My View

Portrayals of Minorities on Television

Retrived from https://theconversation.com/

One of the most studied areas in media psychology is how minorities have been portrayed. Particularly in the early days of television and film, were neither accurate nor kind. According to Clark (1969) there are four stages of minority portrayals. The first stage is non-recognition, in which the minority group is simply excluded, simply not presented. The second stage of minority portrayals is ridicule, dominant groups stereotyping minorities, presenting them incompetent and unintelligent. The third stage is regulation where minority members presented as protectors like police or medical officers. The last stage is respect, here minorities are in the all possible roles, from extraordinary to stupid.

 This topic includes a lot of different groups in society, some of them focused on gender, some on race, some on religion, but I will focus only on ethnic minorities and examples which I’ll provide somehow covers all above mentioned terms. Since media have huge influence it also can perceive us it’s “own reality” which audience can take as a fact. It easy to gather any information about almost anything, everyone uses smartphones everywhere, but still it’s difficult to stay away from disinformation and stereotypical representation of things we haven’t experienced. So, for example, some rural White North Americans have never met any Arab or Jews in person, someone has never met people from the United States, so the media portrayal might be reality for them which lead to stereotyped perception of minorities that in turn provides negative outcome.

African Americans

The most studied ethnic group until the 1960s  there were no African Americans on TV, they have a long history till the days when thing come as we know them, nowadays it almost impossible to find movies or something where is African Americans not presented. Basically this minority group went through the all four chronological stages by Clark. Nevertheless, some argues that there are still subtle indicators of racism on television. (Edwards,2016) . The most well-know stereotype is black men associated with crimes, and the most worst outcome it can have is when black children became conditioned to this stereotypes. Watch the Video below:

Arabs and Arab Americans

Nowadays this minority group presumed as the most discriminated by the media, because they usually represented as terrorist simply because all terrorist often represented as Arab-Muslim and their women fully covered by piranha, the picture looks dangerous. This representation causes discrimination and prejudice in real life essentially due to the lack of information about Islam as a religion and Islamist terrorism. The history of Arab representation on television, in my opinion takes roots from the September 11,2001 attacks, there is no need to explain the date. A study conducted at the University of Vienna confirmed, media coverage that does not explicitly distinguish between Muslims and Islamist terrorist. EzzeldinIbrahim’s speech on TEDx explain misinformation.

Latinos

Much of the meanstream media comes from the United States, Hollywood if filled with Latino stereotypes which might be perceived as “reality”. The largest ethnic group in U.S 40million – 17%.

This finding indicate that beliefs of people who follow stereotypical portrayals of minorities in the media become more stereotypical, in line with the media content. Tese media-enhanced stereotypical portrayals make people evaluate social minorities more negatively. As a result of this vicious circle, minorities's rights are less likely to be supported by majority members. Consequently, the situation of already negatively perceived minorities could further deteriorate, posinf an obstracle for the harmonious coexistence of people from different groups in society.

Main reference:

Harris, Richard Jackson, and Sanborn, Fred W. (2019) A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication (7th Edition) (pp.93-140). New York: Routledge.

Ramasubramanian, S. (2010). Television viewing, racial attitudes, and policy preferences: Exploring the role of social identity and intergroup emotions in influencing support for affirmative action. Communication Monographs, 77 (1), 102-120.