Racism In The Media Essay

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Racism is the unfair discrimination against people of a particular race. This ranges from Arabs, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians and Jews. It is a divisive move carried out to deliberately intimidate the victim in order for them to feel a certain way. Today, racism is a very sensitive issue that is known to have brought about conflicts in today’s society on numerous occasions. The main method of conveying information to masses in large enough numbers to rally the public is the media. The media presents content with racist innuendo aimed at driving a specific stereotype about people. This paper aims to illustrate that the media plays the biggest role in the spread of racist stereotypes and how that affects society’s perception of each other’s …show more content…

It can be violent intimidation, segregation, massacres or just social stereotypes. Examples of major racist events that have happened in history include; the holocaust in Germany where Hitler led a massacre against the Jews, the Ku Klux Klan murder of the blacks in the south and apartheid in South Africa. Clearly all those examples involved major violation of human rights and dignity. Fortunately, today there are fewer cases of extreme racism but it still exists nonetheless. Gonzales and Torres (2011) noted that the media today creates a new “normal” kind of racism (p. 35). This is mostly based on depicting people of a certain race to certain characteristics. Such stereotypes range from issues like violence, parental values, social ideologies, diet, and lifestyle. While they argue that this is mostly harmless, sometimes it may be very offensive to a certain race while thought to be funny by others. The biggest danger with this kind of depiction lies in the minds of young children. Children learn from society. They learn from what they see, hear or taught by an adult. Children born in English speaking nations grow up speaking English even before they enter their first class, same happens in France, china and everywhere else in the world. When a child is repeatedly exposed to a certain picture of a certain race, they will most likely absorb it and may grow up believing it to be a

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