Racial and Media Stereotyping in Society

Racial and Media Stereotyping in Society
Author’s Name
Institution
Introduction
Stereotypes are perceptions that reflect on the ideas that groups of people hold with regard to others (Rao, 2000). Mass media has been a main source of popular culture in the modern capitalist society. Media not only offers news and entertainment, but also transfers beliefs, stereotypes and values to reproduce the existing order of social life. For a long time, families, schools and religion have been regarded as the ideological state apparatuses that have been involved in indoctrinating and transferring dominant hegemonic ideologies of the society into the minds of people (Srividya, 2007). Nonetheless, the media has turned out as another apparatus that controls the mind of the masses.
Stereotypes Propagated by Media
Primary and secondary studies provide an overwhelming support that media still portrays stereotypes of racial minorities. African Americans are often portrayed by the media as aggressive, criminal and unintelligent. Dixon (2006) examines how African Americans are identified with criminal activities. The author further goes on to elaborate the negative consequences which result from this stereotyping. In addition to the aggressive and troublesome characters, African Americans are usually portrayed as poor people, living in dirty places (Dixon, 2006).
Muslims have also been a common entity in media stereotyping. Park, Felix and Lee (2007) further expounds on this issue. Muslims with turbans are frequently depicted as ticking time bombs. The Arabs are frequently portrayed on the basis of terrorism inclinations. Stereotyping in the media also goes beyond racial attributes. In many movies, many males are portrayed as the dominant bosses over the females. Women are frequently portrayed as desperate to get into a marriage.
Asian Americans in the entertainment media and news have depictions of seemingly positive stereotypes, and are portrayed as polite, hardworking and non-controversial people, who can not raise their voices against oppressive actions (Rao, 2000). Additionally, observable biases in the Western media also portray third world people as inferior, naïve, traditional and uncivilized. This serves to rationalize perpetuation of paternalistic, benevolent prejudice towards these ethnic groups.
Since racial stereotypes in the media serve to reinforce, justify and perpetuate benevolent and hostile racism, focused research strategies to undermine and eliminate stereotypes is important (Srividya, 2007). Stereotypes can be created and altered based on experiences with members of stigmatized groups. Due to the ubiquitous nature of the stereotypes portrayed by media, biased information eventually becomes incorporated into schemata or common knowledge that viewers form about stereotyped groups. Exposure to media stereotypes may serve as cognitive shortcuts, which easily activates cultural stereotypes (Rao, 2000). As an example, seeing local news about an African American suspect might activate stereotypes of troublesomeness and aggression. Watching a stand-up comedian joke about the Asian American community may summon thoughts of lack of warmth and slyness typically associated with this group.
Prolonged exposure to these biased contents makes the notions highly automatic. Therefore, without conscious efforts to rectify these biases, the biased evaluations will reactivate on subsequent exposure to similar contents. Recently and frequently used stereotypes are easily accessible when making judgments about a stigmatized group. Such activation of stereotypes will automatically influence perceivers’ social impressions and judgments about the stigmatized group without any conscious awareness (Rao, 2000).
Factors Propagating Stereotyping
Butsch (2001) examines how the media advances racial stereotypes and the factors that serve to enhance and propagate stereotyping. The article responds to the question of why media finds stereotyping unavoidable and necessary. The article also shows how the consumers play a crucial role in promoting media stereotyping. The two factors, in addition to lack of sensitivity of media personnel, are the factors identified, which propagate stereotyping.
There is a lack of proportionate numbers of minorities in the media. Despite this fact, there are many people in the media who lack awareness and sensitivity of minority cultures and individuals (Butsch, 2001). This means that there are many media personnel who do not appreciate the diversity and differences that exist within the society. Additionally, most media personnel, including the ones in the entertainment, industry are not sufficiently aware of the power of the content that they expose to their audiences.
Business demands also propagate stereotypes in the media. Profit margins are the driving factors of the media. High rating translates to huge profits. Therefore, media will always expose consumers to content that is quicker and easier to understand for the audiences. Some media companies justify the biased contents, whereby they claim that stereotype...