“I don’t see color”, an all too common response to asking if someone’s race motivated the way someone treats them. Its a response that fails to grasp the nuance of racial dynamics in America and how many ethnic groups are portrayed in entertainment media and news. Examples seem countless: African Americans’ constant characterization as temperamental thugs, Native Americans ignorant depiction as primitive barbarians, and Middle Easterner’s constant portrayals as terrorists and swindlers. These stereotypes are most prominent in the aforementioned entertainment media such as Film, TV, and literature.
It manifests in both disproportionate news coverage and even our own legislature.
When it comes to racially motivated legislation, especially in schools, international correspondent of the New York Times, Simon Romero states, “One measure that recently passed the Texas House, largely along party lines, would limit teacher-led discussions of current events; prohibit course credit for political activism or lobbying, which could include students who volunteer for civil rights groups; and ban teaching of The 1619 Project”. Many powerful figures in the state legislature wish to reframe American history to have our children forget the pain enslaved and colonized ethnic groups endured. They seem to want to quell any attempt for the next generation to understand the complexities and history of race in America.
And moving on from just education it’s impossible to ensure the people in our judiciary system and congress are truly unprejudiced. As one PRHS sophomore Maryann Yousef puts it, “There have been a lot of white supremacists in government and congress recently and their majority vote could have a really negative impact.”
And news outlets don’t fare better, as the most popular television news outlet in the country is Fox News. Fox is an organization which has worked against giving Americans factual and balanced coverage while vilifying people’s racial prejudices. This is seen in their disproportionate coverage of black and brown crime in urban areas acting as though violent crime is more relevant in America than it’s ever been before. Despite every available, credible statistic showing crime drop precipitously.
“A comparison of data from agencies that voluntarily submitted at least two or more common months of data for January through March 2023 and 2024 indicates reported violent crime decreased by 15.2 percent. Murder decreased by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery decreased by 17.8 percent, and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5 percent. Reported property crime also decreased by 15.1 percent.” (FBI June 10th).
This goes without mentioning their disproportionate coverage of migrant crime, which is exceedingly sparse and only pursued in order to foster hatred. The goal of these outlets is not to inform the people but further perpetuate harmful stereotypes of certain ethnic groups.
Through some work and introspection we can examine our racial prejudices, however it’s another thing entirely to go about getting rid of them. Some key pieces of legislation up to this point in history have been put in place to ensure economic and social equality between the diverse array of races in this country. Sophomore Yousef posits, “I can’t really give an answer, we have too many perspectives. But we should focus on as cliche as it is equality.”
