Who Cares.... You Should.

How many people watch TV? I had never sought to answer this question until I was asked to look at why diversity in the media matters. It was a good eye opener as it made me realize the millions, maybe billions, of people around the World who watch TV everyday, who either don't realize what they are seeing,or are personally affected by the negative stereotypes. We all fail to notice what is being represented or and what is not, and how these subtle messages affect us.

Over the past few weeks, we have been talking about how ethnic diversity in front and behind the cameras is almost non-existent, meaning that the majority of people working in the media business are predominately caucasian, with few 'minorities' being represented. To further this point, in the article, "The Great Black Hope," it talks about how the majority of people working behind the scenes are middle-aged white males, giving us a pretty biased opinion on the world and the people in it, thus creating many of the stereotypes we fail to recognize every time we turn on the television.[1] So since the media business is run predominately by the Caucasian portion of the world, the different ethnic groups are being poorly represented compared to the percentage of the world who are made up by these "other" races. A study, also in the article "The Great Black Hope," compared the two. [1]

The first portion showed the average representation for the 5 major broadcasting networks, including ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, and CW with results as follows:



Caucasian: 74.72%

African American: 13.92%

Latinos/ Hispanics: 6.38%

Asian: 4.5%

American Indian: 0.48%

While the second half of the study showed the 2007 Census data showed the real diversity of the U.S.A with results as follows:



Caucasian: 66.2%

African American: 12.9%

Latinos/ Hispanics: 15.2%

Asian: 4.5%

American Indian: 1%


As you can see this data shows that, on these 5 major networks, Caucasians are being way over represented(8.52%), while African Americans are being slightly over represented (1.02%). On the other hand, Latinos/Hispanics are being unbelievably under represented in the media (8.82%), as well as American Indians (0.52%). The only ethnic group who is being perfectly represented in the media is Asian. These statistics really make you realize how far off the portrayals of the different races are from the actual population.

On top of this, another study known as, Children Now's Fall Colours Prime Time Diversity Report for 2003-2004, recorded that: [2]

From here, you start to wonder how these people must see themselves when they are minimally shown in the spotlight. Is this a sign of racism? Or is it just freedom of speech being stretched to it's fullest form? These questions are ones we must consider in order to correctly analyze the media product, and realize just how anti-racial it truly is.

From here though we also must realize how it is almost impossible for one group of people to perfectly portray the "other groups", or at least to portray them as well as they could portray themselves. This means that we are being given the wrong idea about the "other," leading many people to view these groups through the wrong perspective. Also, it is almost impossible for a group trying to represent itself in the media, not to portray themselves as the "good," without commonly portraying the "other" in a more negative light. Seeing as the media is mainly run by Caucasians they become the majority of characters in the media being shown, as discussed before, as "the good," while the other races in the world are immediately deemed minor roles and are commonly portrayed as "the bad." For example, almost always, Arabs are shown as the violent, American-hating terrorists with plans of mass murder, Latinos/ Hispanics are shown as criminals or maids, African-Americans are always the sidekicks, gangsters, and the criminals(as well as all of the roles shown in the film called "Black Acting School"). While Aboriginals, if they are even represented at all, are always shown as the exotic and Asians as the convenience store owners, operators of a dry cleaning service, take-out food business or the extremely smart. All of these roles are considered stereotypical, and can be taken as truly offensive to the people belonging to these cultures. The world that they create for us to see in the media, is far from how the real world is.



The strange thing is, it is almost as if our society is moving back in time limiting peoples rights in the media. At one stage almost all of the groups were most closely represented to the actuality of the numbers than they are know, meaning our society is backtracking in its footsteps. The cause of this is due to major events throughout the world. It is often said that `Hollywood and Washington are from the same DNA` because when something happens in politics involving different groups of people are the world, they are portrayed the same way in the media to help create a biased opinion of the other. Also it is slightly strange since some of these topics were starting to be addressed around 2003. This means that we are doing the complete opposite and are making issues worse than to start with. If we keep going at a rate as we are now, the idea of different ethnic groups being shown in the media is going to compeltely fade away and we will once again be left with the idea of Caucasians as being the only good background to be.

Unfortunately people fail to realize this, and commonly are oblivious or believe the stereotypes being portrayed, and since not enough of us are aware of the impact the media makes, there aren't enough people to do anything drastic to change this. But for those of us who have been made aware of the hurtful stereotypes and inappropriate portrayals, they have decided to start giving people of the minority races jobs in the backgrounds of the production of all media products, whose main focus is on lowering the idea of the minority, and creating equal numbers of majorities of different backgrounds. Also, by making more people aware of these stereotypes and uneven representation, hopefully we can make everyone equals once again.

Ethnic Diversity: "the state or face of being diverse; difference; unlikeness; variety; multiformity; point of difference." [3] This is what truly matters. It affects all of everyone and anyone and we should all be more aware of the actions of our media products. We need to embrace the definition of diversity and make it actuality, and ignore the idea's of stereotypes and creating "enemies" for ourselves. Once we can do this, we will all realize just how important ethnic diversity in the media matters. The media should represent real life not a fictional one that a group of Caucasian males has produced for us.

[1] "TV's Great Black Hope" Entertainment Weekly Online Article. Jennifer Armstrong. Margeaux Watson. <http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20206185,00.html>

[2] "The Children Now Fall Colours Prime Time Diversity Report for 2003-2004." <http://publications.childrennow.org/assets/pdf/cmp/fall-colors-03/fall-colors-03-v5.pdf>

[3] "Diversity Definition." Dictionary.com. April 30, 2009. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diversity >