Stereotypes In Media Essay, Research Paper

My topic will address how minorities and women are misrepresented in the media

and how they are stereotyped. I plan to show how minorities and women are

depicted or stereotyped unfairly in the news, on television, and in general. In

an article from USA Today magazine, it illustrated that if you have watched,

listened to, and read media all your life, you probably have filed these images

into your thinking process: African-Americans are mostly rap stars, professional

athletes, drug addicts, welfare mothers, criminals and/or murderers; Latinos are

illegal aliens, ignorant immigrants who take, but give little back to the

country and can’t even speak the language, or drug-crazed thugs who have no

respect for law or order; Asian-Americans are either weak, model citizens or

inscrutable, manipulative, or uncaring invaders of business, especially in the

United States; Native Americans are illiterate, drunken Indians who hate all

Caucasians and sleep away their lives. (Saltzman, 1994) If you are like most

middle-class Americans, most of what you know about members of other races or

religions comes from what you read in the paper, hear on radio, or see on

television. It is easy to see that racial and ethnic stereotypes still dominate

much of reporting today. In today’s media, African-Americans, Latinos,

Asian-Americans and Native Americans either are treated as invisible or the

source of a particular problem: crime, immigration, or the economy. In reference

to Native-Americans: when you watch a sport such as the Atlanta Braves baseball

team or the Washington Redskins football team, you see the tomahawk chop and

chants at these baseball or football games. Anything wrong with this? As for

Hispanics, "You find a few Hispanics sprinkled through the networks but in

supporting roles" says Hollywood publicist, Luis Reyes. "They are put

there for color." (Heller 1994) In 1993, Hispanics who numbered 25 million

in the United States, played in only eleven of the 800 prime-time network TV

parts, according to a March 1993 Newsweek study. Another study conducted by the

Center for Media and Public Affairs, found that of more than 7,000 TV characters

on 620 prime-time shows between 1955 and 1987, there were 2 percent Hispanics

and 6 percent Blacks. Last year, Common Law lasted only four episodes on ABC.

Today, there are no shows that I can think of that are all Hispanic — you have

to go to cable TV to find a show. Now turning to Asians on TV, if you remember

the show "All American Girl" which depicted a Korean family, it is no

longer on the air. Where do we see them now? No where. Now let’s focus on

African-Americans. Television’s most prominent black men are athletes and

entertainers. On the court, on the field, on the rap stage, they are heroes to

both Whites and Blacks, particularly to the young. What does this do? They may

give an impressionable viewer the notion that speed, strength, and bad language

will do for them what it has done for its heroes. Elsewhere on the small screen

can be found black news anchors, reporters and commentators as well as actors,

social workers, teachers, and public officials who represents different roads to

achievement. But not even Colin Powell can compete in the dreams of most

youngsters with that of a Shaquille O’Neal or Michael Jordan. Dr. Camille Cosby,

who received her doctorate in education (her husband is Bill Cosby) has written

a book: "Television’s Imageable Influences: The Self Perception of Young

African-Americans," which charts the damaging impact of derogatory images

of African-Americans produced by our media. She observed that self-esteem is

considered a pre-requisite for success. She states, "What impact would it

have on your psyche to see your people constantly portrayed as the devoted

servant, the chicken and watermelon eater, the sexual superman, or the social

delinquent, among many other derogatory images?" It is for these and other

reasons that Dr. Cosby wrote her book to emphasize the real human cost of media

misinformation and indifference. Dr. Cosby also states, "As a mother, I am

very aware of what children watch and how they are influenced by TV, movies,

newspapers and art. The way the media distorts our differences is a covert

divide and conquer strategy which I regard as a violation of human rights."

