Media+Stereotyping+And+African+Americans

__**T//hesis Statement//**__

Media stereotypes of African Americans fuel racism and discrimination in our society and have a negative effect on developing African American youth.

__** Research Questions **__

1. Should we speak up and voice our displeasure with stereotyping?

2. What affect has media stereotyping had on African American youth?

3. To what extent has media stereotyping impacted African Americans?

4. How can you determine the impact media has on developing youth?

**__Research Process Reflection__**
I found the Ohio Link Database the most beneficial in my research for this project. I was able to find books, videos and journals that were pertinent to the project. This database allowed me to access multiple media resources for my paper providing me with varied sources. Because OhioLINK is used for teaching and research, and is made up of the State Library of Ohio, and 88 colleges, I felt safe using it as a reliable scholarly source http://www.ohiolink.edu/about/what-is-ol.html.

After finding an article or book I thought was appropriate, I read the article, checked the books out and skimmed them initially to see if there was enough information to use, and if it supported the project. Some of them did not. In the future, I will be better at finding the best scholarly sources for research projects based on these exercises. The other sites that I used initially had a lot of popular sources that could possibly be unreliable. I used Google initially to search, and found that search was not going to produce the number or types of sources I needed. I will always use a scholarly database in the search strategy process .

__**Multimedia Element**__
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**__Topic Introduction __**
 This summer, I was shocked by racist comments I read online pertaining to a flash mob incident in Cleveland Heights. It made me very aware of the racism that is alive and thriving in our society. It also made me think about the media aspect of that racism. How does the media portray African Americans?

In the book Cultural Diversity and the U.S. Media, Entman (1992) proposes that the visual and audio in television news, portrays both Blacks and Whites accused of crimes, but seems to be fueling “modern racism”. Entman stated that Blacks are presented in the news 37% of the time. He found that news video was often dehumanizing to Blacks because Blacks were often not presented well. I believe the youtube video, “Antoine Dodson warns a PERP on LIVE TV” “hide your kids, hide your wife”, is a perfect example of this.

(Book Source: Kamalipour, Yahya, and Carilli, Theresa. Cultural Diversity and the U.S. Media. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998 )

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__**Annotated Bibliography**__
Beck, Bernard. "The Awful Truth: Unflattering Portraits In A Serious Man, And Precious." //Multicultural Perspectives// 12.3 (2010): 152-155. //Academic Search Complete//. Web. 1 Dec. 2011.

Bernard Beck is a Professor at Princeton University. He served as president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. The focus of this article is particularly on the uncomplimentary portrayal of minority groups in two movies. The author speaks about the burden on minorities of having an unfavorable reputation and the impact of negative stereotypes. He describes the reluctance of minority groups to air their dirty laundry and thus avoid bad publicity. The article discusses the pros and cons of highlighting negative portrayals. The sources cited are other movies that deal with controversial minority group issues. The article addresses a portion of the question, to what extent media stereotyping has impacted African Americans.

Stewart, Jacqueline. "The Scholars Who Sat By The Door." //Cinema Journal// 49.1 (2009): 146-153. //Academic Search Complete//. Web. 1 Dec. 2011.

Jacqueline Stewart is a Professor of Radio/Television/Film and African American Studies at Northwestern University’s School of Communication. Her sources are journals, minutes from meetings, and scholars that she interviewed. The article was more focused on the Society for Cinema and Media and minority scholars than about minorities in cinema and media. The author did talk about “race movies” and “stereotypes”, “misrepresentation and marginalization” in film at the beginning of her article. She also discusses the issue of who is deemed qualified to study race and cinema. The style of presentation was intended for scholars and professionals. This article addresses the question, should we speak up and voice our displeasure with stereotyping and adds the dimension of who would be qualified to do that.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Tosi, Paula. "Thinking About What We See: Using Media Literacy To Examine Images Of African Americans On Television." //Black History Bulletin// 74.1 (2011): 13-20. //Academic Search Complete//. Web. 1 Dec. 2011.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Paula Tosi is a middle school teacher at Belvidere Central Middle School in Belvidere, Illinois and a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction at Northern Illinois University. She writes a thought provoking article about the need for young students to be taught media literacy practices using programs they watch. She focuses particularly on television and examines African American stereotypes and consumer’s desensitization to stereotypical messages. She writes about the need for students to think critically and become critically engaged in questioning the media and its portrayals of African American Society. She supports her arguments with information from both historical and recently published journals. The article reports a lack of recent studies on the formation of how young children’s perception of their culture and themselves is affected by television. The author feels strongly about making students cognizant of how the media industry operates and the effect its depictions can have on society. The article follows with a lesson plan, activities and parent and teacher resources, to help teach students to critique how African Americans are portrayed in the media and question how these portrayals affect the way African Americans are perceived. The article is supported by scholarly sources.

__**Related Links**__
<http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html>. <http://www.communication.illinois.edu/tldixon/research_files/Dixon%20%282008b%29.pdf>. <http://condor.depaul.edu/mwilson/extra/humor/steoaatv.html>. <(http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/SpecialFeature/feb597.htm)>.