Discrimination and stereotyping have always been a large problem and I agree with Eddy that people first get exposed during childhood through their parents. However, I also believe that classmates and the media play a large role in influencing discrimination. After the age of 5, little kids spend a good portion of their time with other children at school and even more time if they have to attend an after school day care program. The children all have an influence on each other. For instance, in the video after one boy says that he thinks the Chinese man looks nicer another child pitched in and said “Yeah, he does look nicer,” and then the rest agreed as well. I wonder if the children would still have the same response if they were asked individually. Eddy also stated that “brown and blacks have a negative or conflict connotation, while white color represents and symbolizes purity, cleanliness, and innocence.” Children are associating certain races with good and some with bad because that is how these people are being portrayed in the media. Children might be overly exposed to television shows, movies, and video games that always makes a black person the bad guy. These stereotyped characters can negatively influence the way we view real people. Television shows and other media tend to depict racial groups in a negative way and young children who don’t know any better begin to view these people negatively in real life. Some common stereotypes that I’ve noticed are that Asian people are perceived as karate experts, Hispanics are shown as gang members, and people from the Middle East are all seen as terrorists. White girls, especially ones with blonde hair are portrayed as "airheads" with the lack of intelligence. I feel that children are easy targets because they can be veered or tricked into thinking a certain way just by what they have been told and seen.
Recently I found out that some Disney movies have subliminal messages in them about sex. The subliminal messages don’t have anything to do with stereotyping but I brought it up because I feel that again, the media can influence children in a negative manner. A majority of young children all love Disney movies. I know I did, so the video is extremely disturbing to me.
However, there are shows out there that try to promote diversity and encourage children to work with others. Sesame Street tries to incorporate various racial groups into their shows so children are able to view different racial groups interacting in a positive way with one another. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood has also been identified as a program that promotes positive role playing. But bottom line is everyone is different and we all have our own mindsets. Just like Eddy, my parents also made a huge impact on me when growing up. My parents raised me and always made it clear to me that I had to be respectful to everyone no matter what the differences were. I was forbidden to be rude to anyone because they were different from me. A big part of who we are is from how we are raised and what we were exposed to during our childhood.
Let's try this again
14 years ago
3 comments:
Polly: I appreciate your response to Eddy, but I think there is a problematic term that we need to examine carefully here: "media." The problem with the word 'media' is that we use it to mean something 'out there', controlled by others, when in fact it is imbricated with every form of communication. For instance, what are the 'media' forms that comprise this very blog format? Or zooming out a little more, what media forms are present throughout a 'personal' computer platform? The YouTube video about Disney's subliminal messages is another example of this: the very medium of the YouTube video is just as saturated as the media of Disney movies. And when we call 'news' outlets 'media', we should really be referring very specifically to the forms of representation that they rely on (and how these are involved with less suspect forms of representation), rather than simply hail 'the media' as an evil genius of sorts. My point is that once we begin to be aware of media as formal patterns (rather than 'messages'), we can then talk very concretely about how we accept (or question) streams of images and information. Do you see what I mean?
I totally agree with you that the media also take a big part for promoting stereotypes. And I agree that it could influence children in a very sensitive and negative manner. But before thinking another consequence, let us retrace our steps and think about the positive effect with media this day. Children today are growing with multicultural society. Diversity is much bigger today rather than a decade ago. So, from that example, we could assume that children today will have different aspects about other races. From the media, you mentioned about shows that promote diversity and that also helps to incorporate the meaning of ‘diversity’ to children. The one cartoon show that also promotes diversity is called Ni Hao, Kai Lan on Nickelodeon. It tells everyday life about a young girl that is biculturalism. It also shows that she is living with multiculturalism society (it was shown through the diverse background of her friends).
Again, professor also mentioned good point of how we accept the information that we gained from the media. From my point of view, if we are already being promoted with multicultural society, it would become easier to separate which part of the information that is negative or positive from whichever media we are exposed to. Also if I remember correctly, Paris’s statement about stereotypes also takes into account for this discussion. It would be nice to be in a world without stereotypes; there will be no labeling on which group of ethnicity we belong to. But then again, if we lived in a world without diversity, how could we distinguish one person with another. Isn’t the point of being human is to be different with one another?
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