During the semester, race is a big part of the lectures. In class, we talk about how race is distinguishing physical characteristics used to place people in different racial categories (Jensen). The biggest concern with race is racial inequality. Racial inequality is the inadequate or unfair treatment of minorities in areas like income, education, employment, health, the criminal justice system, and media. The article written by Rebecca Keegan from the Los Angeles Times newspaper discusses the inequality of race in media specifically movies. This article relates to the unfairness in films because minorities are poorly portrayed in the majority of films. More often than not, minorities are the “bad guys” in films. They are caught up in criminal activity and live in poorer neighborhoods than the majority. The article gives numerous statistics proving and exploiting that there is indeed racial inequality depicted in films. Also the Keegan touches on how minorities are underrepresented in films in the way that they usually do not have as many speaking lines compared to the white actor/actress. Race is socially constructed meaning and biological. Biological race is impossible because there is no genetic or DNA make-up difference from one race to another. Racial inequality is a very big issue that the world is dealing with, especially the United States. People tend to discriminate because of the way someone looks or where they are from. These could be an example prejudice which is the act of prejudging a person because of their appearance, thoughts and/or ideas (Jensen). Also stereotyping, discrimination, and racism go hand in hand with prejudice. Stereotyping is when a person uses a set of generalizations of a group of people that en... ... middle of paper ... ...n American woman to be awarded the Sundance Film Festival’s best director prize in 2012 for her film “Middle of Nowhere” (Keegan). In the interview of DuVernay, she explains how even though only 9.9% of speaking characters are black, with a black director that percentage rises to 52.6% of black speaking characters (Keegan). This explains a lot of why there are is such a small amount of minority speaking roles in movies. This means that because of the majority of the directors being white, they therefore want to hire and have more whites speak in their movies rather than minorities. At the end of the article, Keegan elaborates on how people are now noticing this race and gender inequality in films and are trying to improve it. For example, as stated in the article, the Motion Picture Academy is working on making their company more diverse and not merely white males.
...lieve that races are distinct biological categories created by differences in genes that people inherit from their ancestors. Genes vary, but not in the popular notion of black, white, yellow, red and brown races. Many biologist and anthropologists have concluded that race is a social, cultural and political concept based largely on superficial appearances. (4)
The concept of race is an ancient construction through which a single society models all of mankind around the ideal man. This idealism evolved from prejudice and ignorance of another culture and the inability to view another human as equal. The establishment of race and racism can be seen from as early as the Middle Ages through the present. The social construction of racism and the feeling of superiority to people of other ethnicities, have been distinguishably present in European societies as well as America throughout the last several centuries.
The article I chose this week is about how lack of diversity there are in roles in films made in the United States. The article stated that between the years 2007 and 2014, women only made up 30 percent of all speaking roles. Another article was released recently stating that that there are 700 popular films and represent inequality. This article looked at gender, race, and ethnicity. The top movies are only white, straight, young, and male. Out of the top 100 movies 73.1 percent of all speakers were white, 19 characters were lesbian/gay/bisexual, 19.9 percent of the characters were 40 to 64 years old, and women directed 1.9 percent of the movies. Films produced in 2014, not a single woman was starred over the age 45. These statistics pointed out how directors are prejudice when making decision about their characters. The article specified that art may be a mirror of life, but is often a misleading one in mainstream American cinema. Even though women are about half of the population they remain a persistent minority on screen.
Hit shows such as ABC’s Blackish, Fresh Off the Boat, and Scandal, the CW’s Jane the Virgin, and FOX 40’s The Mindy Project feature well-written multi-dimensional characters worthy of Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and awards. However, according to Tamra Winfrey-Harris, while there is more diversity of female characters, there’s “nowhere near the diversity that our white counterparts have” (Cheung). In 2014, 73.1% of film actors were white, and only seventeen of the top-ranking films in 2014 starred “non-white or co-lead actors” (Santhanam, Hickey). Lack of representation is proven to have an effect on society. An English primary school teacher found that his students of color would write narratives featuring English-speaking white characters because they believe that “stories have to be about White people” (Chetty). However, how can one be surprised when they observe the amount of whiteness children are exposed to throughout their youth? The myriad of white Disney princesses, Snow White, Belle, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Rapunzel, Merida, Anna, and Elsa serve as the white child’s role models. Only four princesses of color exist in the Disney universe: Pocahontas, Mulan, Jasmine, and Tiana. The omnipresence of white characters and actors in the media dramatically impact a child of color’s development; to them, the normal,
Racial discrimination takes many forms in many different countries. People can experience racial discrimination in a variety of different ways. In its most overt form, racial discrimination can occur as a result of stereotyping, prejudice, bias, and in this case whitewashing. Whitewashing is the casting practice in which white actors are cast in non-white character roles. The American film industry has a history of frequently casting white actors for roles involving people of color. This practice doesn 't only apply to African Americans, it applies to all races. Stemming from Othello (1965) to Aloha (2015), it seems that producers within Hollywood are willing to throw away accuracy in exchange for keeping Hollywood “white”. It begs the question
The fact is that Black, Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern, and others racial groups only make up approximately 25% of characters. Not only in film casting, racial stereotypes have also been presented via the appearance of characters. Hollywood writers and directors should have a social responsibility to avoid stereotyping ethnic characters due to the unequal employment opportunity and misrepresentation of Hispanics, Asians, and African-Americans in Hollywood movies.
