The role media plays in racism (Revised)

Growing up there was this ongoing joke in my family that the reason I liked Dora so much as a kid was because I looked like her. Even though this was just a silly little joke to comment on the way that I looked as a kid, it does hold some truth. Growing up, the reason I did enjoy watching Dora was because she was a character that I could relate to; she spoke Spanish, had short black hair, and had darker skin color than most of the cartoons that were on at the time. But, as I got older and grew out of my Dora phase I found that it was very hard to find characters in media that looked like me. When I was finally able to find some sort of media that had a character that I could relate to, the character was poorly written and was just a bunch of stereotypes. We see in society today that racial biases have not gone away, media outlets perpetuating racial stereotypes are not helping the case of removing racial biases.

I recently finished watching Modern Family. I loved the show but as I was watching I couldn't help to notice the constant stereotypes that were being portrayed by Gloria. Well let's face it Gloria was a walking stereotype. For some background the show Modern Family follows the Pretchet family. Gloria is a Colombian immigrant woman who marries Jay, an older white man who already has adult children and grandkids. Gloria was constantly being portrayed as loud, violent and  short tempered. There were always jokes being made about how she has family members with connections to the cartel. As a Colombian woman myself I thought it was very distasteful how they portrayed Gloria as a whole. I found myself constantly being confused or angry at Gloria’s character because it was misrepresenting the Colombian community. The constant jokes about drugs and cartel affiliations just pushes the narrative even further that all Colombians are tied to drugs, whether it be doing, selling or making drugs we always have the

the word “drugs” connected to our names. 

 

(Figure 1)

There is a joke made in Season 1 Episode 6 where Many (Gloria’s young child) is being pulled from class and the first thing that he asks is “Is something wrong, who just died” and Jay looks at Gloria and is confused as to why Many would think that. Gloria then responds with 

“In Colombia, Many went to Pablo Escobar elementary school, you were pulled out of class. It was definitely to identify a body”in a very casual way as if Jay was supposed to know that that was the norm in Colombia. I found this joke to be a stupid and unnecessary as it was not funny at all. 

Back in 1976 (Gorn and colleagues 1976, as cited in Scharrer, E. and Ramasubramanian, S. 2015) There was an experiment where there was a group of Canadian children who watched multiracial inserts from Sesame Street. Then there were children who did not watch the same multiracial inserts. The kids that watched the multiracial inserts showed a greater willingness in wanting to play with non-white children. 

          (Figure 2)

This experiment is a perfect example of how racial biases can be made. The reason that the kids were willing in playing with non-white children is because they were exposed to multiracial inserts. The kids have become familiar with the concept of playing with kids of different racial backgrounds so they are more open to doing so than kids who were not exposed to that. This same concept can be placed for racial stereotypes. If we are not told about a stereotype or shown it in media than we will not see them as true. As stated by Mastro and Kopacz’s (Mastro and Kopacz, 2006) research, negative stereotypes of minority communities can lead to negative interpretation of the actions that they have made. Their research has even shown that these negative stereotypes portrayed in the media have even influenced the way people have voted on policy. In other words the media is painting consumers this picture of minority groups and people are just rolling with it instead of making their own decisions on these groups based on personal experiences. 

Now, you might be wondering to yourself “ What’s the problem with this? It’s just a show, and it’s a part of the culture,” For example, an argument can be made for well known comedian, actor, and director Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry uses many black stereotypes that many would consider harmful as a plot device and for comedic effect. To elaborate, his most famous character Madea, is a strong, black, heavy set woman with a thick southern accent; has multiple movies that are well liked by the public, his movie  Tyler Perry’s: Madea Goes to Jail, has a 96% audience score on rotten tomatoes. There is one major difference between Tyler Perry’s movie and Modern family, Tyler perry uses an all black cast, and he directly helps with the writing and acting in the movie. That’s why I believe a solution to stop these stereotypes is to have the cast or the writer be from that culture. It allows for a good middle ground at the bare minimum because the production/ writing team tried to be sensitive and socially aware.

Stereotypes in media are harmful, they trivialize many of the struggles many individuals go through because of their background. If we are insistent on using cultural negative stereotypes for entertainment we should at the very least hire a writing team with a similar background so they portray these stereotypes appropriately.