The Negative Impact of the Depiction of Black Male Stereotypes in Media

3152 Words7 Pages

The usage of media is huge in nowadays. People rely on different kinds of media to receive information in their everyday life because they are thirsty for the diverse and informative content. However, inaccurate portrayals of people from different races always appear in the media and audience will exaggerate those portrayals by their inflexible beliefs and expectations about the characteristics or behaviors of the portrayals’ cultural groups without considering individual variation (Ting-Toomey and Chung, 2012); in fact, it is also called as stereotypes. According to a study by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University (Stein, 2012), racial stereotyping continues to occur in media and the mainstream media's coverage of different cultural groups is full of biased reporting, offensive terminology and old stereotypes of American society. It specifically emphasizes that majority of the stereotyped characters in media will only bring out the dark side of their cultural groups which many of them might not be true, especially for the portrayals of black community: African American. Besides, in cultivation theory, George Gerbner proposes that heavy users of media treat the content of media as a primary source to perceive the world and assert what they see in media is very similar to the reality (Bryant, Thompson and Finklea, 2013), so there is a high possibility that audience will bring the perception of stereotyped portrayals of African-American from media into the real world. Based on the above unhealthy situations, this paper is going to illustrate how the racial stereotypes in media negatively affect people’s perception, attitude and behavior toward African American in the reality.... ... middle of paper ... ...g Media and Criminal Defendants. Duke University School of Law. 101-103 Hurwitz, J., Peffley, M., & Sniderman, P. (1997). Racial stereotypes and whites' political views of blacks in the context of welfare and crime. American Journal of Political Science. 41, 30-60. McLeod, S. A. (2008). Prejudice and Discrimination. The University of Manchester. Stein, M L. (2012). Racial stereotyping and the media. Editor & Publisher, 127. Tan, A. S., Fujioka, Y., & Tan, G. (2000). Television use, stereotypes of African Americans and opinions on affirmative action: An affective model of policy reasoning. Communication Monographs, 67, 362-371. Ting-Toomey, Stella., & Chung, Leeva C. (2012). Understanding Intercultural Communication. Oxford University Press. 43, 159-160. Tristani, Gloria. (1998). Children are watching stereotypes in the media. Tri - State Defender. 47.

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