Character Analysis: Why Everybody Hates Chris

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Why Everybody Hates Chris: Analyzing Race in Media Everybody hates Chris is a television series created by Chris Rock and Ali LeRoy that focuses on the life of young Chris rock in 1980’s Bedford Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy), New York. Bed-Stuy is a neighborhood that’s directly affected by the then rising problem of crack cocaine. Chris lives with his father who has two jobs, his mother, younger brother and sister. Although Chris lives in bed stuy his mother sends him to Jr. High School across town in a poor Italian neighborhood called Brooklyn beach. She believes Chris will have a better education with “White kids”. Chris’s good friendship with Greg, one of the least popular students in the school, makes Chris more of a target of bullies and other white students. I chose this show because it focuses in the struggles of a teen facing racial problems head on and searching for solution to defeat dominant stereotypes placed on him and his family.
I analyzed a two part …show more content…

Racism and ethnocentrism are two major substantive areas that stand out to me in the show. “Racism is the belief that members of separate races possess different or unequal traits” (Conley 323). “Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture group is superior to others and the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of one’s own” (Conley 326). Chris faces racism of some sort each day, he is picked on by white students and when he rides the bus to school no one will sit in a seat with him or stand near him. Chris’ teacher believes Chris is the product of every black stereotype known, and she sympathizes with him on a regular basis as an attempt to prove too she is not racist when in reality she says offensive things to him daily. The students in school have been raised with these ideologies about black people. When he decides to run for president he is able deconstruct some of the stereotypes and garner the support of his

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