(Johnson, 1995) When Blacks are invited into homes via television, it evidently

is easier for viewers to laugh at African-Americans than to see them effectively

addressing their problems. Former TV comedies such as the highly rated Roseanne

and Grace Under Fire, addressed serious issues such as wife abuse, forced

unemployment, and divorce within the white working class, but similar issues

come up short on black shows. This suggests that Blacks must be fun-loving and

happy-go-lucky no matter how dire the circumstance. This "Don’t worry, be

happy" mentality was illustrated in "A Different World," a comedy

about black college life as a spin-off from the ground breaking Cosby Show. But

it focused on more partying; more relationship matters than on serious

academics. As for women, a report which analyzed media coverage of women, found

that the "white male, as reported by the media, is the subtle norm by which

all else is gauged." For example, when the subject is a white male,

reference to his race and gender is rarely noted, whereas descriptive phrases,

such as "black leader" or "female candidate" are often

employed in addition to that person’s name and title. Images and beliefs

concerning women are far more prominent in our society than those of men. Women

are always the ones cooking, cleaning, doing household tasks or taking care of

children. They are portrayed as being emotionally and physically inferior and

submissive to men. Women are visualized as weak creatures. They tend to be

confined to a life dictated by family and personal relationships. Men almost

always dominate television programs. Figures show that in television drama women

are outnumbered by men 3:1 or 4:1; in cartoons women are outnumbered 10:1; and

in soap operas women are outnumbered 7:3. (Ingham 1997) In daily shows such as

soap operas, women are usually hysterical, crying and emotionally out of

control. This personifies women as being the inferior sex, which leads to many

false stereotypes. Women as sex objects are the most common stereotype of women

on television. Now turning to the television network, Fox executives first

embarked on their quest for the young-urban market dollar, by offering

performers such as Keenan Ivory Wayans and Charles Dutton titles that promised

an unusually high degree of creative control for African-Americans. Of course,

the deals weren’t exactly what they were cracked up to be. When the TV show, In

Living Color hit big, the upstart network got greedy and attempted to make

syndication dollars on Thursdays while continuing with first-run episodes

Sundays. Naturally the Wayans family walked. And when the TV show Roc failed to

earn big ratings, Fox began using its veto power over the shows content. The

shows Roc and South Central depicted reality-based black families. Even though

Roc was canceled, it went out with a fight. In a last ditch effort to salvage

the working-class dramedy (comedy/drama), 29 black members of congress signed a

letter of protest to Rupert Murdock (President of Fox network) while Congressman

Ed Towns even issued a statement that members of the congressional black caucus

will not stand for the "paternalistic" cancellation of positive black

shows. The star of Roc, Charles Dutton in commenting on his show in the magazine

"Village Voice" says, "It is my opinion that if I was doing what

Martin Lawrence was doing, if I was doing what some of the baffoon male

characters on Living Single were doing, if our show was made of

fluff-lightweight material such as Family Matters and the Fresh Prince of Bel

Air, I would have been on the air for five more seasons." (Zook, 1994) Now

some solutions for the news. More than 5,000 minority journalists at a unity ‘94

conference in Atlanta, said the solution is to increase racial and ethnic

minorities in news management ranks so that those who report, edit and decide

what goes on via the media are proportionately representative of the public at

large. The number of minorities in the media have increased in recent years, but

that rate isn’t fast enough. It is unjustifiable that the men and few women who

manage the media continue to do so without the benefit of enough input from

racial and ethnic minorities to make a difference. (Sunoo, 1994) Perhaps in the

television arena, we could ask viewers what they think about the shows on the

air; we need to encourage open dialogue. We need to show that diversity is a

long-term commitment to change. Don’t just focus on diversity when it’s black

history month or Cinco De Mayo; focus on diversity all the time. In summary, I

hope I have enlightened us all to know that there is minority misrepresentation

in the media, whether it be Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans or

Women. There are a number of solutions possible, but until mainstream America

sees it as a problem, I don’t think it will change too fast. As for

stereotyping, the familiar saying, "Don’t be too fast to judge a book by

its cover" is easy to say, but unfortunately most look at the cover before

opening the book.

61e

Heller, Michele A. (1994, August). "Off the air" Hispanic, 7, (7),

30-34. Ingham, Helen. (1997, April 6). "The portrayal of Women on

television." http://www.aber.ac.uk/~edu.www/women/.html. Johnson, Robert E.

(1995, February 27). "Camille Cosby’s book explores negative images of

Blacks in media." Jet, 87, (16), 60-62. Saltzman, Joe. (1994, November).

"In whose image – media stereotypes of minorities." USA Today

(magazine), 123, (2594), 71. Sunoo, Brenda Paik. (1994, November). "Tapping

diversity in America’s newsrooms." Personnel Journal, 73 (11), 104. Zook,

Kristal Brent. (1994, June 28). Blackout. Village Voice, 39 (26), 51-54.