Race In The Media

Obviously, we’ve all seen the commercial’s and billboards telling us how bad cigarettes are, or how bad vaping is. We’ve all seen the ads on who to vote for as governor or city council. Were all told what’s good and bad by the news, commercials, and even social media. Media has the power to influence an entire society, whether it is positive or negative, media controls how we view things. This same idea goes for how people of color are portrayed in the media. Media uses the idea of race (which in my opinion is way too fluid to have any sort of concrete meaning) as a tool for social ranking. Recently, I’ve noticed that social media platforms like Instagram and twitter are the main, if not only, forms of media spreading stories about love amongst people of color. Whether it’s a protest bringing people together, or an act of violence that ends up bringing more love than hate, I can only seem to find it on social media. Rarely do I see these same stories of love and how fluid race is on actual news sources. I don’t see them in articles in the New York Times, I don’t see them on CNN or even my local news channel. The problem with media today is how they are portraying race and how its effecting people of color.

Like I said, the media does not portray race as what it is. It is not a concrete form of determining a social ladder and it is not a concrete idea in which society should formulate hate. People of color in the media are either shown to be the enemy, or the victim. Not only is the way media portraying race affecting society and its views on people of color, but it is affecting people of color and their self-identity. Again, race is just to fluid to pinpoint it to such a “fact”. Yet, the media has so much power over its consumers, it manages to convince society that people of color are bringing the world closer together one day, and dividing it further the next day. This entire process affects people of color and confuses their racial identity, further putting it in the hands of media. When the media discusses race, it simply just has it completely backwards. All forms of media do not talk about how fluid race is. Because of this, it is easy to sway people's views due to the fact that society is now so easily influenced by the media.