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Myonna Peters

Dr. Cuddy

ENG 102-23

4 May 2017

The Effects of Racism in the Media

Racism in television/movies and news media is an issue that has been going on for many

years now. It is an issue that continues to negatively affect society today and should be

eradicated. A Public Service Announcement (PSA for short) about this issue would benefit

African Americans, Caucasians, and those in media related professions. It is essential to identify

how this issue affects society: African American children seeing a large amount of people who

look like them portrayed in a negative way and accepting that this is all they will amount to,

Caucasian children learning to fear and hate African Americans, and how African Americans, no

matter their status in society, as treated as inferior and stereotyped by everyone based on

negative portrayals depicted on television/in movies. Society attempts to ignore this issue and

treat it like it is not important. This issue affects the way in which people live their lives and in

order to work toward ending this issue, we must identify it and come up with possible solutions

for it.

African American children, like all children, desire to see characters on television that

look like them. They want to see characters who are heroic, kind, and funny, instead they receive

characters who only are background characters without a personality, funny in a foolish way, and

thugs. In a study about black and white representation in movies, it was found that, ...Black

females were markedly more violent than White, in percentage terms five times more
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so...suggest that movies portray Black females as less civilized than their White counterparts...

(Entman, Rojecki 198). The negative representation of African American women can teach

young African American girls that they will grow up to be angry and violent. This leads to the

stereotype of the angry black woman. This can also teach young black boys that black women

are mean and disrespectful, which might cause them to disrespect black women or only want to

date women outside of their race. Some people would say that this is not a real issue because of

shows such as The Cosby Show, and A Different World. In an article called The Cosby Effect

the authors Paula Whatley Matabane and Bishetta D. Merritt, explain how the shows The Cosby

Show and A Different World depict African Americans, Both shows were intentionally

designed as examples of positive Black middle-class life and institutions, including portrayals of

historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)which have been largely invisible in

popular culture (Matabane, Merritt 453). There were and are television shows that depict

African Americans in a positive light but this is not the majority. These tv shows both were on in

the late 1980s and ended in the early 1990s. They aired when African Americans were trying to

make television shows that showed their people in a positive view. In the news, African

Americans are shown as thugs, thieves, and violent criminals. Television shows depict African

Americans in the same way that the news does. Also, most shows have African Americans as the

comical relief sidekick, in the background, an evil villain, and only being successful after doing

something immoral.

Secondly, Caucasian children can learn to dislike and/or fear African Americans by being

taught by their parents/family members and by seeing negative stereotypes on television. For

example, in an article by Sherri Burr, Burr discusses studies about race in the media and one
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young Caucasian girls response, You always see black people doing drugs and carrying around

drugs, shooting people and stealing things,' one white girl said (Burr). This teaches Caucasian

children that African American people are violent, thieving, drug addicts. This can cause them to

fear African American people and want to avoid them because they are afraid that they will harm

them. Caucasian children take this education in racism into their adulthood. In an article about an

episode from the television show Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia, author Kenneth Ladenburg

discusses an episode called The Gang Gets Racist, Dennis...exclaims to Terrell that the bar is

closed for the night. When Terrell responds I know, Mac...runs forward with a fearful

countenance and proclaims, Whoa, whoa, whoa, we dont want any trouble! Confused by

Macs reaction, Terrell cocks his head to the side and asks, What? (Ladenburg 864). This

particular scene shows that African Americans are viewed as aggressive. Mac automatically

assumes that Terrell is going to be angry and become belligerent. Some Caucasian people are

taught to be afraid of African Americans. They can learn this through television, whether it is the

news or a television show, in the form of subliminal messages. The images they see condition

them to fear any person who looks like the thug or criminal they saw on television.

Finally, African American people have been viewed as inferior and treated as such for

decades/centuries, it is nothing new. This viewpoint has been shown in television multiple times.

For example, in the article that reviews a book about minstrel shows and animation, author

Christopher P. Lehman describes some racist cartoons, An early cartoon from Warner

Brothers-Congo Jazz-features a blackface minstrel-type character, a black monkey, and a nearly

naked African in one scene, and only the clothes of the minstrel and the African and the tail and

nakedness of the monkey distinguish the characters from one another (Lehman 175). This
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shows how black people were viewed as animals; lower beings who did not share the same

mental capacity as Caucasians. African Americans are treated with disrespect no matter what

position they are in. Burr describes how contemporary black celebrities are treated, In

November 1999, the images of African-Americans took center stage over a dispute with New

York City taxi drivers who refused to pick up African- Americans, particularly men, even some

who were famous (Burr). Burr used an example of how actor Danny Glover was not able to get

a cab to illustrate this issue. Even when Danny Glover was able to get a cab, he was not allowed

to sit in the front. No matter how important an African American is in society, they are able to

escape racism. African Americans have been treated like animals and are currently treated as

second-class citizens due to the fact that they are viewed as inferior and untrustworthy.

These negative stereotypes have destroyed the lives of those in the African American

community for many years. A PSA can show how horrible this issue is, and changes can be

made to the portrayal of African Americans in the media. Writers and producers of television

shows and films such create a balance with how African Americans are portrayed. All of the

portrayals do not have to be positive but the majority should not be negative portrayals. African

Americans do not need to only be represented in a positive way but their roles in the media

should be more diverse.

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Works Cited

Burr, Sherri. Race, Racism and The Law. The University of Dayton School of Law, 2001. Web.

9 Apr. 2017.

Entman, Robert M., Andrew Rojecki. The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in

America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Print.

Ladenburg, Kenneth. Illuminating Whiteness and Racial Prejudice through Humor in Its

Always Sunny in Philadelphias The Gang Gets Racist. The Journal of Popular

Culture 48.5 (2015): 859-877. Web. 9 Apr. 2017.

Lehman, Christopher P. Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American

Animation. African American Review. 49.2 (2016): 174-176. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

Matabane, Paula Whatley, and Bishetta D. Merritt. Media Use, Gender, and African American

College Attendance: The Cosby Effect. Howard Journal of Communications 25.4

(2014):452-471. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.