Minorities In Tv Shows

The Chicago Tribune reports that, as of 2014, children sit in front of the television more than an entire day in the average week. The problem is, parents now more than ever are relying on the media to help their child’s development to become an adult and children’s television shows are improving only certain aspects of a child’s growth while ignoring others. Unfortunately, they forget to acknowledge the social advancements in today’s society while prioritizing skills already taught to them in schools. Children ages 2 and up are taught vocabulary and grammar in school and those skills are only reinforced by the television they watch. Unfortunately, neither of these places teach nor reinforce the idea of equality or equal representation. Since the media plays such a huge factor in the

Some may argue that there is enough representation of minorities in American television, but the statistics show otherwise. A study conducted by researchers at Harvard University shows “minority” groups are not represented as much as “majority” groups are on American television. Their researchers found that Caucasians make up seventy-five percent of commercials aired on television whereas, African Americans were only in them twelve percent of the time, and the rest were of other races. The issue of representation doesn’t stop at how much but at how. In most cases, minorities are depicted in a negative light to make the majorities look superior. Additionally, researchers at the University of Southern California studied the seven hundred top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014 and analyzed the ethnicities of more than thirty thousand characters to reveal the true amount of diversity in the film industry. In their study, they found that seventy-three percent were Caucasian, five percent Asian, five percent Hispanic, and the other seventeen percent covered all other