FREE ESSAY ON STEREOTYPING IN THE MEDIA

STEREOTYPING IN THE 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.