Negative Media Stereotypes About The Marginalized In Society

I want you to read the next sentence, pause, close your eyes and think about the first thing that comes to your mind. I am currently writing this from the island of Jamaica. Where do you imagine I am writing from? What do you think my ethnicity is? If you go with what you thought about in the first instance, whatever it was, then you would have to wonder how that thought got in your consciousness and why. How do singular thoughts become conventional wisdom? There is no ‘one’ way that these thoughts are proliferated throughout society, however a major method of transmission is through the iconography on display in society daily. From billboards to magazines, television and now the internet, we are bombarded everyday with images that certainly help to perpetuate several, often unpleasant, stereotypes. Predictably, these stereotypes most adversely affect the most marginalized of society. For first world countries that experienced some verison of slavery or colonialism, the imagery is especially egregious; words and phrases such as: Jezebel, Miscegenation, Hoes, Pimps, Ghetto, Coons and Mammies; in the public parlance has positioned black people as over sexualized, violent individuals who reside on the outskirts of ‘polite’ society. These mere thoughts become dangerous as black people are many times not afforded the benefit of the doubt in many situations as they are often pre judged as being the worst representation of their community based on skin colour and gender alone. Because of that, it would be foolhardy to try to argue that?these images are merely entertainment and do not have a significant ripple effect, globally. However, the counter balance would be to start to have more positive images being on display throughout the media and thus continue to chip away at around 400 years of negative mischaracterization.?????

References

D Dirks, JC Mueller, A Williams. (2018). Racism and Popular Culture: Representation,?????????????????

Resistance and White Racial Fantasies Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic????

? Relations, 69-89.