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Alexis Lyles
Ms. Jones and Ms. Hogan
Topics In Literature
March 23 2012
The Media And The Negative Stereotypes
“ African Americans are not good role models to another generation of blacks” African Americans portrayed negatively in the media because of the stereotypes. This is shown in magazines, on the internet, and on television. African Americans presented as deceitful, uneducated, and as criminals. Stereotypes of African Americans are characterized by the way African Americans are portrayed in the media.
The media negatively depicts African American women. African American women are negatively depicted in the media. African American women are often portrayed as deceitful and influenced in a bad way on television and videos. According to the article Images Of Femininity: Media Portrayals Of Women “females on television serves to further ingrain in society the stereotypes of incompetent females who are in need of male help” (Marguit 2006). The fact that television represents women needing men threatens the next generation of young girls. It changes the idea that women can be independent, and it keeps them in a more submissive position. Some of the music videos shown on MTV present women as sexual objects for men to view. Women are often shown as objects” (Marguit 2006). Women portrayed as enjoying being objects, but many really enjoy serving their men and just being noticed: “ Females in the videos are extremely beautiful and skinny, female pop artists in videos may not enact scenes where they are objects, but they still dress and act in ways that attract the male gaze and win then men” (Marguit 2006). Young African American girls see this can be influenced to lose weight to become skinny, and they can also consider plastic surgery because the women in the videos might be seen as a role model for some younger girls. Even though in many videos, women are also seen as independent of men, and can initiate encounters as well as men, they are still more sexualized (Marguit, 2006). These women are seen as “easy” and give the impression that being independent and sexually actualized for a woman is somehow dirtier than men when men are (Holtzman 2006). Women can still considered as being independent by dancing in videos, dancing are some women dreams and dancing in videos can help them get noticed and take their career to another level. There’s a lot of single parents in the world today who goes to school and have a job or two just to provide for their children, which means that women don’t always have to depend on men to take care of them. Women can be independent on their own with or without men on the side of them. Education rates have even increased over the past three years for African American women.
African Americans are portrayed as an uneducated class in the media. According to the article Yes Black Males Are Different, but Different Is Not Deficient, “allowing the student to be the teacher moves beyond traditional co teaching and empowers the black male student by allowing him to become engaged in class and validated for enacting a positive and more academic behavior” (Edmin 2010). This expresses what the student has learned and helps them improve their skills by going over what they learned with their teacher: “Developing a cosmopolitan ethos in the classroom is a responsibility that the teacher should have and must fulfill with black male students. These students must feel like they have roles in the classroom” (Edmin, 2010). This can help black males connect to the way the class is set up and understand what is being taught. For example, when black males are told to collect homework or to pass something out, they realize that they are needed in the classroom. It is more interesting to express their true passions in the classroom. They will eventually exceed the lessons and perform well academically. However, in the media many black men are shown as a low class, uneducated race that have high drop out rates. In reality many black men feel like no one cares if they succeed in life or not. School is based on learning and being educated but if students don’t have the guidance or the support from teachers they cannot be interested in school. This article proves that African Americans males want to learn and be involved in the class rather then being judged or criticized because of what is being represented by the media. It also represents how African American males are capable of learning just like other ethnic groups.
African Americans are portrayed as criminals. According to How Black Males Are Portrayed In The Media? “The media always portray the dismal, sad and horrific news because it means ratings (Payne 2/2012)”. African Americans are used to get ratings, African Americans were chosen because in our society African Americans out numbered other ethnic groups. This means that any crime that takes place African American are accused of it weather guilty or innocent. Stereotypes are going to always exist and African Americans will be criticized and judged based on more then any other ethnic group, the media is going to influence society to believe these things because of who blacks are and what society think they stands for. African Americans wear their clothes sagging, which can also give the media, and other races around them a bad impression because they are labeled as thugs who gang bang. However, Blacks are not the only ethnic group who sags their clothes but those other ethnic groups are not being labeled as thugs because the media are forced to make the public think otherwise. I personally do not think that you should judge someone based on how they are dressed because everyone has their own style. When murders take place the majority of the shooters are black and the victims as well, anytime there is a security report issued for a suspect the suspect is black (Payne 02/2012). Some blacks have a rough life until their able to make a change occur on their own. Some blacks commit crimes because of how they were brought up by their parents or by the streets. Some people grow up without someone around to take care of him or her and teach him or her right form wrong. “Russell-Brown refers to the criminal black men as a myth and says the stereotype enables the use of "racial hoaxes" which she defines as when someone fabricates a crime and blames it on another person because of his race or when an actual crime has been committed and the perpetrator falsely blames someone because of his race (Russell-Brown)”. Police officers blame African Americans for crimes a lot, according to an article Russell-Brown, 10 African Africans Freed After Being Charged For A Crime They Were Blamed For wrote in the year of 2011 “10 African Americans were fighting a case for a crime they didn’t commit in the month of October, they were put on trial and had good lawyers that argued that they were blamed for a crime that racist police officers picked them up for that they didn’t commit”. Robbery, drug use, and gang violence, for example, have been associated with black people since the 1960s, this could be some of the traits that African American males have that causes them to be held accountable for, weather they committed the crime or not.
African Americans are portrayed negatively in the media, because of this African Americans are judged based on what people hear a or see about them but that’s not really who African Americans are. The media makes it easy for others to stereotype African Americans in ways that can barely be imagined. African Americans are judged, criticized and put down because of the media. Instead of the media putting some of the positive things on television or on the internet they choose to put the negative and that’s not fair to blacks because African Americans do good things that gets ignored.