This article talks about racial stereotypes in the media, directly of the African-Americans on TV shows or news. The article claims that a person watching a lot of television would assume that African-Americans are "lazy, dishonest, dumb and ignorant" (Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media, 2002). These are the main characteristics which are associated with them in the media. 89% of black female movie characters are shown using vulgar language, while only 17% of White women are, according to Entman-Rojecki Index of Race and Media. Also, black women are shown as being violent in movies 56% of the time compared to the 11% of white women. The article mentions some popular "black sitcoms" from the 1970's such as In Living Color or Good Times which gave African-Americans more TV coverage and also portrayed them in many different roles. However it concludes that other "white sitcoms" such as Friends were more popular and had higher viewership. Consequently, it mentions more recent shows such as The Cosby Show or Fresh Prince of Bel Air which show black families in a more positive light and also suggests they are not all poor and uneducated, as it was portrayed in the show Good Times. The last part of the article concerns itself with the unfair portrayal of African-American in the news and especially with the coverage of Los Angeles riot in 1992. The news made it seem that mainly black people were responsible for this riot, however this was very inaccurate information, as only 36% of arrested were African-Americans and the rest were white of Hispanic (the people's media company). To conclude, this article is trying to show that African-Americans are overly stereotyped in the media by being shown as violent and aggressive.
Yes this is all true, or to be correct WAS all true. Nowadays we do not see these kinds of representations among African Americans in the media. Nowadays African Americans are represented as intelligent (30 Rock), honest (Vampire Diaries) and superheroes (Hancock). I believe that the portrayal of all minorities is changing every five or ten years in order to keep the media entertaining and interesting, this is why the African Americans shifted their representation drastically.
OdpovědětVymazatIt is true that the representation of African Americans is not ideal yet, but it´s getting closer. As as petoooSK said there are many programs on TV showing African Americans in good light, but there always is a space for improvement. What I am bit more concerned about are other minorities such as Latinos or Arabs. Those minorities are the most abused and underrepresented in media.
OdpovědětVymazat