Racism and the Media

Racism and the Media

Hope Babalola

English 147

Racism and the Media

Racism refers to the belief that differences existing between races have an impact on an individual and cultural achievement.  In the contemporary world, racism is based on biological traits, genetics and area related traits (Holt, 2013). Racism is mainly influenced by the media.  The media have made a significant contribution towards the perception of various races. The media consists of newspaper, television, radio, film, and magazines. Racism has been prevalentin the United States since the past.  The paper discusses the types of racism in the press.

The most popular means of spreading racism in America is the television. In most of the shows aired on the television, the media captures specific audiences, who could be either the whites or blacks. For instance, in the television shows like the “Sanfield" and "Friends", they target the white middle-class audience. The television shows rarely have interracial actors. In most cases, the actors are of the same race. The media does not include the people of color in the shows, and when they do, they reveal them as less successful (Holt, 2013).

The obstacles existing between the televisions and the races are a great challenge. In the first place, the television is not portraying ethical diversity in America. America is mostly represented to have a single ethnic group, and this does not give the real picture of America. The media is much concerned with the perception of a given ethnic group, and they do not care about its impact on the children. Kids do spend most of their time watching the television and once they are exposed to one ethnic group, they become close-minded and embrace prejudice (Van Dijk, 2015).

The media has facilitated racism by stereotyping various races (Holt, 2013). For instance, in “The Simpsons Show”, there are many racial stereotypes, as the Indians are the most generalized in the show. In the show, the Indians who work in the grocery are portrayed to have been practicing Hinduism as their religion. "The Sopranos Show” has also stereotyped other races. In the show, the head of the criminals is Tony Soprano who is an Italian. Thus, the show depicts all the Italian Americans to be criminals.

A recent comment that was made by William Bennett on crime and abortion portrayed prejudice. “ I am sure that if you wanted to do away with crime in America, the best way you can do it is by aborting all the black kids and that way, the rate of crime in the society will significantly reduce” (Yancy, 2012). In my opinion, Bennett's idea to end crime through aborting the black child's was less effective. Bennett generalized the blacks as criminals, and he encouraged prejudice through the media. Bennett's generalization of blacks as criminals is one of the examples of how the media uses the prominent people to spread racism.

Another example of racial discrimination in the media is in the time allocated on the press coverage for different ethnic groups. The media gives a comprehensive coverage to the news story that entails mostly the whites unlike those, which are revolving around other ethnic groups. For instance, 30th May 2005, a white American by the name Natalee Holloway went missing while she was on her graduation trip to Aruba(Lyons, 2017). On the following month, another lady by the name LaToya Figueroa disappeared in Philadelphia (Lyons, 2017). She was an Africa American. The media gave greater attention to Natalee's disappearance than on LaToyas. The family of LaToya was forced to stay at the corners of the street to draw the media’s attention. The disappearance of LaToyia was covered in black radio stations. The media mainly covers the loss of the Caucasian women when there is a countless number of Hispanics and the black women who have disappeared.  The media has engaged itself in racism by failing to offer equal coverage of events from people of different ethnicity.