Although the media can assist in making knowledge more widely accessible, it has also been used to develop stereotypes which can negatively impact the reputation of different groups of people. One particular group that is often misrepresented in the media is immigrants. The article “What History Can Tell Us About the Fallout From Restricting Immigration,” by David C. Atkinson provides evidence of stereotypes about immigrants, including the idea that immigrants bring crime and violent religions or philosophies. Jennifer Kay and Adriana Gomez Licon have additional evidence of these false beliefs about immigrants in their article, “Haitians fear wrenching end to US immigration protection.” Images of immigrants in the media also continue stereotypes …show more content…
A major stereotype is that immigrants are dangerous and harm citizens by spreading crime, diseases, or radical foreign ideas. David C. Atkinson discusses these stereotypes in the article “What History Can Tell Us About the Fallout From Restricting Immigration.” When writing about restrictions on immigration in Europe, Atkinson explains, “This legislation was also inspired by fears that so-called aliens would import poverty and disease, as well as hostile foreign ideas like anarchism, Bolshevism, and Catholicism,” which shows that societal fear of immigrants can manifest as stereotypes about the dangers of immigration. In this example, the media spreads the idea that immigrants will bring illnesses and harmful ideas in order to justify the limitation of immigration. This leads to serious consequences such as a general disdain for immigrants and the belief that every immigrant is dangerous, which creates an unsafe environment for immigrants in which they are the possible target of discrimination and hate crimes. Citizens then continue these stereotypes to defend their disdain and mistreatment of immigrants. Jennifer Kay and Adriana Gomez Licon expand on this topic of immigrants being viewed as dangerous to society in the article “Haitians fear wrenching end to US immigration protection.” When writing about Haitian refugees who fled to the United …show more content…
An image included in the article “Shattering Stereotypes About Immigrant Workers” which was published by the New York Times depicts immigrants gathering around a truck while searching for work, which reinforces the stereotype that immigrants are desperate for jobs and will steal jobs from citizens. The image portrays immigrants as willing to do nearly any job and to work for very low wages, which convinces people to think that immigrants will be more tempting to hire for the jobs that citizens should have acquired. The stereotype that immigrants steal jobs invokes a sense of jealousy and inequality in natural citizens who believe that they deserve more access to jobs and opportunities than immigrants. Citizens who are afraid of losing potential job opportunities continue to believe that immigrants are stealing their jobs and conclude that removing immigrants will solve their problems. This rivalry between immigrants and natural citizens helps to continue stereotypes because citizens will blame immigrants for their financial problems and label them as thieves in order remove immigrants from the workforce and regain their job opportunities. In addition, this misrepresentation of immigrants results in the belief that immigrants are undeserving of jobs and that employers should not consider them as candidates. In reality, immigrants often take jobs that citizens do not want due
In the U. S today, the approximated population of undocumented immigrants stands at averagely 11 million. Therefore, this has created a hot debate in Congress about the action to take over the undocumented immigrants. Those opposed to illegal immigrants suggest that, their stay in the United States effects U.S citizens on the job market negatively . In addition, illegal immigrants are viewed in certain quarters as takers in the sense that illegal immigrants benefit more from public resources than the american-born citizens of the U.S. However, the reality is that immigrants contribute positively to the U.S economy and pay significantly into the system compared to what they send back home.
Competing for jobs against native Americans, immigrants are not only using valuable government resources from welfare and other programs, but they are also increasing the rate of unemployment. True, the jobs immigrants are tak...
Latino/a immigrants share similar experiences of anti-immigrant rhetoric just like other immigrant groups. Many Latino/as in America have faced negative comments based on their identity. For example, Rush Limbaugh, a radio host, expounds negative comments toward Latino/as, particularly Mexicans. He claimed that Mexicans are “a renegade, potential[ly] criminal element” that is “unwilling to work” (Media Matters for America, 2/28/06). These malice comments were similar to that of other immigrants. As other immigrant groups of non-English descent started arriving in America, there was an immigrant phobia towards the newcomers. During the mid-1700s, Benjamin Franklin said ...
