Reading About Race in the Media

Week 6 Reflection for the Readings:

I read a lot of articles this week about race in the media. This comes in different forms, for example the topic of how the media uses race in crime reporting, the racial wealth gap increasing since Coronavirus, and the damaging effects of racism in Hollywood. These articles made me stop and think and really look at myself and society. As I read I began to form some questions.

The first few articles were about how news stations use race or sometimes don’t when they are reporting crime. “The skin color of a person is not as reliable an identifier as the general public might think,” Clark said, citing as an example a colleague of Puerto Rican descent who often asks groups to guess his ethnicity just based on his physical appearance and hears everything from Jewish to Arabic to Mexican" (Millar). This made me think, do you think the use of race is necessary in crime reporting?, If it is not used what do you assume? In my experience I always hear the news, especially at night, bash Black men and paint them and dangerous criminals. I also have observed that different news outlets leave out the race if a white person commits the crime. Yet, some people don’t assume anything if they read a report that does not disclose the race of anyone.

However, I did realize that people also agree with me. If a late night news show is reporting on a horrid murder, if the assailant is Black, the race is mentioned. However, if the race is not mentioned, some people, like myself, assume it was a white person.

The articles I read about race being used in news reports made me wonder if there was a solution. How can you report the news accurately instead of perpetuating stereotypes? I do think that race is necessary when reporting crime because as I mentioned above the race is usually on the police report. However, I think that the news stations need to do a better job of always using race with crime reporting instead of only doing it with minorities. One of my classmates also agreed that the broadcasts should use more descriptors instead of just throwing races and ethnic minorities into a certain group (criminals).

I also had to stop and pause when I read about the racial wealth gap increasing. "More than 3 million people have filed for unemployment in the last two weeks alone. Latinx and African American people have been hit hardest by the layoffs" (Rushe). I wondered, why were Latinx and Black communities the hardest hit by both the disease and layoffs since last March? Then I thought duh, these are the same communities that hold both our essential workers and the people that lost their jobs due to it being closed; These are our country’s EMTS, nurses, farmers, transportation, restaurant staff etc. I have personally been both considered laid off and an essential worker since last March. I was a server at a restaurant that closed on March 15, 2020 and I was laid off until the summer. Once restaurants opened back up I was suddenly considered an essential worker that literally risked their health everyday.

In closing, the last moment of reflection I had was after I read about the lasting effects that old Hollywood has. This is a nice way of talking about the racist culture that was displayed in movies and on television. Since this past summer and the killing of George Floyd, a lot of companies have begun rebranding themselves and removing any ties they have to racism after being called out. This trend has translated into the movie realm as well with some old movies being under fire for their racist inclinations; movies such as Gone With the Wind have some people wondering if they should even be accessible. I will say that movies such as these can be harmful in today’s society because they still ring true in certain aspects. Media that stereotypes Black people, and other minorities, and paints them as caricatures are horrible. However, I don’t think that erasing the past is necessarily the answer. I think that there should be some kind of middle ground that helps new generations understand racism and why such media is wrong. If companies destroyed their pasts I think an opportunity would be missed and would be a lot like pretending it didn’t happen.

Hannah Reed