Stereotypes In Media

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.

Bibliography
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.