What does the average White American think when he sees an African American? If there is a person who watches a lot of television, he thinks that he is dumb, unscrupulous, cowardly, ignorant (Journal of Radio & Electronic Media, fall 2002 v44 i4 p704). Obviously, these are just stereotypes, but these are just some of the stereotypes that the media consistently uses to portray African-Americans. These stereotypes are not accurate according to countless studies. African-Americans have been portrayed unfairly and unrealistically on television and other forms of media.
According to the Entman-Rojecki Index on Race and Media, 89% of black female movie characters are shown using slang, while only 17% are white female. Black women are shown to be violent in movies 56% of the time compared to 11% of white women. These types of ratios are consistent in this and other studies. Where do they take them? Are the blacks really a more violent race? Statistics say nothing, they are not (www.raceandmedia.com).
The Entman-Rojecki Index on Race and Media also shows that serious crimes (murder, kidnapping, robbery, assault) are committed only by a small percentage of African-Americans in inner cities (about 8% of estimates). Despite this small percentage, Stephan Balkaran of the Yale Political Quarterly states that “the tendency to single out all African-American males in our society persists.” after
with some of these statistics, you can see that the African-American people are shown really unrealistically.
In the 1970s, “black sitcoms” became quite popular. Some of these shows include In Living Color and Living Single and Good. These shows gave African-Americans more television coverage and featured many different roles for blacks.
“White shows”, which is somewhat more useful to friends. Most Americans do not live in an all-White or All-Black world. Why does it need to be “shows black” and “shows white”? Have we done segregation in the past? (www.familyeducation.com).
The stereotyping of these shows is a good example in the show Good Times. This show is marked by the Evans family. James Evans, the father, can hardly read or write, so he is forced to do menial jobs. The family lived in “enterprises” and in a small space, with five people in two rooms. The projects that they lived on had “roaches, winemakers, junkies and swindlers around” (www.valdefirro.com/times02.html). The family lives in a typical Chicago “ghetto”. The Good Times showed civil rights protests and other non-stereotypical issues, but overall, it’s a great example of how the media portrayed African-Americans (www.valdefirro.com/times02.html).
Good Times is just one of many shows that placed African-Americans in this dovehole. As in Good Times, there were a few roles that African-American actors traditionally (between 1940-1970) played. Most of these traditional roles portrayed all blacks as idle, uneducated, or downright dumb (Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, fall 2002 v44 i4 p704). There are no statistics to back up this stereotype.
There is no study that African-American men are not as smart or hard working as Whites. In fact, 15% of black families have an income of at least $50,000 in 1990 (Yale Political Quarterly v21, 1i) . The rate of African-American students dropped from 24% (1972) to only 13% in 1991 (Yale Political Quarterly v21, i1).
Recently, though, there have been some developments with shows such as The Cosby Show and Fresh Prince of Bel Air. These shows showed that not all black families were poor and uneducated (anti Essays: Social Essays: African Americans Television images). Although it seems to be truer to the television shows of the past, we still have a long way to go.
African-Americans are also unfairly portrayed in the news. An example of this is media coverage of Los Angeles in 1992. The news shows that Americans were led to believe that mostly blacks were responsible, but reports show that this is not accurate. Reports show that only 36% of those arrested were black. 60% of the rioters were white and Hispanic (Yale Political Quarterly v21 i1). If you’ve watched television news, you most likely never knew this.
Prejudice and racism were not isolated in the coverage of the 1992 riots. The Entman-Rojecki Index on Race and the Media states that a bald African-American man is four times more likely to be featured on a TV news report than to be white. A black person is twice as likely to be physically restrained in a news film than a white person. (Entman-Rojecki Index of Race and Media). A black defendant is two times less likely to have his name in the news than a white defendant (Entman-Rojecki Index Race and Media, www.raceandmedia.com).
Why does the media hang on to stereotypes that have been proven to be false and not data? By showing these images to television and movie viewers, it seems as if the media is trying to keep America segregated and racist. Maybe the creators of these sitcoms and news shows are ignorant of facts and statistics, and it’s an honest mistake. Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that the African-American media is showing a unique way. When watching television and news shows, viewers should keep in mind that these stereotypes are just that, and that African American people are not really that different from anyone else.
