How Races and Gender are Represented in Media and in the News

    At the beginning of class on September 3rd, a classmate brought up a good question. The question stemmed from the VMA awards that was on August 30th. Her question was, why is that black people are called "ghetto" when they are speaking up or address a situation as Nicki Minaj was called when she called out Miley Cyrus. 

    In my experience, the word ghetto is likened to black people. Not saying any other race doesn't get called ghetto but the term often refers to a part of a city where minority groups live in more often than not, black people. Often, the ghetto is the "hood" and it's the areas that are low income, crime is high and the struggle just to survive is difficult. Unfortunately the term went from being a noun to an adjective because it is now used to describe people. I don't have the answer to her question but I do feel that since black people are often portrayed in the media as low class and "uncivilized," when they speak up about an issue, it is frowned upon and likened to be ghetto because it is not in the way the majority feels is appropriate. 

    Race and gender is often displayed a certain way in the media based off of what we are used to seeing. Our culture tells us that men are the dominant ones and females are suppose to be more sensitive and inferior to men. In the same case, minority groups are portrayed as not having much and are not as educated while the majority (whites) are seen as educated and financially established. Just like we discussed before in news stories, blacks are shown to be the criminals or are interviewed about a serious matter but are somewhat made a joke of. For example, Antoine Dodson and Sweet Brown's interviews that quickly became a laughing joke because of what was said and how it was said. Both stories were serious matters, yet these two individuals are examples of how often blacks are portrayed in not a good light. The way the stories are covered just aren't the same as the way they would have been covered in a white neighborhood. 

    The show, Family Guy is notorious for making racial jokes. I'm not a big fan of the show but I have caught a few episodes before that I laughed at or couldn't believe Seth MacFarlane got away with. In one episode there is an Asian person driving on the freeway when she says something along the lines of, "I need to get over but there is a lot of traffic," and then says, "Oh well...good luck everybody else," as she cuts over 3 lanes safely while cars behind her crash and beep horns at her. This plays on the stereotype that Asians don't know how to drive and since they are portrayed this way, people tend to believe it. This is another example of a race being depicted a certain way in media and it being accepted. 

    Every race group including whites are depicted as something else and the same with genders. But if you are a minority or even a female, the representation in the news media of these groups are not seen as equal as to their counterparts. Therefore, the representation of them are often skewed in every way whether in the news or social media.