Introduction
Mass media plays a pivotal role in fueling negative stereotypes. These stereotypes have downward effects on the communities they target. Through media, stereotypical race and gender norms flourish and become standard. Media allows for negative stereotypes about minority groups to circulate and fester. The mainstream themes associated with the Black community are criminality, poverty, lack of education and lack of ambition. In conjunction with multi-media/film, news media has a great influence on how Blackness is perceived by other races, and internalized by Blacks. News media overcriminalized minorities, and frames Blacks as barbaric and sub-human.
Mass media drives normative ideologies imposed onto the Black community, and influences the standards which themselves hold for each other. Media construdes the idea of power and masculinity within the Black community. Masculinity within the Black community is a prevalent theme that influences the way Black men engage with society, and plagues their outlook on life. Damaging stereotypes of the way a ‘strong Black man’ is supposed to operate socially and intimately, complements the goals of systematically oppressive structures that benefit from the development of these social norms. Black men use these social norms to build acceptable characteristics that would make them the ideal man, and develop an aggressive and oppositional attitude towards men that do not fit those characteristics. Doing so, it negatively affects their relationships with women, educational and occupational opportunities, and health care. The thought papers and images featured on this page explore the ways in which media has tainted the ideas of how a Black person should look, speak, and operate.
