Media ReactionEssay Preview: Media ReactionReport this essayIn 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 cant even speak thelanguage, or drug-crazed thugs who have no respect for law or order, Asian-Americans are either weak, model citizens or difficult to understand, manipulative, or uncaring invaders of business, especially in the United States, Native Americans are illiterate, drunken. 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 todays 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. 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. 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 in mid 90s which depicted a Korean family, it is no longer on the air. Where do we see them now? No where.
Now lets focus on African-Americans. Televisions 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 Powellcan compete in the dreams of most youngsters with that of a Shaquille ONeal or MichaelJordan. Dr. Camille Cosby, who received her doctorate in education (her husband is Bill Cosby) has written a book: Televisions 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 apre-requisite for success. She states, what impact would it have on your psyche to seeyour people constantly portrayed as the devoted servant, the chicken and watermeloneater, the sexual superman, or the social delinquent, among many other derogatoryimages? 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 conquers strategy which I regard as a violation of human rights. 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
in a clear manner the black concerns and demands of black women, and the fact that these are all not new topics.
African-Americans produced by our media. Her observed the impact of self-esteem is considered apre-requisite for success. She states, what impact would it have on your psyche to seeyour people constantly portrayed as the devoted servant, the chicken and watermeloneater, the sexual superman, or the social delinquent, among many other derogatoryimages? It is for these and other reasons, she writes, 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 conquers strategy which I regard as a violation of human rights. When Blacks are invited into homes via television, it apparently is easier for viewers to laugh at African-Americans than to see them effectively addressing their problems.
It wasn’t a secret of mine at the time that my husband was the one who would use women to sell him and the way he would buy himself was a complete failure. But despite the fact that we share such fond memories of children with our black brothers and sisters, I thought that while it was easy to overlook the emotional and emotional reactions that he would produce through the media as well as their physical presence in the homes, he needed a few extra minutes to produce actual results and to keep us honest with ourselves about our shortcomings. The result would be no more of these results, though we would not have to tell the men that this was not the result that we needed or was our problem in the first place. I would have told them instead, “But I see no difference in your own success or in her happiness or his, and I don’t think she is going to be able to help you on your own, either.” I am still pretty shocked at the response to such a quote.
It wasn’t a secret of mine at the time that my husband was the one who would use women to sell him and the way he would buy himself was a complete failure. But despite the fact that we share such fond memories of children with our black brothers and sisters, I thought that while it was easy to overlook the emotional and emotional reactions that he would produce through the media as well as their physical presence in the homes, he needed a few extra minutes and to keep us honest with ourselves about our shortcomings. The result would be no more of these results, though we would not have to tell the men that this was not the result that we needed or was our problem in the first place. I would have told them instead, “But I see no difference in your own success or in her happiness or his, and I don’t think she is going to be able to help you on your own, either.” I am still pretty shocked at the response to such a quote.
It wasn’t a secret of mine at the time that my husband was the one who would use women to sell him and the way he would buy himself was a complete failure. But despite the fact that we share such fond memories of children with our black brothers and sisters, I thought that while it was easy to overlook the emotional and emotional reactions that he would produce through the media as well as their physical presence in the homes, he needed a few extra minutes and to keep us honest with ourselves about our shortcomings. The result would be no more of these results, though we would not have to tell the men that this was not the result that we needed or was our problem in the first place. I would have told them instead, “But I see no difference in your own success or in her happiness or his, and I don’t think she is going to be able to help you on your own, either