Marginalized Americans

            While African Americans are slowly being integrated into American culture in modern times, the African American people were largely a marginalized population here in the United States up until about 40 or 50 years ago when the attempt to integrate African Americans into American culture began. Marginalization, to be clear, is the exclusion, of a particular group, from meaningful participation in society. This can be seen in television sitcoms of the 1950’s, where little or no black people are seen at all, and if they are, they are seen as criminals or servants. Why were they excluded? Well, probably because the majority of viewers (who are white) would have felt uncomfortable watching a black family on television and they would have had a hard time relating with the show because the white majority does not look at America as a black nation.

                The truth is African Americans are marginalized even to this day. The United States was founded by white people in the interest of white people. No other race or cultural group was added in the original constitution. In the first 200 years of this country, African Americans were a highly marginalized community. This can be seen in Tim Wise’s film “White Like Me” when the majority of jobs held by “colored” people were excluded from the benefits of Job Insurance. You would never see a black man holding the part of a lead character in a regular television sitcom in the 1950’s. This is because the majority of viewers did not feel African Americans were apart of America.

                This can also be seen in the news coverage up until modern times. Agenda setting is the theory that the media tells you what to think about but not necessarily how to think. In a study done by Franklin Gilliam and Shanto Iyengar, they found that black people are overrepresented as the criminals and the white people are overrepresented as the victims. Why do you think African Americans are represented in such a way? I believe it is partly because they are still a marginalized community, often seen as a phenomenon. If all you see on television is black perpetrators harming white victims you are bound to activate some schemas and stereotypes that are already in place.

                This is a problem that goes back almost 400 years. You see, this country was never made to be integrated. This country was founded on the freedom of white people and solely white people. The whole process and function of this country is to benefit the white man. I agree with Malcolm X when he says that the only way for the black man to be truly free is on his own land with complete “freedom to take care of the needs, to take care of the wants, and the likes and the dislikes of our people. To establish our own nation, our own society, our own heaven, our own future.” When a society has been and is so centered on the benefits of one type of people then it is near impossible to integrate that marginalized community (African Americans). I would like to end this blog post with another quote from Malcolm X:

“When you are another man's country, in another man's land, under another man's flag and under another man's government and under another man's court system, you have to look to that other man for justice and you'll never get it and negros in this country probably are authorities on that.” –Malcolm X

New T.V. Comedy 'Black-ish' a push for Post-Raciality on Television?

     Post-raciality has been a topic that has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years with many Americans feeling like race is no longer an issue in the United States. With the United States electing an African American president, many Americans felt like this was the final step for America in getting over its brutal racial past. While the amount of hate crimes and lynchings have gone down considerably since the middle of 20th century, there is still a wide array of racism going on in this country. The Caucasian male is privileged in our society with things you would not normally think of. From racial profiling to career advancements the white man has privilege, but with all this knowledge on race and privilege, we still strive to be a colorblind society. A society that sees not the color of a mans skin but everything else. I feel this kind of mentality can and will lead to a world where everyone is the same, your color may differ, but everyone will act the same as individuals and as a community, losing much of the cultural identity we have come to love and know.
    While being in the United States alone can strip a family or generation of their cultural identity pretty quickly, the importance of the cultural identity is essential to living in a truly copacetic world. My example of this "post-racial" ideology in the media this week is a television show, called 'Black-ish', that premiered recently. The show is about an African American family that acts like a white family. The theme of the show is the father of the show is trying to find his family a cultural identity. Every episode is based on the main character, the father, dealing with circumstances in life in "black" ways and "white ways". This kind of television show presents to its audience (which is unclear) this idea of post-raciality.  The show gives the feeling that there is not a "black" way or "white" way to deal with something, that our ways have become one.
    This type of media portrayal of the African American community is trying to push forth the idea that race is a thing of the past and we just all get along now. This is not true, there is still a big racism problem in our ideologies and institutions. I agree with director Tim Wise when he says we need to look at the concept of race with a direct approach to changing our ways of thinking. We need to live in a community that is color conscious, which is when a population seeks to acknowledge and understand differences of race. Only then will we be able to stop talking about race and privilege. 
     

