Media & Minorities

"You're fired!" became the catch phrase in the spring of 2004 as NBC's The Apprentice captured public and media attention. Even though The Apprentice was not exclusively about race, it communicated and reinforced racial messages that are part and parcel of the dominant American ideology. No matter which minority group is represented, the media in America offer the same bill of fare: first, exclusion; followed by stereotyping that makes a sharp distinction between "good" minority members and "bad" ones; and finally, the telling of stories that justify racial inequality in American society. Media & Minorities looks at all these tendencies with an eye to identifying the "system-supportive" messages conveyed and offering challenges to them. The book covers all major media-including television, film, newspapers, radio, and magazines-and systematically analyzes their representation of the four largest minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Entertainment media are compared and contrasted with news media, and special attention is devoted to coverage of social movements for racial justice and politicians of color. Political communication scholar Stephanie Greco Larson brings sharp insight into how the white-dominated media do a disservice to all their audiences when it comes to their representation of racial and ethnic minorities. She gives us ammunition for decoding the dominant messages and then combating them, whether through political activism, "culture jamming," or the creation and patronage of alternative media. Larson encourages readers to fight the misleading media messengers, saying "you're fired!" to media that undermine racial equality.