Race, Ethnicity, Psychology and Culture
Question: Western Media is and has been a key site for the representation of ideas about radicalized groups, which repeats, reinvents, and shapes wider ideas of race. Assess this statement using case examples in your answer.
Introduction
“Great power entails great responsibility,” as Spiderman would reiterate as he realizes that he is a man bestowed with power to liberate people who are in need and oppressed. As he faces an epistemic dilemma, Spiderman recognizes that such power belongs rightly to the people. Thus, as Spiderman acknowledges his enormous power, he then carries a great responsibility that he has to fulfill for humanity’s sake. In the same way, existential tone leads us to realize our role as individuals as we fulfill our different functions in the operations of the society. Each individual is endowed with gifts and these gifts naturally demand a specific function.
With power at hand, man’s natural reactions are varied according to necessity and context. The power may be used use in different ways, either positively or negatively. Using this power for personal gain and interest may be injurious and dangerous to others. More so, if this power is used collectively to harm innocent people, this would lead to destruction. The challenge is for each person to have a responsible use of power to fulfill crucial functions to humanity in general.
Media as an institution itself does not merely influence the consciousness of every individual but tends to manipulate and control the operations and processes of the consciousness. Moreover, media institution symbolically offers a sanctuary for those who are suffering from injustice, oppression, and discrimination. Media upholds the rights of the people, a defender of a cause, and a harbinger of spreading information and freedom.
Hegemony, Power, and Ideology
According to Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist and social theorist, all human actions take place within the social fields which are areas of struggle for the resources. These resources could either be in the form of economy or culture. Obviously, the friction of the struggle for these resources is mainly caused by power. For Bourdieu, power is concentrated in three fields – economic, political, and social power. At most, the projection of power is concentrated in the control of resources through the use of ideology and hegemony. Ideology and hegemony are the two concepts that are assumed to have been influential channels in the hoarding of power.
The common understanding of ideology is described as a set of deliberately formulated coherent, rational, usually political ideas that is used as a way of defining and understanding how society can be organized (Shaughnessy, 1999). In this context describing someone as following an ideology suggests that their views are unrealistic, rigid, and dogmatic, that the person is always trying to makes reality fit their ideological beliefs. Such a se of the term according to Shaughnessy (199) assumes that ideologies are always in some sense inherently false and flawed because they are not realistic or they do not reflect reality. However, this is the traditional conception of the idea on ideology which sprouted from the doctrine of Marx and even Marx himself delivered and offered such definition of ideology, most especially a ‘dominant ideology’ in particular.
This Marxist analysis of ideology brought forth diverse interpretations from intellectuals after his reign. According to Andrew Tolson (1996), author of the book Mediations: Text and Discourse in Media Studies as far as a practice of critical analysis is concerned, much hinges on Marx’s conception of the dominance of this ruling ideology—that is, how precisely ‘those who lack the mental production are subject to it’. There are weaker and stronger versions of what subjection could mean. If we assume that these ideas are, essentially, not our own, but the ideas of the ruling class, then there is already a certain critical distance from them. Moreover, if these ideas are nothing more than ideal expressions, then it might be possible to see around them, or even see through them, in some way (p. 161-162). Through ideology, ruling groups attempt to universalize their own interests as the interests of all.
The prescription of ideology in a society using the power coming from the dominant class are disseminated and integrated in laws, rules, norms, habits, and even a quite general consensus, and this take the form of what Gramsci called hegemony.
Therefore, power and ideology are two fundamental elements at play in media. Without power that assert and ascertain certain values, norms, and beliefs, no ideology with regards to these may not formed. However, the presence of ideology assumes the ability and the resources of power of people who imposed, ascribed and enforce worldviews.
Role of Media in shaping consciousness and lifestyle
A certain belief may be dominantly acceptable when it passes through the process of legitimatization and consent. Usually, the seat of power is concentrated from the ruling class which regulates and mobilizes such legitimatization and consent. The dominant class, with its great power, can manipulatively legitimize certain belief and ideology through the intervention of effective and influential conduits. One powerful conduit is media.
Gramsci points out that media, as an institution, manipulates the social consciousness of a society which, in effect, becomes hegemonic. Furthermore, Louw (2005) states that “becoming hegemonic means becoming the dominant or ‘leading group’ in the society. This entails becoming the ‘ruling group’ whose concept of reality then sets the tone”. In this post-modern era, media plays a powerful role, and we can even say rule, over the lives of people more than the power coming from the clergies and educators. Gramsci foresees media as foremost among the institutions’ echelon. Undeniably, education is feed mostly by media, more so, with the church authorities that use media to effectively convey their power. The effects that media brings are indeed encompassing and can reach beyond barriers.
