Racial & Ethnic Relations Exam 2

Exam 2 Lecture NotesC

culture

beliefs and practices that orient people' to their society

Mass Media

media channels of communication that transmit information to a wide segment of the population

popular culture

beliefs, ideas, images, and objects that are part of everyday life

dominant culture

dominant group culture

• culture associated with the most powerful group in society

Cultural hegemony

pervasive and excessive influence of one culture throughout society

• despite changes, the dominant culture still views poc through a narrow lens that distorts reality

Racial Frames

scripts that frame how we see ourselves and others through the lens of race

Cultural Racism

images and ideas the presume that superiority of whites and inferiority of people of color

chiquita Banana

picture of mexican women dancing to get people to buy it

• aunt jemima: syrup

• Uncle Ben: rice

Media

can be stereotypical

racial-ethnic stereotypes overlap with gender stereotypes

controlling Images

images that restrict ideas of people, particularly poc

Collins 4 types of controlling images

1. the  mammy

• black women who are happy to serve

1. the welfare queen

• black mother takes advantage of the system and dosen’t work

1. the matriarch

• bossy 

• agressive

1. jezebel/wh*re

• black women with no morals

• s*x with anyone

• sexually permissive 

1. The black lady?

• mean

• mad all the time

• attitudes

Caps on Welfare

deny additional assistance after a child is born if the mother was already recieving assistance before the pregnancy

Objectification

process of treating a human

• being as an object/thing

echo of the past

yellow peril, frito bandito, black sambo

• many of today’s images have origins in an earlier history (contemporary representations)

• disney

• looney tunes

Who sees what?

the media acts as agents of socialization:

they convey norms, values, ideas, to a public whose thinking and identities are then shaped by the images presented

• 70% of infants spend about two hours per day in front of a screen

• children of color are now 44% of the population

Certain themes recur in the presentations of racial - ethnic groups

associating race and criminality 

poc as hypersexual

poc as alien/other

police = African Americans with danger and crime are more likely to shoot than aa not associated with that

ways to explain racial and ethnic representation in pop culture & media

1. demographic changes in population (not represented as main actors in movies)

2. status in media organizations

3. critical race theory

critical race theory

veiwpoint that the media and pop culture reflect and re-create hierachial systems of race, class, and gender in society 

capitalism

economic system based on the pursuit of profit and private ownership

racial

Race and Identity: micro-level

the part of society that is up close and quite directly observable 

race and identity macro-level

large-scale social system and institutions that further constitute society

• racial categories

• racial norms

Identity

a persons self conception

meads Identity

• looking glass self 

• taking the role of the other 

• generalized other 

racial identity

the sense one has of oneself as belonging to a racial group (comes w special expectation on how we behave and what we belive)

master status

a status that trumps over other forms of identity while also intersecting with other master statuses: gender and age 

Minority group

small amount of power