"And now the end is here and so I face the final curtain"

As we have reached the end of the semester, I look back on my experiences in this class and say "Wow!" My eyes have been opened to many different worlds that I never had really thought about in my small bubble of a world. This is one class that even though it was 3 hours long, never left me with a boring moment. There was always and interesting conversation to be told and always something new I learned. In the end it is clear that one semester is just not enough time to cover every aspect to race and gender in the media.

I am sitting here and type on my blog I have learned to communicate in a new way. I think that this was also a great learning experience. It allowed me to write in m own way and communicate with classmates that I did not previously know. I learned a lot about myself and others in the class through the use of blogs. I think that having a blog will allow me to continue speaking to the public through words. I think that I will continue to blog even though it will no longer be a class requirement. I think it’s a healthy way to communicate and interact on the Internet with people.

I have also really enjoyed working in-group this semester. I think that it allowed me to meet 5 other classmates that I did not previously know and was a learning experience. It allowed me to learn and listen to five different people and their viewpoints and opinions. We did not always agree on everything but we learned how to communicate and work together in a positive fashion. I wish that more classes had group assignments. I think that as media professionals we are not going to be sitting behind a desk crunching numbers rather we will be out and about interacting with the community, other businesses and people. By working in groups you are able to learn to communicate with others in this fashion.




Race and gender in the media is a very important and critical subject. I think that this should not be an elective rather a required class for all JMC students. I believe that a class on this subject matter can only benefit media students and in an ever changing more diverse society we have evolved into here in the United States and across the globe, it is important for all people to be informed. By not having the knowledge it not only puts one at a disadvantage but also the company that you work for as you will not have the proper knowledge of this subject matter.

The information that I have learned in this class has made me and will make me that much better of a media professional. I feel bad for the students and professionals who did not have the opportunity to take a class like this and are in the professional scene and lack the knowledge of race and gender. I have a new out look on the issues that are and have been created by race and gender. I in know was ever looked down upon women as a gender or minorities. I have friends of all races but I now have a better understanding of how the view society. I know I will never get to experience life as an African American or Hispanic or female, but I do know that this class has prepared me to be a better professional and person.

I would like to close saying that I have enjoyed this class.

Hip-Hop is.................

Five hip-songs that I have never listened to or heard of until this assignment:

1. Straight Outta Compton- NWA
2. Just Get Up and Dance- Afrika Bambaataa
3. Suckas Need Body Guards- Gang Starr
4. EPMD- You Gots To Chill
5. UTFO- Leader of the Pack


Five Hip-Hop videos I have not scene before this assignment:

1. Master P- I Miss My Homies; Focus of the video is about the death of close friends and coping with the grief of death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggNymSJ52Fw

2. Eminem- We Made You; The focus is a parody of many celebrities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15L7I2ExAJY

3. Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Dogg- Lil Ghetto Boy; Focus of this video is about a black man in prison and how he is surviving in the slammer and what is he going to do when he gets out and tries to start his life fresh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULYE3xmR2kg&feature=PlayList&p=BDBCC4EF7F6E7FE6&index=0

4. Ice Cube- Today Was a Good Day; Focus is about having a day in the hood that nothing goes wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4RY-eJgHHs

5. Big Tymers- Get Your Roll On; Focus is about partying and looking fly by having the best cars, watches, clothes and women.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cknX36Gurj0

Two hip-Hop radio stations:

1. K104 (104.5)- Dallas, TX
2. 97.9 The Beat- Dallas, TX

Two corporations that have utilized Hip-Hop:

1. NBA (National Basketball Association)
2. Rock The Vote

I think that Hip-Hop has done a lot to and for society. I think the recent hip-hop/gangster rap has put out a bad image for all African Americans. In many of these songs they degrade women, talk of drug and alcohol abuse and put out a gangster persona. I think that this has developed into a media chaos, where it puts all African Americans into this light. I think that this is a disservice because not all African Americans are gangsters and they sure do not believe or live their lives along the words of these artists. I think that society needs to get out of their head that just because the majority of hip-hop/rap artists are African American that all African American men and women act like these songs portray. On the other hand I think that the hip-hop community is a uniting force through the African American community. It is the music of the times. There was once blues and funk, and today we have rap and hip-hop. I think the more and more the genre matures and grows it has begun to change. I think that artists such as Kanye are moving away from the traditional gangster image that has been the face of the hip-hop/rap genre for the past decade. Although the messages in some of these gangster rap songs can paint a true picture some of the lyrics and remarks used in the songs are just down right degrading to both men and women. The vocabulary that ahs derived from this genre of music is huge. Although I grew up in a very white community, we all listened to rap. I think we listened to it more than any genre of music so I believe it is safe to say that the listeners of hip-hop and rap have no color. We still use terms such as "homie", "Dawg", "Whip" (car), and "Dougie".