This study examines stereotyping of Arab Muslims in the New York Times for the past forty years. Theorists suggest that stereotyping of a minority group effects the public's opinion of that group. Other communication media theorists say that only under extreme conditions will the negative stereotypes reflect the publics' opinions of the portrayed minority group. The parallel theory between propaganda and stereotyping by the mass media is examined. Theorists including Thomson, (1977) & Myers, (1992), related to mass media effects strongly agree claiming that repetitive and non-contradictive images in the media are an effective form of propaganda. The research samples are random article reviews of the New York Times for the past forty years. Using every fifth year and 2 random numbers ranging from 1 to 12 is used to select an article search date. Islam was the search term. The Gudykunst & Kim( ? ) method of analyzing a stereotype is used to evaluate the 8 New York Times articles. The results indicate 95% of the articles were "vague," labeling entire group rather than individual. Out of the total 100%, 70% of the article used unfavorable trait characteristic labeling.
The usage of media is huge in nowadays. People rely on different kinds of media to receive information in their everyday life because they are thirsty for the diverse and informative content. However, inaccurate portrayals of people from different races always appear in the media and audience will exaggerate those portrayals by their inflexible beliefs and expectations about the characteristics or behaviors of the portrayals’ cultural groups without considering individual variation (Ting-Toomey and Chung, 2012); in fact, it is also called as stereotypes. According to a study by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University (Stein, 2012), racial stereotyping continues to occur in media and the mainstream media's coverage of different cultural groups is full of biased reporting, offensive terminology and old stereotypes of American society. It specifically emphasizes that majority of the stereotyped characters in media will only bring out the dark side of their cultural groups which many of them might not be true, especially for the portrayals of black community: African American.
Sherman Alexie’s Flight Patterns, which discusses racial stereotypes, relates to the effects of 9/11 on American citizens, who tend to inappropriately judge Muslim and other cultures in the world today. Although 9/11 was a horrible day, it still should not be used to categorize and stereotype people. Stereotypes do nothing but harm to the people who receive it and to the people who dish it out.
In Marcelo M. Suarez- Orozco and Carola Suarez- Orozco’s article “How Immigrants became “other” Marcelo and Carola reference the hardships and struggles of undocumented immigrants while at the same time argue that no human being should be discriminated as an immigrant. There are millions of undocumented people that risk their lives by coming to the United States all to try and make a better life for themselves. These immigrants are categorized and thought upon as terrorist, rapists, and overall a threat to Americans. When in reality they are just as hard working as American citizens. This article presents different cases in which immigrants have struggled to try and improve their life in America. It overall reflects on the things that immigrants go through. Immigrants come to the United States with a purpose and that is to escape poverty. It’s not simply crossing the border and suddenly having a great life. These people lose their families and go years without seeing them all to try and provide for them. They risk getting caught and not surviving trying to make it to the other side. Those that make it often don’t know where to go as they are unfamiliar. They all struggle and every story is different, but to them it’s worth the risk. To work the miserable jobs that Americans won’t. “I did not come to steal from anyone. I put my all in the jobs I take. And I don’t see any of the Americans wanting to do this work” (668). These
In the modern world, all kinds of oppressions involve a dominant cultural psychology that causes different communities to be suppressed on diverse social, racial grounds. There is usually a hierarchy of oppression in which some communities are perceived to be less valuable than others. However, stereotypes are usually utilized to rationalize this domination and to label individuals on certain type while marginalization is the social process of being demoted to the lower social standing. On the other hand, oppression is any form can be visible at the personal or social level in the media as media reaches several individuals regularly and has the power to influence at all the levels of society and contributing significantly to stereotyping, marginalization and oppression of different communities around the world. The paper aims to critically analyze that in what way media impacts psychology of people by portraying particular communities in the diverse society in such a way that the depiction leads to stereotyping, marginalization and oppression of racial groups. For this purpose, two key resources are used in this paper. One is a web article by Sarah Senghas, named “Racial Stereotypes in the Media” published in 2006, and the second one is an empirical research paper by Elizabeth Monk-Turner, Mary Heiserman, Crystle Johnson,Vanity Cotton, and Manny Jackson, “The Portrayal of Racial Minorities on Prime Time Television: A Replication of the Mastro and Greenberg Study a Decade Later” published in 2010.
