the African American Population within the United States and the Question of the Color Line at the Beginning of the 21st Century”, Frank Harold Wilson highlights the evolving racial lines amongst Black people, in American during the 21st century. As his main source, Harold envelopes W.E.B Du Bois (sociologist) infamous article discussing the “color-line” in America. Harold showcases contemporary racism/segregation by bringing forth the “new color-line”; which he alludes to not only involving African Americans, but also Latinos and possibly other minorities (Harold, 17). Throughout the article, very few commonalities are found in connection between the author and his audience. Nevertheless, he

Karl Marx, a revolutionary sociologist and philosopher, argued and created many concepts and theories; one being the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Summing up the terms as used in his concept, the bourgeoisie represented the employers who were rich and had power while the proletariat represented the employees who were seen to be poor and a part of the working class. Using these terms, alongside their given definitions, it can explain how racism in media is over-popularized and controlled. Breaking down the question, “how is racism in the media over-popularized and regulated?”, the key terms of ‘over-popularized’ and ‘regulated’ can be analyzed and explained by using Karl Marx’s concept of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The current president

Systemic oppression in America is now masked behind systems and institutions of control and domination, backed by doctrine and perpetuated by the economic elite through new laws and mandates. Understanding systemic oppression is important for three reasons: a) it is born out of the color line; b) ruled by few; and c) gives control over money, natural resources, health care, and education. Du Bois describes the transition from the color line to capitalism in his essay, The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto. His accounts discerns how race has transcended color and physique and progressed to a pattern of human hate.