African Americans and Hispanics in the media

The media portrays many inaccurate stereotypes about various races. Many movies, TV shows, and newspapers show a less favorable image of minorities than they do of other races. African Americans and Hispanics, in particular, are sometimes shown as being less intelligent, more vulgar, and more violent than their Caucasian counterparts. Statistics show that these facts are not true. Most crimes among blacks and Hispanics occur in inner cities, which is a very small percentage of the total population. Still the media sometimes makes it appear as though most blacks and Hispanics are violent.

The problem with the media focusing in on specific races, and negatively representing them, is that it perpetuates the racial stereotypes in our country. Images that are shown over and over again are thought to be fact. People who may have friends who are minorities may also become biased by the media’s negative description of certain races, and treat their friends differently.

One byproduct of this negative bias is the lack of news coverage of missing or victimized minorities, as opposed to the constant coverage of cases such as Jon Benet Ramsey or Natalie Holloway, where the victim is a pretty Caucasian. How many blacks and Hispanics go missing each year? It seems that television producers often assume that no one cares about these races and won’t follow their cases in the media. People will sympathize with a white female and develop an interest in the case.

Cases with missing children are often the same. Most of the coverage goes to the adorable little blonde girl; black and Hispanic children go missing, but how often do we hear about them? Only recently has there been an improvement in this, as programs such as Nancy Grace have begun highlighting the cases of missing minority children.

This racial stereotyping also occurs in children’s cartoons and movies. Many of the characters with minority voices are not shown to be as smart as the whiter characters. In particular, the producers of the movie Star Wars Episode 1 took a lot of heat for portraying the character Jar Jar Binks, who many thought resembled a minority, as a bumbling idiot. In particular, many took exception to the Rastafarian look the character had. What was more, its walk that looked suspiciously like a “strut” and its penchant for preceding each sentence with “Meesa”, which many thought sounded a lot like the word, “Massa”, which is slang for master. And recently, the movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has wandered into the same territory by sporting a pair of jive talking twin robots that many say resemble caricatures of African Americans.

Although several media outlets are trying to change these racial stereotypes by portraying minorities in a more positive light, other venues still perpetuate classifications of people. The news media especially needs to take a more objective approach to showing the news. Americans are overwhelmed by news stories, movies, TV shows, etc. every day that still perpetuate old stereotypes. The media needs to be less biased and show a greater perspective of the population.