This year’s Oscar nominees caused an uproar in the African American community due to the lack of color representation. Of course the Black films that did earn a spot on the nomination chart didn’t grant the award or nomination to the people of color involved with the film. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg, for a little over a century, black characters have been Whitewashed, portrayed via Blackface, stereotyped, or exploited in the film industry. While there have been ups and downs in progress, Black representation in the film and media industry is still a recurring problem. There are outstanding individuals who succeed at combating these tribulations, however there’s still an overwhelming majority that has yet to thoroughly recognize,
Race is an idea that developed and changed over time. Essentially, it is a method of organizing and splitting people into categories. The struggle of race was also concerning which race was superior. When studying American history, the majority of people in power were White. If one was a descendant from another nationality it caused them to be inferior. We have progressed away from these ideologies but unfortunately still encounter racial issues in our nation and all across the world.
The lack of minorities that Hollywood puts into its films is a form of “whitewashing”. In its simplest definition,
Some may argue that there is enough representation of minorities in American television, but the statistics show otherwise. A study conducted by researchers at Harvard University shows “minority” groups are not represented as much as “majority” groups are on American television. Their researchers found that Caucasians make up seventy-five percent of commercials aired on television whereas, African Americans were only in them twelve percent of the time, and the rest were of other races. The issue of representation doesn’t stop at how much but at how. In most cases, minorities are depicted in a negative light to make the majorities look superior. Additionally, researchers at the University of Southern California studied the seven hundred top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014 and analyzed the ethnicities of more than thirty thousand characters to reveal the true amount of diversity in the film industry. In their study, they found that seventy-three percent were Caucasian, five percent Asian, five percent Hispanic, and the other seventeen percent covered all other
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however what is considered beautiful by some is not considered as beauty when discussing diversity within the media. Society is based on criticism of judging one’s characters body, shape and or race/ethnics background. In the media the society only sees one type that is only focused on perfection to the mind; however within the United States, it is very typical in that the media lacks ethnic representation, cultural identity and gender inequalities. There are no ethnic representation when it comes to the media world and that the media has been trained to believe that the ethnic groups are not valuable. African Americans and Hispanics writers are the minority group when it comes to a social group. According to journalist Prince and Television critic Deggans “CNN , let go one of its most high-profile anchor of color, Soledad O’Brien, replaced her with a white man, Chris Cuomo. Wolf Blitzer gave up one of his hours to another white man, Tapper. Though Zucker met with both National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalist to try and address their concerns, there has been no overt sign from CNN that it is bringing on any more anchors of color, ”(Mirkinson p.1).
The underrepresentation of minorities in Hollywood goes further than the typical surface level marginalization of certain racial groups, it also includes the exclusion of people who have distinct sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion that are often not even given the opportunity to show their talent. We say “It’s 20xx” to remind ourselves and surrounding people that we have progressed from the time that our country was narrow minded, yet hollywood in the recent years has had a significant decline in minority talent portrayal.
The power of this is used as a tool to inform audiences of particular races by enforcing stereotypes. It is a way that does not mess with the structure already in place. Shohat and Stam 's reading provides a powerful insight to the practices put in place by the industry. Shohat and Stam 's reading provides a powerful insight to the practices put in place by the industry. It is rare to see a person of colour portray themselves of the 'white race '. Yet it is acceptable for a white person to portray someone who they are not. These practices of white washing excuse the behaviour and paint the idea that only European views are acceptable. Racial politics raise serious debates as to why this issue is present. Despite numerous efforts this problem still remains in Hollywood. Due to Europe dominating the world with their view it is no surprise that the same is done in
We have all dealt with societies discrimination to our appearance. Segregation Race was created socially, primarily by how people perceive ideas and faces we are not quite used to. The definition of race all depends on where and when the word is being used.
Merriam-webster as “any one of the groups that human beings can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits”(2017). This is the true definition of race and many people do think of the right meaning of race but to a very short meaning. It means much more than just color. It comes from anything someone can put you into a group by any physical trait they can think of. Even though the main reason people put a person into a category is by their color. Many other reasons could be height, weight, hair color, or even by they clothes they wear. When I think of race it is just