The generally accepted thought when we speak of media is that an institution assumed the role of being the fourth estate which upholds the importance of conveying information. The cardinal virtues in which we ascribed to be of media’s ideal principles are to practice objective, impartial, and balance reporting of information. However, media practitioners do not observe such principles due to uncontrolled constraints and interferences coming from external and internal influence. Moreover, attached to its grand responsibility as a fourth estate is to become the “balance beam” of the three state democratic branches namely the legislative, judiciary and executive. It is not just simply to act as scrutinizer of the state rather, to help the society grow and the public must be well-informed about recent and important issues which usually affect them. The media must remember that being an institution possesses certain amount of power to influence the public. However, they should always be reminded that this power which is inherent in them be exercised properly.
Media: Site for Representation of Ideas
Let us take a look at media as a site of representation of ideas in the plane of postmodernism. But first, let us look into the classical notion and role of media before we jumped into its modernized and post-modernized role in the society in general. Media were believed to mirror, reflect or represent ideas and reality. As both an institution and instruments, media play a crucial role in the development and formation of the society in which it assumes one of the most significant roles, that is to inform the public of right, objective and fair information regardless of danger and harm it will produce. Yet, only few realizes such noble responsibility instead others abused media as an instrument to advance and pursue personal interests. As it was discussed above, because media dominantly influenced and control by the few or elites, most often the ideas and information flow is being selected and manipulated for their own gain.
Jean Baudrillard, a French postmodern social theorist, avant-garde, and postmodern media theorist provides a paradigmatic models of the media as all-powerful and autonomous social forces which produce a wide range of effects. We can extract most of his provocative and radical thoughts in his works Toward a Critique of the Political Economy, Understanding Media, and The Mirror of Production. These works were significant in media studies in which it provides radical reflections about media situated in this postmodern society. In line with the idea that media assumes a place wherein it represents ideas. What is intriguing is that since media do not fester in a certain locale, but rather active and dynamic, is highly dubious that media now represents ideas that are grounded on the reality outside. We even further asked whose ideas are being represented in the media, are these ideas represent the collective sentiments of the people regardless of their social status? Or are these ideas only represents the elite and minorities and marginalized are simply passive and silent.
According to Baudrillard, the rise of the broadcast media is an important determinant of post-modernity along with the rapid dissemination of signs and simulacra in every realm of social and everyday life. He then branded media as key “simulation machines which reproduce images, signs, and codes which constitute an autonomous realm of reality (retrieved August 4, 2008 www.gseis.ucla.edu).” Now, to look at media in the plane of being a site which represents ideas is quite relevant. However, these ideas are suspected to be more than what it reflects from the outside reality and are rather ideas highly fabricated to represents or create a hyper-reality. The social analyses of Baudrillard about media point to a reversal of the relation between representation and reality. Now, media are coming to constitute a hyper-reality, a more real than real, wherein the real is subordinate to representation leading to the dissolution of the real. Moreover, Baudrillard claims that the proliferation of signs and information annihilates meaning which leads to its collapse and destruction between media and reality. Looking into these ideas, we are no longer surprise if media nowadays radicalized some major issues and social structures which often lead to repetition, reinvention, and shaping wider hyper-real representative ideas.
Media on issue about Race
Today, we addressed our sentiments, social, economic and political discourses through media. By and large, media become our effective channels in which we convey our utmost desires for political, economic and social change. Since media have the power to discharge thoughts and ideas which positively promote social and political stability or order, however, as an institution it also branded to be bias and partial. On the other hand, media can also be used by some in unfettering subversive information that can destabilize the current social order and status quo. This reality is inescapably subject to diagnosis and evaluation of media scholars and social theorists. Throughout the history of media, the redress and undress of fundamental principles and theories were significant in order to adjust itself from the current trends and demands of society. However, there are still principles that are orthodox which exists alongside the history of humanity. Hence, the issue on race is one of many social issues people tend to solve and media play a key role in the evolution and formation of human consciousness towards our perception on race. When we look at media as both as an institution and instrument, we can easily underline its powerful role on racial issues. Upon looking at various cases which directly relate to media and race, we can find fertile ideas that would lead us realize and understand how western media contribute to the many social issues like race.
