How the Media Portrays Minorities PDF

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An essay on how American media portrays minorities such as African-Americans, Native Americans, and Asians, and how it perpetuates negative stereotype of these minorities....

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Estrada 1 Moira Estrada Professor Kristi Renshaw ENGL 1301 7 October 2018 How Does the Media Affect How We View Minorities? There is no shortage of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States: black; Latino; Asian; Pacific Islander; even Native Americans are a minority in the country that was theirs in the first place. Whatever racial minority one may be, there is no doubt that minorities of any kind are often both under- and misrepresented in the media, from the news to entertainment to advertisements. The media plays a large role in how these minorities are viewed, and unfortunately many negative stereotypes are attached to them because of how the media portrays them. The media plays a big part in everybody’s lives. It influences people and their worldview much more than they tend to realize. The news and diverse forms of entertainment are right at everyone’s fingertips, and people are surrounded by advertisements even when driving. The media’s reach is nationwide, and because of that it has the power to “[set] the tone for the morals, values, and images of our culture” (Horton). Cultivation theory states that the media shapes how people see the world the more they are exposed to it, and so eventually what people “deem as appropriate role portrayals, values and ideologies” become more like what they see on-screen (Monk-Turner). Though it might be obvious that what people see in the news, entertainment, and even in advertisements inform their views, the media also influences people’s actions. The media has been able to create stereotypes of people who are different from what is considered the norm, thus encouraging “the creation of mental shortcuts to make relevant judgements about various

Estrada 2 social issues” (Dixon). Whether these images are accurate or not cannot be said for sure, but it is possible to assume that they are. Therefore, the media has been able to create stereotypes and prejudice against certain groups of people, such as blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, and because these stereotypes are often very negative, they have been used to justify discrimination. For example, the news tends to overrepresent black criminality and “exaggerate[s] the notion that blacks belong to the undeserving poor class” (Dixon), leading people to be suspicious of black people even if they have not actually committed any crimes. Although minority representation has been improving and becoming more positive, there is still a lot of representation that only contributes to negative stereotypes of minorities. While there has been some progress, the media has not been “consistently responsive or sensitive” (Cort). Native Americans and Asians, for instance, “are relegated to ‘historical’ and/or fetishized portrayals,” with Native Americans often being depicted as savage, and with Asians being seen as the “model minority…[representing] ‘succesful non-whites” as well as being portrayed as meek and submissive (Dixon). Minorities need better representation so that the negative stereotypes surrounding certain minorities can be dispelled and eventually eliminated. All too often, the media has been used to show minorities negatively, only furthering many people’s beliefs that those of a certain minority are a certain way when that is far from the truth. These beliefs show through in cases of black and brown children being targeted by the police for their skin color, such as Michael Brown, and in the cases of Asian-American children being targeted for their ethnicity and culture. Though the media has been used to portray minorities negatively, with the rise of social media and other forms of mass communication, such as the television and the internet, there is no longer any reason or excuse to not see the positive aspects of these communities. There may no longer be “Confederate flags…or signs relegating colored people to

Estrada 3 different facilities,” but the media only propagates the negative stereotypes and “inescapable stigmas” surrounding minorities (Horton). Representation is not just about casting minorities to play minorities, but about having positive minority role models not only for minorities, but even for those who aren’t a minority, because the issues of different minorities “are not realized by most Americans because they are not visible to most Americans” (Onwuamaegbu). The United States is often said to be a melting pot of cultures, and it would be remiss to not acknowledge the diversity that exists in the States. Depictions in the media affect how people see the world, and it has a long-lasting effect on society. It affects not only how individuals view themselves, but also how individuals view others. That is why media portrayals of minorities is so important, especially since the media plays such a big role in our lives – it is always readily available, and it can sometimes be overwhelming. It informs how people think and what they do. Therefore, people need to be more conscious of whose voices are being drowned out by the media and of what the media tells society about certain minorities and about what it does not tell them. Representation may help dispel stereotypes and stigmas surrounding minorities, but society must also challenge said stereotypes and stigmas for them to truly be eliminated.

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Works Cited Cort, Carlos. “A Long Way to Go: Minorities and the Media.” Center for Media Literacy | Empowerment through Education | CML MediaLit Kit ™, Center for Media Literacy, http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/long-way-go-minorities-and-media. Dixon, Travis L., et al. “Media Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 20 Sept. 2019, https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/ac refore-9780190228613-e-502. Horton, Yurii, et al. “Poverty and Prejudice: Media and Race.” PORTRAYAL OF MINORITIES

Estrada 5 IN THE FILM, MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRIES, Stanford University, 1 June 1999, https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/mediarace/portrayal.htm. Monk-Turner, Elizabeth, et al. “The Portrayal of Racial Minorities on Prime Time Television: A Replication of the Mastro and Greenberg Study a Decade Later.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 32, no. 2, 2010, pp. 101–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23416158. Onwuamaegbu, Natachi. “The Importance of Representation.” The Stanford Daily, 25 May 2018, https://www.stanforddaily.com/2018/05/25/the-importance-of-representation/....