African American Stereotypes

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African Americans and the Media Today the media portrays African American males as hoodlums and thugs. The racism present in today’s media needs to be addressed and dealt with. African Americans suffer from institutional racism, are misrepresented in the news, and their portrayals on television are based on negative stereotypes that do not accurately portray reality. If there is not a major change in the media’s policy toward African Americans then this negative stereotype will continue to dominate popular opinion and eventually become an uncontested fact. “Television, or specifically media, is not merely a reflection of reality, it is a mechanism for the creation of reality.” (1) History has proven that the ruling classes in any society…show more content…
African Americans became a part of our media way back in the colonial days when they were forced into slave labor. At this point in time in history, the media industry was limited to books and newspapers. “Brown identified recurring caricatures, particularly the contented slave, the wretched freedman, the tragic mulatto, and the comic negro as the most persistent African American stereotypes to emerge from the nineteenth century.”(1) Its unfortunate these stereotypes are the foundation upon which white image makers chose to portray African Americans in the modern…show more content…
African Americans are often portrayed as flashy drug lords or homeless fiends. Once again this is an exaggerated miss representation that doesn’t stand up to the truth. “In fact, blacks are no more likely than are whites to use drugs; and more whites than blacks are arrested on drug charges.”(9) With that said the media over represents African Americans in regards to crime, illegal drug activity, and poverty. These three aspects are the foundation upon which the faulty African American stereotype stands. The media’s portrayal of African American’s is both inaccurate and highly degrading. The racism present in today’s media needs to be addressed and dealt with. African Americans suffer from institutional racism, are misrepresented in the news, and their portrayals on television are based on negative stereotypes that do not accurately portray reality. If this issue is never resolved then our main stream media will continue to be tainted by racism and the African American stereotype will go on to contaminate the minds of the next
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