As for my mom, she listened to all of the 1960's rockers. Some of her favorites were The Doors, and The Beatles. She also listened to Marvin Gaye. As for my dad he doesn't really listen to much music from that time today. He is more contemporary when it comes to music, although he is a big Johnny Cash fan.

Parents Examples:

1. Johnny Cash: Country
2. The Doors: Rock N' Roll
3. Marvin Gaye: Soul

To conclude on my earlier comments, I think that hip-hop and rap are headed in the right direction. I think that there are an important part of the culture in America and will continue to be.

Advertising: Does race and Gender Matter??

After studying advertising through certain media outlets, I feel that it is clear that there is a lack of racial diversity in certain publications, although I believe that the television has been doing a better job in 2009 of having a more diverse cast in advertisement. I am not sure exactly why this trend occurs but I do not think it is as they do not want to have minorities in their advertisements rather that they create advertisements to market to a certain group of people. One of the magazines I looked at was Men’s Health. Now, they do not have the most racially diverse ads, but there are minorities present in the magazine. If I was an advertiser and was going to be putting my money into a magazine, I would want to hit home to the readers. I would do this by looking at the subscribers of the magazine. If the majority of them are white then you are going to try and market that percentage of ads towards them. I guess it is like saying that you are going to put ads of all white people on networks such as BET or TeleMundo, or in magazines directed to and main readership is of a minority. Another magazine that I looked at was Elle. IN this magazine I saw one of the most interesting ads. It was for Johnson & Johnson and it appeared on two consecutive pages. The first was a white mother and the picture of her white baby. Then on the next page it was a black mother and a picture of her black baby. Now this how that the company is trying to market equal and the ads both sent the same message about taking good care of your baby, but what I thought was interesting was the white mother was advertised with the original baby wash which came in a pink bottle, so the ad was pink. But the black mother was used for the baby wash with cocoa butter and was a yellow colored ad. Now, I am not sure but I think that the coloration screams racial profiling. Why did they not do it the other way? It seems as if they were trying to say that the cocoa butter wash is for black people which I feel is totally false and think that they should have advertised both products on each ad and had a universal color for the ad Another magazine that I looked at was Lucky Throughout this magazine I saw a majority of white people in the ads. Of course there was you’re occasional minority but there was really no equal comparison. One ad in this magazine was for a company called Curvation which makes bras and underwear for women. And in the ad was a black woman who was over weight but was trying to portray that the underwear and bras can cover up being over weight. I think that they should have included other women, because I can tell you that there are both men and women of every color who are over weight. But I guess throughout the whole thing what the passage said was right and there still exists the presence of racial issues within advertising. Women of color are portrayed as exotic and seductive while on the other hand 80% of the ads that I saw in the publications I looked at were of white people alone. Although I feel that this is not fair and does do a disservice to society, I feel like I am going to have to side with the advertiser’s themselves and not the political correctness of equal representation in ads. I have a business mind set, and have been working since I was 15. The important thing is to sell. If you want to sell market to whom you want to buy your product. In no way does having a white model mean that a Hispanic cant wear this or same for using a black model saying that white people cannot where this. So if Ralph Lauren knows that 90% of the subscribers to Men’s Health or Elle are white, why would they not want to market to the people reading. I know for me it doesn’t matter what color the model, if I like it then I am going to buy it, but I think that as a company you have to do what is best for your company and if that means only using white model’s to make sales then you do it, not because you are racist or insensitive but because you are in a competitive market and you want to make sales, so whatever makes sales is the approach you should take.