Stereotyping Bad Habits

     Stereotyping has been a common practice used by the American media for centuries and still continues to be used today. Since our country has been a country we have been stereotyping many different cultures and lifestyles. Stereotyping really becomes evident in our history after the Civil War when Americans were hell bent on expanding the United States in the mid to late 17th century when almost all media outlets sought to put a bad label on Native Americans. During this time, Native Americans were portrayed in the media as being savages that were barbaric, heartless, and violent to their core. This has changed over time, however, there is another type of stereotyping that goes on still to this day that does not just hit one culture or race. This is the stereotyping of people that seemingly have bad habits such as the use of drugs and/or alcohol.
      Stereotyping impedes communication in four major ways: 1. Stereotyping creates an assumption that widely held beliefs are true when that may not be the case. 2. Stereotyping has a self-perpetuating nature to it 3. It links widely held beliefs about a group of people to the individual, and 4. Over time these stereotypes become a self-fulfilling prophecy for many of the individuals being stereotyped. The last point is the point this study would like to focus on.
      For years we have been seeing commercials that link drug users and smokers to the criminals and derelicts of society. Could this be the reason that many drug users and alcoholics are not successful and they usually end up being consumed by the product that they are addicted to? For generations drug and alcohol use have been certainly used as descriptors of stereotypes for instance the pot-smoking jazz musicians of the 40's and 50's were always linked to African-Americans just as blunts and 40 oz.'s are linked to African Americans today. Even in a state where marijuana is legal we still see an undesirable life being linked to the use of drugs and alcohol. This studies main question for the public is: Could the "War on drugs" propaganda be a self-fulfilling prophecy for all those who choose to use psychoactive drugs? We have learned, as a society, over the years that alcoholism and drug abuse are genetic and some people are more susceptible to it than others. This study proposes that all this anti-drug propaganda could be contributing to our drug problem and the people it is effecting more than the drugs themselves.

Cultural Hegemony and Ideology and Advertisements

     Cultural hegemony is when the elite or ruling class push across a certain idea or or ideology through a certain type of medium. This is largely seen in every type of media we consume on a daily basis and possibly more apparent in children's films and cartoons. For instance, when a cartoon character goes out on a date with his woman cartoon character ,and when they are on the date, portray him buying his date things and spoiling her. This type of cartoon would suggest to the public that women want things and to be catered to if you are interested in them romantically. Another example of this would be seeing a family on television with a mom, a dad, and two kids. This suggests that the social norm in America is to have two kids with mom and and dad in the house.
      However, throughout the years there has been little that has changed in the ruling classes ideology and hegemony is still focused on the same ideas that were being pushed on the public for the last thirty years. While studying kids media culture, I found this subject to be quite interesting because of the ideas that are being pushed onto such a vulnerable age group. Cultural hegemony is seen in its most unhidden form in children's television.
   While our cultural hegemony can be seen clearly through the media the children watch and interact with, our cultural hegemony can also be seen in such as advertising as well. My example of hegemony in advertisements is an example from the 1950's where cigarettes were advertised as being a somewhat healthy habit.
    In all these examples cigarettes are being recommended by doctors and dentists, trustworthy occupations of the American society. This shows how if a certain idea, or made up fact, can make itself real to millions of people. At this time, cigarettes were seen by the public as non-lethal and mostly safe to smoke. I can conclude that a lot of that public view came from advertising in movies and in print.  By the time it had came out that cigarettes were bad for you and often caused death, the media had to try and undo what they had done to the cultural hegemony concerning smoking cigarettes. This is probably what led to the banning of advertising cigarettes in video and print media. The banning of these advertisements was to try and change the ideology about cigarettes that the public had.