Racism In The Media Essay

Racism comes in many forms ad can be expressed in many different societies in various ways. 1 The dictionary defines racism as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. This definition of racism makes it clear that it is a perceived point of view that implies prejudice towards people or a person based solely on their race. Racism has been an issue in many societies for many years and still is an issue in modern society. 2 Recently in the U.S. many cases of racism towards African Americans have been shown in the media. However racism is not just a U.S. culture based issue but also a cross-cultural issue

Presently racism in the U.S. is presented through the media’s portrayal of the shooting of African Americans by police officers. This racism can be found in the racial bias that is obvious in media in the present day. In the video “Terence Crutcher’s Police Shooting & Racial Bias in America” by The Daily Show, Trevor Noah mentions that we are “ living in a society where racial divisions are so deeply baked into every part of society that we don’t even notice them anymore” (The Daily Show). By stating this Noah is showing that the racial bias that is shown in many news interviews and media forms is often overlooked and quite often already present. Another example of the racial bias that is set in most Americans can be found in the video “A White Audience is Left Speechless Racism in America” when a lady asks the audience to stand up if they would want to be treated the way African Americans are treated in society. The lady responds to her audiences lack of standing by stating the obvious fact they they are aware of the situation and they do not want that to happen to them, then she asks why they “are so willing to accept it or allow it to happen to others” (YouTube). This shows the fact that people are aware of the way that African Americans are being treated because of racial bias however because the way they are treated is so normalized people aren’t

presents itself in a more discrete way than racism in other countries. Racism in other countries goes further than just having a bias towards races. In other countries racism denies the people of certain races privileges that everyone should have access to, as well as creates a prejudice that leads to minority groups to be treated badly. An example of this can be found in the video “Understanding Systematic Oppression and Institutionalized Racism” by Kyol Blakeney from TedxYouth in Sydney. In his Ted talk Kyol Blakeney compares the chance of an African American in the U.S to end up in jail to an Aboriginal Australian to end up in jail and found that an Aboriginal Australian is 14 times more likely to end up in jail. This example shows that the institutionalized racism in Australia is so present that it affects minority groups like that aboriginal Australian which make up 2.7 % of the population on a huge scale. The fact that racism in the form of an institution which stems from racial bias affects minority groups not just in the U.S. but also cross-culturally in other