Local News- OKC region

Following my completion of the local news assignment, the majority of the information I found did not surprise me. First off, I was not surprised that out of all seven days that I covered, only once was there a minority lead reporter covering a story. Being in Oklahoma, which is not a very diverse state in comparison to that of California where there may be a greater diversity in representation of minorities in the newsroom, it was expected to see white news anchors doing the nightly news. Secondly, the people committing the crimes, when identified, were a mixture of male and female, as well as white, black and Hispanic. Two of the crimes were husband and wife combination and both were white. Probably the biggest case that I covered was the story about the African-American female who had robbed four banks in the Oklahoma City area. The FBI was involved in this case. I did not really notice any particular bias towards the criminals from the news anchors. No matter the sex or color of the offender, they reported them based on the facts and didn’t make the minorities crimes seem worse than those of whites. Although the Oklahoma television stations do not show much diversity at the news desk, they do not tend to stereotype or call out any sex or race for being criminally inclined. This project for me was an eye opener. I am from Dallas, and even though it is a southern state, it is clearly more diverse in the newsroom, than Oklahoma City. On any given day and time you can find white, black and Hispanic anchors doing newscasts. The same goes for St. Louis, where my grand mother lives. On channel 5 in St. Louis, Art Holliday, who is an African American male, is one of the lead anchors in the morning and pretty much all of my family in St. Louis watch channel 5 because of Art. Although the coverage in Oklahoma City is non- bias when it comes to coverage, I think they could do a better job of diversifying their newsrooms.

Who Decides What News Is?

After watching the videos, it is clear that there is a problem with the media system. It is clear that the media agenda is not set by crucial issues that effect the public, but by the owners of the radio and television stations, which in many cases they are set to cover what they want. With this issue of not covering important stories for the public, which many of them have to do with minority issues, they are doing the public a huge disservice. I think that it is extremely important for minorities to have media outlets that they can go to for there own cause. I think that these media outlets speak directly to them. Instead of listening to other people's agendas, they can be informed on the issues, which directly affect their communities. After watching the videos I thought that WVON radio station in Chicago is an amazing thing. An African American radio station that started in the middle of the civil rights movement and is still serving the community in Chicago today. That is a special thing, and more of this should be occurring around the country. This success story proves that not everyone has the same interests. I think that the best way to continue to spread the word to minority communities is to expand the range of these racially and ethnically motivated media outlets. Although I believe that this should serve as a building ground to evolve the mainstream media into a source of media that covers everyone's interests. The war in Iraq is an interesting story about covering interests. At the time we were in a very defense mind set following the September 11 terrorist attacks. It was the first time since Pearl Harbor that we as a country had been attacked at home in that deadly of a fashion. When we went into war, the media did a fine job of ignoring the opposing opinion to the war, and in turn did there best to justify the war in a sense to not look un-patriotic. Whether you believe that the war was the right or wrong choice, this is how the issue was covered initially. Today, the media has very different opinion. Although the times in Iraq have gotten far better than when we first invaded, it is still controversial. In the upside, I have friends who are over in Iraq right now. They are doing things like building schools and setting up business and city. They do not want to be there any more than any of us would, but they are soldiers and are doing the job they signed up for and they will be the first to say that. I think that it is a very important part of life to have an opinion because opinions are what have made our country the great democracy that it is, but in the end the support for those who are over there defending our country so that we can live our day to day life’s and go to school and get drunk on Friday and Saturday nights is extremely important. The next time you see and man or women in uniform walking on campus or in the airport, go up and thank them for what they do. I know I do every time I run in to a man or women in the armed services. Anyways, off of my soapbox about supporting the troops. The media has covered numerous protests, from gay marriage, to the war in Iraq. I think it is important that they do not ignore many of these marches as they have done in the past, although I believe there is a limit because if you show too much of a protest, in a media world attempting to be fair and balanced, you tend to take sides on touchy issues in the United States. The Civil Rights Movement benefited the most from media coverage. For many Americans they lived in a bubble of black and white and ignored what was really going on in society. The media opened the doors to ignored images and social spheres that would have never been opened if the coverage had been ignored. We are a better country today for the detailed coverage of the Civil Rights Movement. The media is a very important part of our society, if not the most important. If we do not have freedom of the press as Americans, we do not have democracies. God Bless America, and God Bless the first amendment and what it has done for this country!