The problem of the color line emerges to be highly significant in western countries like America. The division between the light and black colors intermittently discussed in multiple public spheres. Civil disorders in United States came upon the arrival of minorities most especially of black descent. Discrimination, oppression and civil rights deprivation became major causes of upheavals amongst people with black color line against authorities’ cruelty and discriminatory measures. Here, the role of media greatly receive satisfactory grade on the issue about race. If to look at media as instruments, it does occupy several communication tools like television, radio, print, theatre and new media technologies like web or internet. Thus, we come to asked ourselves what image does the media conveyed or form on let us say, people with black color line? How media present information or images that have something to do with race? We are not only dealing here with a specific issue on race but the generality of its concepts applied to all situations wherein racial issues are prevailing. But in order to illustrate the epitomical role of media on social issue, we must take a look at particular events in which the involvement of media greatly affects our ideas on racism and the subordinating correlative racial concepts. First, in order to bring a clear arguments and articulations about our thesis statement let us first treat media as a tool or instrument. In this way we are going to look at media’s instruments in which it communicates representations or images about our ideas and notion of racial discrimination and concept of race in general.
The Use of Representative Images
One good example in order to explain deliberately the role of media as a site of representation of ideas which radically reinvents repeats and shapes wider ideas or understanding of race is the use of historical literature. One of the most significant historical literatures was the racial history about the African black minorities living in the white country like United States. Let us then examine the images of African-American or people with color line portrayed in various mediums. In the book by Jessie Carney Smith (1988), the Images of Blacks In America Culture, he investigated various mediums in which the discriminatory images for color line people were explicitly manifested. He deeply engaged on studying the images found in theatrical plays, musical, literary writings, and folklores. In the early theater, Black in the early centuries was considered slaves and was subjugated by their white lords.
Since color line people are despised minority with little or no influence over the literature, it was not surprising that even before the nineteenth century bizarre caricatures arose in connection with white-run musical theater. This was a form of entertainment with strength in its identification with popular sentiments – sentiments that held color line people to be pathetic, laughable, or stupid. In the 1840s the dawn of blackface minstrel took place. The minstrel show was a theatrical entertainment in which “images of Negroes shaped by white expectations and desires and not by Black realities (p 31, 1988).” Minstrel men were experts in caricature. Along with cork-darkened faces, lips were painted extra large and white; players wore rags or ludicrously fancy clothes and told jokes loudly in a dialect not necessarily resembling Black speech. The earliest Blacks to cross the color line on the antebellum stage was the legendary dancer William Henry Lane, who did not work in blackface but toured in i1845 and later with three white showmen calling themselves the Ethiopian Minstrels. Moreover, in contrast to the negative image portrayed by the domineering race at that time was a literary writing entitled Uncle Tom’s Cabin in which the author speaks her sentiments about the color line people who considered being equal to the colorless people. This novel being recognized as a milestone in American literature and politics was widely disseminated in dramatic form, with music interludes. The drama depicted the slavery issue squarely and vehemently, the image of the colored people within the play. Although it is pervaded by a melodramatic tone typical of the time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin recognized that colored people, Blacks in particular were human beings and embodied human emotions.
The culture of America is multiethnic and multiracial. The Afro-American race had the greatest handicap of all. They were the only people who began life in America not even owning them selves. Blacks had little chance to learn history, to establish self-identity, or to formulate satisfying self-images. They have to survive by learning the speech of the white masters. The exclusion and segregation of their race significantly hindered them to interact with the culture and social atmosphere of the whites. Much of the notion, hence, consciously attempted to mold the Black mentality into one self-image – that of a slave. These indications which clearly mapped in American history contained in various literatures which we considered as means of communication—medium of transmitting knowledge and information to people of the present and the future. In fact in the early movement of the century, the presence of stereotyping still exists in the mid 40s and 50s. The cultural images still leaned toward portraying the life of segregation in various literatures like children books, illustrative materials and books.
Hence, given these representative images, it is very clear how media as an instrument manipulated, used, and controlled by the dominant class to spread and promote discriminative and oppressive values that legitimize the current state of people’s consciousness, in this case, the colored people. They are unconsciously conditioned to be of lower class-race and are lived for the service to their masters. One stereotypical connotation on attached to the name Black is slavery hardly surprising that even towards the early 19th century the notion of Black still conjures a concept of slavery. Moreover, the power of media as noted in the previous discussion is encompassing and unconquerable, yet can be reached and conquer only when agents –man in this case, consciousness enable to manage and temper the power of media by making it useful and beneficial to the common interest and not for personal gain. We see how media are being used to propagate the interest of the few and the dominant and if we base our discussion on this fact, we can say that the racial discrimination among Afro-American race was strongly founded and propagated through the use of media in particular, theatre, print, and literature.
