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How Media Under-represents Minority Groups

The main role of the media is to provide information, entertainment, relaxation, and even

help us have small talks. The media can help save lives but unfortunately, it does the opposite by

encouraging people to cause harm to others. If the world is becoming a global village, is because

the media, especially TV has brought things closer to us. Media contributes so much to what we

see, hear and read, and does have some effect on us. Different scholars however approach this

matter differently. Social scientists try to model their research on natural science and hence find

it challenging to maintain their main objective. They tend to use experimental or survey

methodologies testing for accuracy and narrowing down the effects of media. Critical or cultural

researchers, on the other hand, argue that as human beings we cannot distance ourselves social

world but only can we put it into practice so that we can understand them. Ultimately, help

maintain a certain status quo where others are privileged or have power while others do not.

Media Portrayal Of Gender and Race

Our media system is complex and incorporates a variety of interrelated components.

Three major components of media are; the producer, the audience the media content. production

involves anything to do with the creation of the mediated message: how these messages are

assembled, by who, and under what circumstances, content put an emphasis on the mediated

message themselves, what they represent and how what is included, and definitely what is

excluded. The audience is the people that interact, and consume the message, what sense they

make of the media content and how they are affected by the media.
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Scholars have argued that popular consumer culture is both a producer and consumer of

social inequality, but few studies have shown that advertising imagery constructs stereotypes of

race and gender. Characters in television commercials tend to enjoy more prominence and

exercise more authority if they are white or men. Generally, televisions tend to portray white

men as powerful, white women as sex objects, African Americans as aggressive, and African

American women as inconsequential. The history of media representation is not a progression of

stereotypes but rather a struggle to constantly articulate the definitions of people’s identities and

the way they can live those cultural categories (Grossberg, Wartella, and Whitney 231)

From historical research, we know that African Americans have often been portrayed in popular

culture as inferior to whites and subservient to them. More recent research shows that nonwhites

continue to be underrepresented in both television programming and commercials. Most of these

are African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.

Critics contend that the roles of African Americans on television have been extremely

exaggerated where black characters are disproportionately shown as buffons, dangerous, unruly

youths, and hypermasculine thugs, whereas black females are portrayed as exotic and sexually

available. Scholars studied black women's representation in a variety of media contexts. Meyers

used discourse analysis to examine the representation of violence against African American

women in local TV news coverage during “Freaknik” a spring break ritual that was held in

Atlanta, Georgia in the 1990s. Her study concluded that news “portrayed most of its victims as

stereotypical Jezebels whose lewd behavior provoked assault” ( 95). Orbe and Strother did an

analysis of biracial characters in “Queen” Alex Haley’s miniseries, demonstrating how the queen

fell in line with “traditional stereotyping of other bi-ethnic characters as beautiful yet threatening,
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inherently problematic and destined for insanity”(117). Also, the image of a black woman in the

soap opera” all my children” is portrayed as an oversexed fantasy object dominating matriarch

and desexualized mammie figure. Black feminist thought also challenges the way some media

run by black men engage in misogynistic depictions of black women. (Burks 27) explains that

black independent cinema is not necessarily free of the dominant white, male, heterosexual

hegemony that has succeeded at one point or another in colonizing us all. Burks's argument

leaves Hollywood producers free to construct a black female image in any way they want and

thus reaching a larger viewing audience.

Black women scholars such as Wallace and Hooks have written intensely on the work of a black

director Spikes Lee portrayal of a black woman. Hooks argues that while Lee is uncompromising

in his commitment to creating images of black males that challenge perceptions and bring issues

of racism to the screen, he conforms to the status quo when it comes to pictures of females.

Sexism is the familiar construction that links his films to all the other Hollywood dramas folks

(14)

How These Representations Affect The Society And Community At Large

Light skin and long, straight hair continue to be characteristics that define a female as

beautiful and desirable in the racist white world and in the colonized black mindset.

Stereotypically portrayed as embodying a passionate, sensual eroticism, as well as a subordinate

feminine nature, the biracial woman has been and remains the standard other black females are

measured against. (Hooks 179)

Considering race and gender in television imagery, we have been able to understand the

popular cultural milieu and the part it plays in producing contemporary stereotypes, Excluding

Asians and Latinos and denial of romantic and domestic fulfillment to African Americans,
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encourages viewers of television commercials in all audience categories to withhold positive

emotions toward outgroup members.

Conclusion

We can conclude that the research has exposed the different ways media constructs

monolithic notions of race and gender and it will continue to play a prominent role in these

struggles making the work of media scholars important.

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Works Cited

Burks, R. (1996). Imitations of invisibility: Women and contemporary Hollywood cinema. In V.

Berry & C. Manning-Miller (Eds.), Mediated messages and African-American culture:

Contemporary issues (pp. 24–39).

Grossberg, L., Wartella, E., & Whitney, D. C. (1998). Media Making: Mass media in a popular

culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender and cultural politics. Boston: South End Press.

Hooks, b. (1993). Male heroes and female sex objects: Sexism in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X.

Cineaste, 19(4), 13–15.