Gabriella Pinos/ Staff Writer
One evening in late January, Jussie Smollett, a black and openly gay actor on the TV show “Empire,” was confronted by two men on his way home.
The men, according to Smollett, hurled racial and homophobic slurs at him, beat him, and even put a rope around his neck.
As police continue to investigate, the details about what happened that night remain hazy. But the crude, violent actions Smollett described reminded me that some people still perceive minorities through the blurry, inaccurate stereotypes fed to us through media.
While representation of minorities, especially African Americans, has increased over the years, we shouldn’t forget that American media only recently became inclusive to all people.
Prior to the 1970s, only six percent of characters on television were black, according to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. These characters – “loyal but subservient mammies and ridiculed buffoons” – depicted a harmful stereotype of blacks and African Americans.
By the 2010s, the percentage of black characters on TV increased to 16 percent. However, exposure to these depictions by white audiences can also create a distorted view of a minority, according to Oxford. Reality TV, for instance, depicts African Americans as aggressive compared to other races and ethnicities, according to the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.
Even local news has a negative effect on black representation in media. On TV, crime stories often frame non-white males as the perpetrators, according to the American Journal of Political Science.
In fact, 56 percent of all suspects in TV crime coverage between 1996 and 1997 were minorities, with African Americans making up the largest group.
Through this, archaic stereotypes about African Americans and other groups live on through implicit biases. In other words, we unconsciously associate minorities with these negative qualities.
This is seen even in the most public space in the world: the internet. In 2014, 11,090 cases of racism were reported on Facebook in Brazil, according to a policy brief by the University of Southampton. Of these cases, 81 percent of the victims were “middle-class, well-educated, Black women aged between 20-35 years.”
These biases, if left unchecked, can lead to physical confrontation and harm. The alleged assault on Smollett proves that hatred toward minority groups – even ones that are prevalent in media – continue to plague this nation.
In recent years, however, there has been a shift in the way minorities in America are portrayed on the big and little screen.
As America grows more diverse – and as the minorities become the majority – audiences prefer content that is also diverse, according to a 2018 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report. Compared to previous years, minorities and women have gained representation in areas like film directing, reality TV and digital content.
Platforms like YouTube have also given minorities the spotlight. Content creation is no longer limited to the executives or producers in film and broadcast, but to the average citizen, no matter their race.
More importantly, increased exposure to racial and ethnic media depictions has positive outcomes as well.
In research done by Oxford, self-esteem was positively associated with black fourth and fifth graders who watched black family programming. Favorable media depictions also positively influence white audiences’ behavior, attitudes and judgements toward minority groups.
While America is improving its portrayal and treatment of minorities, the finish line is still nowhere in sight.
The fact is, all people have implicit biases and will stick to the stereotypes they’ve learned throughout their lives. Unlearning those biases is difficult, if not impossible, but recognizing them is the first step toward achieving equality.
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