Why the Media Coverage of African American Children are less then the Essay

Why the Media Coverage of African American Children are less then the Coverage of Caucasian Children - Essay Example Calvert et.al (14-16) claims that African American children are believed to have been raised by single parents and come from a poor background, but Caucasian children are from the wealthiest society. Additionally, African-Americans have a black race, while Caucasians are white in color, which dominates in America. Such factors lead to more media focus in Caucasian kids than African American children. In this regard, this paper aims at explaining why media focus is more on Caucasian children than children of the minority African-Americans. Media has become one of the most powerful institutional forces in the society. It is responsible for shaping and directing attention cultural values and attitudes. Additionally, most of the aspects in life are impact on the media as well as influenced by the media. The way the media represent a certain social group gives us important clues on its norms, attitudes, and social values towards the particular group. In this case, media focus is more on C aucasian children than African-American. Some of the reasons that explain why media choose to present Caucasian kids and African-Americans in different ways are; to start with the African-Americans are exploited and marginalized (Tolleson et al, 23-25). The society views African-Americans children as inferior because of their color as well as background. Most of their parents struggle to make ends meet in the world economy. To add to this, Caucasian children are over-represented among the advantaged segment of child population, while the other group is disproportionately disadvantaged. As a result, the media focuses more on the group that is over-represented in the society, forgetting about the minority group (Franklin, 32-33). Moreover, the media naturalizes and perpetuates Caucasian kids more naturally superior than Afro-American kids. It tends to reward those who have physical appearance of whites than blacks, with more coverage and exposure on commercial advertisements than Afro -Americans kids who have black appearance. The message it tries to pass to the society is that, black and white color is contradictory and therefore, Africans-Americans kids should try balance their color in order to be accepted in the society (Franklin 32-33). According to, Calvert et.al (14-16) media plays an important role in reconstruction and construction of hegemonic ideologies like racism by naturalizing and creating social realty. For example, it re-presents and re-dramatizes white and black kids within a certain framework of interpretation, which facilitates the passing of messages and preferred ways in both colors. It is argued that Caucasian kids enter the media world in terms of cultural, sports, economic powers and institutional than Afro-American kids. These factors reinforce the color differences through media oppression and subordination of African-Americans kids. The media also fails to cover the achievements of African-Americans focusing on Caucasian children achie vement. They are also under-represented in the society, despite their growth in many areas for the last decades. Niven and Zilber (34-36), claim that African-Americans only receive 10% of media coverage. In case they receive coverage, Afro-Americans are not perceived as the other dominant group but as a stereotype group with reference to something else. To add to this, the Caucasian children dominate the media in most programs and events because of their physical appearance and color attractiveness. For example, in sporting activities they are seen to win in most activities like swimming, tennis diving, and others, thus dominating in most of them. The African-Americans are associated with school-sponsored games while Caucasian childre