Friday, January 29, 2010

How does the media present us?


Black people have always been troublesome in the sense of how they should be projected on TV.

One thing i've learned pertaining to the images of blacks in america is that they aren't static.

Images of blacks change according to the needs this society has for them.

Lets start with slavery.

In slavery there was a need of this government to show blacks as "happy slaves" so that they wouldnt have any guilt in enslaving blacks.

So you saw flyers and advertisements with blacks smiling and enjoying their existence in slavery.

They horrible things that were done to slaves wasnt shown as much as these happy images.

And all of this was done to soothe white guilt for what they were doing to their fellow human beings.

When blacks were freed the government portrayed them in another light.

This white supremacist government didnt want to give blacks all of the rights and resources that were owed to them.

They couldnt take seeing large numbers of educated, business owning blacks because it opened up the possibilty that these people were actually equal to them so they portrayed blacks in the mainstream media as savages, incapable of adjusting to freedom and incapable of governing themselves.

This portrayal was created to justify the terrorization of blacks on so many levels in this country, because if they are savages incapable of controling their primitive nature then they have to be controlled and dominated by the ruling society right.

And these portrayal continued all through the early 1900's to around the mid to late 1960's.

Then the civil rights struggle hit and civil rights leaders started to plea to the broadcasters to show more "positive" images of blacks.

So the media started to portray blacks being integrated, living with and being friends with white people.

They did this to say to white america, "they are just like us" so that white america wouldnt be so hostile to their integration.

These images are still carried out today.

Even though there is still television programing that present us as savages and barbarians, the vast majority of media images show us in a "glowing light" that is, just like whites but only colored.

They have also depicted us as being just like them so that these sell out black people with inculcated white values could be considered normal while the vast majority of struggling blacks were considered abnormal and deviant.

Basically saying we shouldnt try to help other blacks who are continuously held back by the government.

Many of us dont even think we are held back because of the pervasiveness of the successful images on television.

We have been totally brainwashed and many people dont see it yet because they have never been taught how to analyze the media.

Im gonna start writing more posts about this issue.

Stay tuned.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

the media is a very strong tool. and yes, totally brainwashing and deceiving.

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