Media and Race
I do believe that vital to the role of media is to shape the consciousness of the people. Through a simple advertisement of any products which has an interesting proverbial lines, when it attracts our attention it submerges to the subconscious and without our knowing it make us push towards getting such product. That is why many are addicted to a lot of things most especially things that have to do with lifestyle and technology. Moreover, most of us when watching a news story we are easily convinced to believe what is being conveyed. But without knowing that news stories do not necessarily contain the whole truth because of it undergoes certain process of selection, edition, and control. Hence, news bits and headlines do not necessarily reflect the truth in the real specific events it took place. Although, some news reporters strive to make a balance, objective and impartial reporting, it inevitably cannot commit any biases and partiality when reporting.
In this line of thought, let us extract some cases in which the role of media in the news field manifest some biases and misshape of consciousness towards racial issues. Although, nowadays, it can be noted that racial slur is prohibited in the international human rights law. Unlike of the past centuries wherein racial discrimination became the central social and political issue, today, as the world gradually becomes highly literate, social and cultural reforms are highly important and significant. However, let us examine notable cases which will show contours of biases and inequality treatment to the subordinated race. A report made by (2006), Rethinking the Discourse on Race: A Symposium on How the Lack of Racial Diversity in the Media Affects Social Justice and Policy, provides recent issue on racial diversity. The report said that during the height of hurricane Katrina, the storm laid bare the cleavages of race and class that continue to divide the nation. Noting the statement of which goes, “the storm exposed the fact that race does matter, so, too, does class. We learned that economics can save lives. It was the difference in who had a bank account or a credit card that determined who got out of the city and where they stayed once they were out (p.9, 2006)”, it was clear how racial stereotypes still apparent. Mediated through media, the torrent of images speaks not only to the unrelenting swing that race holds over the nation’s collective consciousness, as well as its public policies.
By and large, the coverage highlighted how the media give shape to public discourse about race. The bias in perception and interpretation is profoundly inevitable for reporters to temper in its lowest level. Carlson noted that during the hurricane two news bureaus captured two different photographs. The Agence France-Presse published a photograph of a young couple carrying bags of food and a case of soda through chest-deep water with descriptive caption “finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.” Meanwhile, another news bureau Associated Press published a nearly identical photo of a lone young man wading through water with provisions in tug with a descriptive caption for the subject “looting a grocery store.” Although nearly identical in composition and tone, there was one salient difference – the subjects in the first photo appeared to be white while the young man in the second photo was black. When photos were vis-à-vis posted in the internet many critics viewed it as biased coverage of the storm and its aftermath. Moreover, media reinforcing racial stereotype was confirmed in the research made by two communication scholars of the University of in their analysis of post-storm news photos. Gandy and Lee analyzed the racial coding of photographs that appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post from August 30 to September 7 of 2005. According to them, whites stand to be active agents in their own rescue over 80 percent of the time, while blacks were shown in roughly equal proportion to be passive. Most African Americans were portrayed as being passive, doing nothing. “They just looked incompetent. It is like they lacked some intelligence on responding to their own disaster” Lee commented.
Yet the Katrina coverage represents just a small corner of the media universe, and the racial stereotypes that often pervaded the coverage represented one example—albeit an especially dramatic one – of how the media often present distorted representations of various minority groups. As reiterated, “when we talk about our representation in mass media, we are totally invisible. When you talk about our television, again, very rarely do you see a Native American judge, or an attorney, or a cab driver for that matter. He noted television communicates more ideas and images to people in a single day than Solomon or Shakespeare did in their entire lives. Yet when Native Americans, especially the young and the old, hear the “loud sound of exclusion” they feel the pain acutely. Hence, media shape and misshape race to some extent.
Conclusion
Media as an instrument and as an institution with inherent power subscribe to influence and manipulate values and consciousness of the people. The various channels which composed the entity perpetuate different messages that are manipulated and controlled by the few groups or the dominant class. In line with this thought, media discharge ideologies and stand to be hegemonic, such role being established greatly affect the formation of social order, in particular the issue on race. Due to the prevalence and effective tools of media, racial discrimination became stiff and fierce to the Black as regarded to be a second class or low-racial class. However, through media, Blacks also regained the dignity of being human and stiff stereotyping and discrimination became lax as the world becomes more literate and knowledgeable. Still racial issues are although, not too heavy and explicit as compared before unavoidable to some groups and to some extent. The acute treatment of the colorless skin people to those with color line skins are the effects of the influence of media publicity. What is essential here is that media plays a powerful role in shaping and reinventing ideas. Yet, we no longer surprised if these ideas are product of the influence, manipulation and control of few dominant groups. The inherent power of media instruments can be both shape and misshape our consciousness towards certain social or political issues like race. While minorities strive to regain equality and respect from other race, the use of media is imperative.
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