Minorities in the Media

Minorities in the Media

The three television programs in which I chose to research how minorities are portrayed in the media are: The George Lopez Show, American Dad, and All in the Family. The George Lopez Show is very racially diverse because the show includes Latinos, African Americans and White to include females from all three races as well. The number of females and males in the show are about equal and their roles vary from being a housewife of a manager at an aircraft parts factory, his mother working in the factory, being a bartender to being very rich wives of millionaires. In one episode, there was a racial issue when one of George’s neighbors had a statue of a sleeping Mexican wearing a sombrero and George and his family took it as being racial because they felt that the statue depicted all Mexicans as being lazy, which as outlined in Schaefer’s text in Chapter one as being a stereotype, which is defined as “unreliable generalizations about all members of a group that do not take individual differences into account.”

American Dad is an animated sitcom that is generated around an all white family but the show has a diversity of ethnicity to include White, African Americans, Chinese, Iranian descent and Native Americans. Stan who is the main character in the show is very prejudiced and he jokes about all ethnic backgrounds and political affiliation. The show also has a gay couple that is hiding their relationship from one of the couple’s father because he does not like homosexuality and when he is told about his sexual preference, he disowns his son. He also refers to gays as being fairies, which is outlined in Schaefer’s text in Chapter two as “prejudice that is often expressed through the use of ethnophaulisms, or ethnic slurs, which include derisive nicknames such as honky, gook, and wetback.” In American Dad, there is a great deal of racial slurs and issues that is mocked at all of the different ethnic backgrounds.

All in the Family is a sitcom that is generated around an all white family during the 1970s era where