A Racist Media

Eli Berengut

Professor Kitty Nard

English 115

24 November 2015

A Racist Media

        As a major establishment in America, the media plays a critical roll in our everyday lives. The media has been part of our lives for hundreds of years. They have been spotlighting issues by television, novels, newspapers, and press to inform the public about their view on issues. One of the biggest issues in the world that has existed for many years is racial discrimination. What is racial discrimination? It is the exercise of treating others different just because of their race and the color of their skin. Racial discrimination has been an issue since the first European stepped on what is now American soil. This idea of racism is significant because it is completely against the rights that each and every human has from the day they are born, to the day they die. The media has unfortunately helped the spread of negative racial views, which had caused controversy and chaos. Racial views by the media need to stop because media targets the youth and has extensive influential power to convince their audience.

        Media is one of the biggest contributors to the spread of racial views because it plays a huge role in influencing the decisions of everyone. It starts with the targeting the youth, “Media exposure, particularly for children and youth, has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool used to brand images” (Adams). Targeting the youth is a great tactic when it comes to the spread of racial discrimination because the youth is easily influenced by what they hear or see. For example, racial hatred can be easily caused by what a young boy heard on the radio. From there, the idea of hating an African American can begin to spread through the young boys friends and family. Words spread fast and soon, a snowball effect will occur that cannot be stopped.

        Our lives revolve around learning information and absorbing it in order to survive. Media is a big source where thousands of new good and bad ideas are created every day. When blacks began to gain popularity in the mid twentieth century, many people have already had a bad image of them. They saw African Americans as slaves brought to work in fields and factories. Once the African American people rebelled and began to fight for their right as human beings, nobody supported them except themselves because of their image. Not only did this gain a negative view on African Americans, but the television helped continue these negative views, “Exposure to negative TV images will reinforce and influence negative perspectives of Black people by White society” (Adams). These negative views of African Americans only sustained the horrible image that America has given them, which lead to more problems. Imagine if the world hated you for no reason and no matter what you did to try to influence everybody else, it would not work. The media often dished out many ideas and views of certain groups, which often showed racist views. Not only was this awful, but the audience believe the media. This affects our society because it was shaped to be racist and unfair to all other races. Slowly but surely, our society started to change and accept people for who they are, no matter what the skin color or ethnicity of those people was.