MEDIA AND RACIAL BREAKDOWNS

Media and Racial Breakdowns



Media and Racial Breakdowns

America today is diverse, but is there enough diversity in the media? Do the numbers of minorities on TV, in movies, and on the news reflect reality? The United States is culturally diverse with African American and Latino ethnic groups alone making up nearly one-third of the population. The media however, from video games to the prime time news cast, is not as diverse. There are not enough minorities in the media; there is not fair representation in news and entertainment. How do the number of minorities on TV, in the news, and in the movies compare to the percentages of different ethnic groups in the country? How does a lack of diversity in the media impact society?

According to the US Census Bureau for 2009 just over 65 percent of the population is white. Minorities, or people of color, make up just under 35 percent, with the percentage of Latinos in the US being 15.8 percent, of African Americans, 12.9 percent, and the third largest minority group, Asians, making up just under five percent of the American population. How many minorities are in the media? According to the American Screen Actors Guild, in 2008 of all television and theatrical roles, excluding animation, the percentage of different ethnic groups is as follows:

For leading roles the percentage of Caucasian characters is higher and that of minority roles is lower for all minority groups. Comparing the numbers of the actual population to those of the people presented on screen, there is not enough diversity in the media. The ethnic group with the greatest disparity between the numbers in reality and those for television and film roles is the Latino population.

According to a study done by PBS, looking at the numbers of both minorities and women in the media, only 18.3 percent of the major networks prime time news cast is not white. How does the viewing public make sense of the number disparities? How aware are individuals of the fact that different ethnic groups are not represented fairly in the media?

Acknowledging Valdivia's (1995) assertion that feminist work has focused on white women as ethnic and race studies have focused primarily on African Americans, we seek to include other “women of color” in our analysis of stereotypic female representation. As we stated in the beginning of this chapter, our analysis relies primarily on black women, as that is where the majority of scholarship on race, gender, and the media focuses. However, we agree with Hill Collins (2004) that many of the arguments made previously about black women also apply to women from India, Latin America, Puerto Rico, and Asia, “albeit through the historical specificity of their distinctive group histories” (p. 12).

Asian women and Latinas are often portrayed in the media as the exotic, sexualized “other as well. According to Tajima (1989), “Asian women in film are either passive figures who exist to serve men as love interests for White men (lotus blossom) or as a ...