Yesterday, people gathered to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by attending prayer breakfasts and service projects, continuing to forge community through fellowship and action. His image was run in news stories, remembrances and his memorable quotes were posted widely on social media.
This is notable, given that generally people that look like Dr. King are largely absent from news, television and film as anything more than criminals, comedic foils or window dressing. Only this Saturday did SNL debut its first black female cast member in over a decade (alongside two black female writers found during their casting search). Onscreen and in the writer’s room, the voices and talents of black artists are not present to be heard and realized in the final product. This leads to both news and entertainment programs (reflections of how we experience the world) being created by a select group (read: cis white upper or middle class males).
That grand world envisioned by King where one is not judged first by their skin is far from being a reality when the depictions of people of color are forged from the assumptions of whites. When young black girls and young black boys don’t see reflections of themselves onscreen, they internalize the images they do see.
Less than Violent Undereducated Criminal Helpless Unstable
The messages the media bombards us with daily from advertisements to movies imprint on us what the ‘ideal’ is, who can be counted as good and trustworthy and who is to be questioned and regarded with suspicion and distrust.
These stereotypes play out every day in the way media spins stories. Did you see the recent on-field interview with NFL player Richard Sherman? He is being decried for screaming and generally coming off as crazed, but really, he was just riding an intense adrenaline wave. Think about it, not only had he just made the play that would take his team to the SUPER BOWL, but he had just survived a game where no less than four people had to be helped or carried off the field! Wouldn’t you be acting erratic and excitable too?
King’s Legacy itself has been sanitized for public consumption; he has been immortalized as a man of faith working for peace and nonviolence, not as a purported communist that was investigated by the FBI. The March on Washington for Jobs and Justice is widely remembered only as the occasion of the I Have a Dream speech while the larger issues and lists of demands continue to be omitted or pushed to the side because they make people confront uncomfortable truths. Americans are so quick to distill people down to idolized heroes that their essence gets lost in the process. For crying out loud, even the monument to Dr. King in DC is white!
With President Obama’s election in 2008, some have questioned whether America is a post-racial society. The reality remains that we have a long way to go. Until a broader range of the American experience is represented both onscreen and in the writers’ rooms and more people of color are brought on news programs as talking heads and experts, America denies the daily reality of almost 40 percent of her people. When the stories of American life are being written by whites painting blacks and other people of color as the ‘other’ we will all continue to be depicted as stereotypes. This prevents us from being able to start from a blank page and relate first as humans, let alone move forward together as a society.
It is incumbent upon all of us, black or white, to question what we’re being told. Ask yourself why media focused on a drug arrest in the inner city, but not the suburbs; why sitcoms are mostly intra-racial; or why dark skinned people rarely get to be the protagonist. Challenge stereotypes. Question your assumptions. And remember, if you’re not actively working against racism, you are serving the structures that perpetuate it.