The Web. 15 Jan. 2015. Izumi, Yutaka and Frank Hammonds. " Changing Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes: The Roles of Individuals and Groups."
I also researched instances of counter actions taken by Asian Americans to protest against these negative images. My research also has examples of Asians that have succeeded in breaking through the racial barriers in the media. The results show that even though racial stereotyping still exists in various forms of mass media, there are signs that show noticeable improvement in allowing a more balanced image of Asian Americans. Statement of the Problem There are close to 12 million Asian Americans living in the United States (U.S. Asian, 2000). Asian Americans are considered one of the fastest growing minorities (Pimentel, 2001).
The American dream, as some may call it, is a cherished idea by those who may lack opportunities. For those in Mexico, it is something that is sure to have crossed their minds sometime in their life. The United States, to foreigners, has been looked at as a sign of opportunity and freedom from oppressive governments or unfortunate living conditions. The Other Side of Immigration takes a look at the Mexican nation and provides thought-provoking interview segments about the people still living in the nation who experience and observe the effects of immigration to the United States.
Throughout the course of my life, I have always encountered individuals wanting to better their economic situation especially those within my community. Those who come from impoverished communities in other countries risk their lives and lifetime savings to come to the United States hoping that one day they will regain everything that they lost. Their only motivation to come to this country is to be able to provide their family with basic necessities and in order to do this, they must work two or more jobs that pay at minimum wage and are taken for granted. However, many individuals do not see this side of the story and categorize immigrants as unambitious people. In order to be completely aware of what immigrants truly go through and how they succeed in life, one must be willing to place themselves in their shoes and hear his/her story. We must acknowledge that the hands of these people work in back breaking jobs in order to sustain their families. While some Americans may be against immigrants arriving to the United States in search of a better life and the American Dream, in The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse further reveals that immigrants are exploited as cheap labor, and although they contribute greatly to the everyday function of American industry, they are quite invisible.
When telling Jane about the discrimination that a Hispanic woman faced while she was at work, Alba passionately recites the preamble of the constitution and questions Jane, "how much of the preamble do you think she knows?" (16:51-17:05). In this TV show, Alba represents a modern, realistic immigrant experience and illustrates one of the many struggles that immigrants have to face, even after they become legal citizens. Even if an immigrant does a lot of work and spends a lot of time and energy to become legal citizens, all immigrants are treated the same, regardless of status. The work that immigrants may do in order to gain citizenship and American status are not taken into consideration and instead, all immigrants are placed into one generalized category and all treated in the same negative manner. A study on how the United States mainstream media represents immigrants performed by Storm and Alcock found that the analysis of U.S. media "yielded three metaphors that shaped the way the American public viewed these immigrants - IMMIGRATION AS DANGEROUS WATERS, IMMIGRATION AS INVASION, and IMMIGRATION AS DISEASE OR BURDEN" (445). The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which were the two newspapers that were analyzed for this study, frequently use water metaphors to portray the large number of immigrants arriving in the U.S. as a dangerous disaster occurring in the U.S. Frequently, news media reinforces the subordination of immigrants and continuously illustrates them in a negative way. Regardless of who the individual immigrants are, the media only represents them as dangerous immigrants that need to be deported immediately. Instead of only focusing on the deportation of immigrants
The media does not stand in isolation from the separation in society when they report. It is a group wonder, which translates into everyday reality through the actions of individuals. But it is not confined to individuals. It is present in the institutional and cultural matrix of a society. According to Jennifer Pierce, stories about discrimination against people of color and the problems the economy posed for them receive little attention in the news media, while accounts of “reverse discrimination,” “angry white males,” and “white male victims” took center stage—narratives that helped turns the majority of California voters against affirmative action. For example the media have separated the working class and stereotyping class young African-American and Hispanics as gangsters or drug dealers. The media has crushed the younger generation for future education, employment, and other advancements. The media has focused more on the negative aspects of the Hispanic and black than the
From the multiple informative messages of media to the social norms and protocols in different particular areas, an abundant of incomplete thoughts and information gradually occupies peoples’ cognitions—that is how stereotypes are formed. “Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that media representations often contribute to misunder...