Negative Media Images of African Americans

In America today, the media shows how the race and ethnic issues that relate to the quality of its image of the lives of non-white Americans. Truth and diversity are parts of media performance that basically consents for an evaluation of how it symbolizes people of color. Evaluating media performance is important because of the consumption and dependence on the media for much of the public monitoring and evaluation of reality. The performance of mass media is important when looking at race and ethnicity, because the media is the main source of indirect experiences that supports racial attitudes and beliefs that are included into balanced structures.

Accuracy is an important part of media performance in reviewing the quality in illustrating the lives of people who are non-white Americans. It's understood that consequences of developing a self-image and personal identity and its reflection of social reality. Previous research by Shah and Thorton, state that minority groups have shown that minorities are sometimes represented as being violent, primitive, and politically unsophisticated (p. 84). Also, they assume that certain behaviors among minorities may be understood by whites as pathological or out of the ordinary because of how the news represents them. This representation is wrong because it ignores the past background and structural explanations for social trends. In addition, Shan and Thorton state that newsmagazines add to the racism by carrying on a racial ladder carried out by mainly whites and consumed by mainly whites that placed blacks at the bottom.

Entman found that local news encouraged the production of modern racism. Violent crimes that were committed by African Americans were the largest category of local news (p. 145). Out of eight times, where African Americans were the focus of the lead stories. Six were portrayed as violent crimes. As well as, they were shown to be more dangerous than whites. Entman stated that "accused blacks were usually illustrated by glowering mug shots or by footage of them being led around in handcuffs, their arms held by uniformed white policemen" (Entman, 1990: 156). Not only were African Americans portrayed in the media, Hispanics have been stereotyped and were labeled as wetbacks and connected with causing damage by introducing one of the world's most destructive insect. Gandy stated that minorities were often portrayed as violent criminals. If they are portrayed in real life stories, these stories rely on negative stereotypes. Like Entman ...