Do you know that most of the violent criminals, drug users, juvenile delinquents and poor people in the US are Anglo-Americans? And that the majority of African-Americans are none of the above? If you find these facts surprising, it is because of the way African-Americans have been negatively portrayed on the media for the past 50 years. Not only do these images justify the Anglo-Americans distrust and hostility toward African-Americans, but they also send a powerful message to them that: the majority of African-Americans are violent and criminal, drug addicted and ignorant.
Since the birth of the industry, African-Americans have been presented in the media as dangerous and violent. This stereotype of African-Americans defined by Joseph Boskin as the savage and the sambo images has been reinforced by the media for nearly 400 years, and is still alive today. An example of this stereotype would be the movie " The Hurricane ", based on the novel " Lazarus and the Hurricane " by Chainton and Swinton, which is the true story of a black boxer who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1966.
Pie chart of religions of African Americans
African American Read-In 2013
African American Read-In 2013The story shows how African-Americans have been unjustly presented as criminals for a long time. One study of local California television coverage found that more than half of television news stories on violence involved African-Americans, while only 2 % of them were victims of violence that year. And because these images come from the media, which claims to represent the reality and to provide unbiased information about the society, Anglo-Americans tend to believe that they are true without looking or knowing all the facts. This stereotype can be due to the Anglos enslavement of African-Americans, where African-Americans were presented as dangerous and violent.
Second, African-Americans are often portrayed as drug addicted. To illustrate,