Robert Entman And Rojecki's The Black Image In The White Mind

Race has become an integral part of our society, determining how we act, where we live, how educated we are; all aspects of life are touched by the constructs of race. Media has come to play an essential role in this, "perpetuating the effects of... historical oppression and... contributing to African-Americans' continuing status as second-class citizens." As the concept of race has come to develop in this country, it has become something that has rooted itself into the minds and lifestyles of those across it, media acting as the medium to which stereotypes and ideas regarding race are promoted and justified. In the beginning, the United States was a country in which everyone generally coexisted peacefully, where, while race was a concept,

They note that while Black actresses were seen more in films in 1996, 89% of Black female movie characters were shown using vulgar profanity, whereas White women only did so 17% of the time. Likewise, Black female characters were shown being physically violent 56% of the time and White women only 11%. Entman and Rojecki note that, in 1996, over 70% of Black characters in the highest rated television shows held professional or managerial positions. Despite the fact that Black characters were getting more prestigious parts, this idealistic reversal of roles imposed a formal distance between Black and White actors, giving the audience a skewed view on their relationships. Blacks' supervisory roles isolated their characters from close peer relationships and among these actors, 92% of the interactions with Whites were restricted to job-related tasks, giving the audience no opportunity to connect with the Black characters. News in the United States is more often than not skewed in a negative manner toward the Black community. Network news has the tendency to "ghettoize" Blacks. African Americans appear mostly in crime, sports and entertainment stories and are rarely shown making important contributions toward the serious business of the nation. In fact, Blacks are four times more likely to have their mug shot shown when a crime has been committed and twice as likely to be shown physically restrained when in