Mass Media And Racism In America

Racism. The word that has been prominent in America, for over many decades. The word that has many meanings behind it. The word that brings stereotypical thoughts, fear, and anger behind. For decades we have known this word to be very relevant even with fact of its origins having a horrible background to it. Racism is a belief that the race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial difference produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Racism has been the breaking point of America’s down point for years. Since the Civil Right movement, African-Americans has been one race that’s dealt with the harsh realities of racism. It has affected us in many factors such as education, the workplace, and our communities.

With this being said the media has a major influence on our society as a country. The media was designed to tell us about the world issues/problems thus causing us to have certain emotion and thoughts about what we were informed about. They then show us variety ways of how we should react to the situation at hand, making it more of a problem due to the outcome of everyone's reaction. While saying this African-Americans have been viewed harsh on the media. In the article, Mass Media and Racism, by Stephen Balkaran of Yale University, Balkaran gives his thoughts on how the media portrays the African-American community. “For many years the media has showed the worse of the African-American. Media have divided the working class and stereotyped young African-American males as gangsters or drug dealers. The media have focused on the negative aspects of the black community (e.g. engaging in drug use, criminal activity, welfare abuse) while maintaining the cycle of poverty that the elite wants”. (Balkaran,

This is a problem that has always been around, however, the problem has gotten worse in recent years. Going back to my previous analysis about the media portraying African-American as violent, I spoke about the overkill of Laquan McDonald. In this topic there was a young African-American male (Laquan McDonald) running from the police. It was said that he was carrying a knife with him. The police officer, by the name of Jason Van Dyke, found the guy and shot him 16 times murdering him. The entire incident was capture on a police dash cam, which became evidence to the murder. The whole incident happened about a year ago. However, the police decided to cover up the evidence and pay the young male’s family off to keep quiet about the situation. The family didn’t follow with police and made the incident go public. When the case was brought back to existence the judge requested that the video of murder of Laquan McDonald be showed to the public. When the video first came out there was no sound. You only saw the young male running then officer Van Dyke shooting him multiple times. From the angle of the video at hand you didn’t know how many McDonald was shot. Later in the case it was said that the police had attempted to delete footage of the murder from police dash cam and all other surrounding area such as the Burger King the was near the incident. To this day the case is still