Response #3

Blogger: Jamie Olmos Bofill http://jaimeplayitagainsam.blogspot.com


After reading you blog and the examples I just want to say i completely agree. As I stated in my blog, it is clear that stereotypes are present and that the creators of media are the people who continue to make these stereotypes present. I was also not surprised by the use of this media. Even before this assignment when i never really took time to notice these issues as stereotypes, it was so clear that all forms of media use gender and racial stereotypes. I think it is just amazing when you actually take time to notice all of the different uses.

StErEoTyPes

02/16/2009-

HBO (on Demand)
Television
11:30 p.m.
Film
Poker Scene
Racial stereotypes



02/17/2009

Nip Tuck
FX
9-10 p.m.
Wedding shower scene- Liz with family and friends
Gender Stereotypes

Uncle Killa
HBO (On demand)
11 p.m.
Entire film
Racial stereotypes and innuendos



02/18/2009

Ratcliffe’s textbooks
4:55 p.m.
Personal conversation with fellow employees
Comments on book titles referring to minorities
Racial stereotypes and assumptions

www.youtube.com
12:36 p.m.
Music Video
Juvenile- Back That A** Up
Gender and Racial Stereotype

CW
9- 10 p.m.
Television
America’s Next Top Model
Profiling of how women should look
Gender profiling


02/19/2009

Personal Conversation
3:12 p.m.
Telephone conversation with Zac XXXXXX
Comments about driving ability
Racial Stereotypes, Assumptions, and Innuendos


Crimson Park Apartments C302
7:49 p.m.
Personal Conversation with Julie XXXXXXX and Andi XXXX
Comments about males not asking directions
Gender stereotypes

Spike TV
10:35 p.m.
Television
Manswers
Constantly showing women in bikini’s showing them only from the neck down and zooming in close to their chest.
Gender Stereotype



02/20/2009

HBO (on demand)
11:20 a.m.
Film
The Kingdom
After a terrorist attack on an American living complex in Saudi Arabia, all members of the gated community begin to judge all Muslims and Saudi’s.
Racial Profiling, Stereotyping and Racial Innuendos


After completing this assignment, it made me realize the amount of stereotyping that was out there. Before this assignment I never really noticed the stereotyping as much but it was obvious to me after this assignment that it is has a big part in our media world. I guess I can say that I wasn’t surprised at the amount that is used. I believe that people I n the media world use stereotyping to make money. I think that in the world we live in that when it comes to money that’s all that matters in the end. It doesn’t matter whether genders or races are belittled, if a dollar can be made then it will be done.
I experienced this profiling first hand. From racial to gender I in some way experienced this issue that we face. I had some of my best friends taking part in creating and referring to these stereotypes. I even caught myself in the act. I guess I never really thought about stereotyping before this class. I mean I guess i thought that I took part in it. But I did and still do. I think that I am probably the worst when I am behind the wheel. When ever I get cut off or am traveling at to slow of a pace, I automatically think that it must be a foreigner. But today after this class I have began to catch myself when I begin to think of these things. I am not sure if I will ever be able to ditch the stereotyping but I will be trying. I think that these stereotypes that we refer to comes from the media and our elders.
I think the reason that we as adults take part in the carrying out of these stereotypes is the influence from the media. Growing up we hear and see things on television, Internet and radio. Relying on these sources for many things we take a lot that they say to heart and put it to use for our daily lives. If we see an episode of “Nip Tuck” where they show in almost every episode one of the doctors having sexual relations with a beautiful women and then never talking or seeing her again in the episode or the entire season for that matter, it is just stereotyping women in a terrible way.
I also believe that the adults we grow up with have influence in carrying out these stereotypes. I have friends whose parents grew up in small towns throughout Texas, and they have a great different outlook on race and gender but especially race than my parents who are from St. Louis and Pittsburgh. I feel that when one is brought up around these attitudes that it is easy to fall unto the feelings.
At the weeks end, my eyes were open to how the continuous development and use of images to stereotype both race and gender affect society. I don’t believe that this is necessarily correct but understand that this is a part of life and society that will be very difficult to change. I believe that if we did not stereotype that we would have a happier, less confrontational society because races and genders would cease to feel discriminated in a way. In my opinion, these actions will never cease because it would be to difficult to get everyone to buy in, and but maybe one day there will be hope.


Juvinile- Back That Thang Up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L1qsIwoTRI
Manswers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6BzxlXB8E0&feature=related