Race And Ethnic Identity

1240 Words3 Pages

As a united society with great leaders and innovators, much has been accomplished by the 21st century. One issue that continues to linger around seems to be the non existing equality on different races and ethnicities. Through many forms of communication, the media continues to remind our society of what was once in the past, expressing no progress in human impartiality in their work. The media has repeatedly overtime classified certain behaviors and associated them with specific races, which unconsciously constructs expectations by individuals of one race to another. This creates the significance to view negatively upon different races and ethnicities, and plays a crucial role in shaping the way we recognize race and ethnicity as part of …show more content…

If you are white, are you Canadian and superior? Regardless of an individual’s physical and biological roots to a particular race and ethnic identity, understand that race and ethnicity are belief systems, or methods for ideologically viewing our world. Race and ethnicity within the media are saturated with influential imagery, substance, and use descriptors as well as indicators to reveal racialized messages to people. For instance films that cast white actors as heroes, killing dirty and invasive barbarians which are played by people of colour. These indicators not only target individuals within an institution and a certain skin colour or cultural background, but work in a larger structure to connect racial and ethnical personalities. The problem with society is we incorporate people into certain cultures based on what physical traits they encompass, and exclude those that do not have these physical features. Our knowledge with regards to culture, ethnicity and self-identity is subconsciously altering every single day through our social interactions and what we observe in the media. The media subsequently favors certain races while negatively portraying another. They continue to stereotype and provide stories that only further create unrealistic expectations of races and …show more content…

Any difference from westernized culture is constructed as negative and imbued as a threat or invasion on our society. Those that did not possess the same traits that western cultures defined were positioned as ‘others.’ Others were distinguished as criminals, dirty, troublesome, and had to be contained and separated from the normal civilization and society. The media portrayed this on billboards, films, TV shows, comic books, advertisements, and all different types of media, presenting that if you did not possess western culture traits or a western racial or ethnic background, you are barbaric and a threat to society. A social study of the media coverage of ethnical and racial minorities by The Vancouver Press identified an underlying ‘moral economy.’ Within that order, aboriginal people and people of colour were consistently portrayed in negative terms. In contrast, the Scots, English and other preferred groups rated high in terms of positive coverage. Her studies expanded into colonies of the British Empire, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, with no differing results. People of colour were constantly depicted in negative terms. They were associated with crime, deviance, and threat of invasion (Indra, D). Television newsrooms are nearly 80% white employees, and radio newsrooms are 92% white

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