Mother America’s Double-Standard, Term Paper Example

Introduction

While America enjoys believing that the days of minority discrimination are long over, the reality is different.  The law does protect minorities from overt instances of discrimination, but the society nonetheless maintains a double standard in terms of how minorities are generally treated and perceived.  In plain terms, and despite how the population of the nation has become so diverse, bias continues to exist and blacks, Asians, Latin Americans, gays, and other minority groups face prejudice and marginalization.  As an example, racial profiling by the police continues to be both practiced and largely defended by law enforcement.  If one social behavior most reflects how this widespread minority discrimination is practiced, however, it is the ironic one of denial.  More exactly, and as blatantly seen in all media, a kind of condescension is in place regarding minorities, in which American society asserts just how oblivious it is to any racial or other differences.  According to media, not only are minorities firmly entrenched within the society, they enjoy exactly the same status as any mainstream, white population.  Even as this occurs, moreover, it then somehow becomes acceptable to revert to stereotypical – and demeaning – humor.  As the following explores, America’s minorities today suffer from a double-edged sword of bias; the prejudices remain, but are cloaked within a pretense of equality and full understanding.

Discussion

In order to understand how and why minorities today face discrimination through denial and condescension, it is first necessary to note the realities of minority bias as they have existed in the recent past, and exist today.  These realities then give scope to the issue of condescension as evident in the media, as well as the license taken by media to revert to discriminatory humor and judgments.  To begin with, it is far too easy to forget that, until only a few decades ago, blatant prejudice was widespread both in the nation and in the media, and very much a part of American life.  The Civil Rights movement aside, most of the 20^th century witnessed a nation fully comfortable in marginalizing and mocking all minorities.  It may be believed that black stereotypes left the media after the 1960s, for example, but this is erroneous.  All that occurred, in fact, was the beginning of the reshaping of the stereotypes to present a false idea of dignity and racial equality.  In the early 1950s, The Beulah Show featured a long-suffering and utterly stereotypical black “mammy,” but this type of character would be seen decades later in The Jeffersons, running through the 1980s (Larson 27).  On the male side, and as will be discussed, there was and remains an emphasis on a stereotype of the black male as hypersexualized, as in the character of Chef on South Park.  Interestingly, this male character incorporates two black stereotypes, in that he is the sexually voracious black man and the wise, “mammy” figure to the boys (Larson 28).  In plain terms, and well into the 21^st century, blacks continue to be objectified, even as the objectification is presented under a guise of respect.  This in turn enables racist humor which would have been seen as unacceptable decades ago.

Asian and Latin Americans as well have consistently been trivialized in the media, and/or presented in racist and stereotypical ways.  Regarding the former, and if in the 1860s it was legitimate for newspapers to describe Chinese workers in California as “yellow vermin,” it must be wondered what progress is made when, over a hundred years later, Korean Americans were described in the California press as “economic exploiters.”  This population was in fact targeted by that press as taking advantage of African Americans, which indicates the news media deliberately setting minorities against one another.  The label of “economic exploiters” also goes to the prevalent, and often comically slanted, view of all Asian Americans as diabolically clever and interested only in taking advantage of less intelligent “Americans” (Larson 133).  As recently as 2007, moreover, a popular New York City radio program, “The Dog House,” featured a lengthy skit essentially employing every known and utterly demeaning Asian stereotype.  The hosts engage in a protracted effort to order Chinese food and, in the process, degrade Asian women as suitable only for sex and Asian men as poor drivers, impotent, and unintelligent.  The skit was so egregious that the DJs were fired, but this occurred only after massive protests were lodged by the Organization for Chinese Americans (OCA) (Ono, Pham 109).

Regarding Latin Americans, there is an interesting shift to be seen in why media portrayals are less racist today.  In the past, certainly, characters like Jose Jimenez, created by comedian Bill Dana, presented Mexican Americans as lazy and dim-witted.  Moreover, racism in advertising has not vanished regarding Hispanics.  It is true that Frito Lay finally put to rest its famous Frito Bandito character in the 1970s, but only after massive protests over many years.  Nonetheless, and only a few years ago, a Chihuahua with a thick Spanish accent was used by a fast food franchise to sell tacos on TV (Larson 273).  At the same time, however, the media has taken note of a specific reality: Latin Americans purchase movie tickets at far higher rates than other minority groups. This being the case, the entertainment and advertising industries are careful to not offend this profitable market (Lester 315).  The crucial point here is that racism is not reduced through awareness, but merely submerged in order to accommodate economic concerns.  American society is not concerned with observing the human dignity of the minority; the concern lies only with catering to consumerism of a specific kind.

Gay men and women as well have not been exempt from overt, and often virulent, discriminatory portrayals in the media.  In the 20^th century they were in fact targeted in very direct ways, perhaps more so than any racial or religious minority.  The news and popular media of the 1950s and 1960s made it clear that gay men were inherently feminine and perverted, and also a threat to the nation; the gay man, being less than a man, was not a good citizen and would undermine the nation (Castaneda 49).  This clearly reflected the medical assertion of the era, which held that homosexuality was an illness.  Nonetheless, later decades would seem to indicate that gays were fair game for all, in terms of bias.  It is identified, for example, that Hollywood had a list of rules regarding how gay characters could appear in TV and film, and going into the 1980s: no sexual desire could be presented; appearances in TV shows were restricted to one-time events; the homosexuality could not be incidental, but rather a problem to be solved; and the focus had to be the effects of the homosexuality on the heterosexual characters (Potter 217).  These extremes have largely disappeared, but for the same reason that Latin Americans suffer less abuse in the media; namely, gay men and women are significant consumers of entertainment.  Once again, it is not enlightenment, but commerce, that creates some measure of change in the demeaning portrayals.

What is then seen is that minorities have long been stereotyped, and that the stereotypes, at least ostensibly, have been discarded or altered in recent years.   This in turn goes to the reasoning behind the changes, and how they in fact represent nothing more than denial and/or condescension within the media.  This goes beyond a double standard, and may be termed a “triple standard”; the bias remains in place, but it is masked by deliberate and insincere attempts to present an America in which all are embraced because of their differences.  This trajectory of minority condescension in the media has its roots in the late 20^th century, and occurs in covert ways.  In these decades advertising, for example, perceived the advantages to marketing to minorities, and the image of blacks was radically altered.  Turning away from the more obvious and insulting stereotypes of Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, new types of black men and women began appearing in print ads and television commercials.  This was, however, a white idea of what black people wanted to be, which was white.  Blacks in commercials were presented as middle or upper class, but were also light-skinned, and the actors used typically had more “white” features.  Then, promotions based on highly successful black men, such as Michael Jordan, emphasized that blacks could achieve success only through physical ability (Carroll 12).  Consequently, there was and is no recognition of blacks as human beings, but rather concentrated efforts to blend them with white ideas of what is acceptable.  The mere reality of the promotion of black male physicality, certainly, is strongly condescending.

More interesting is how modern media presentations of blacks, and particularly of black men, adopt overtly patronizing attitudes which are redolent of stereotyping.  In today’s entertainment and advertising, without question, a new type of “black character” exists.  It is one simultaneously pretending to be respectful while relying on the most traditional white stereotypes of blacks.  It is argued that, in less than four decades, blacks have moved from being a minimal element in American popular culture to being the most dominant.  In plain terms, black men and women are featured in entertainment and advertising media on an immense scale, but the scale only reinforces the degree of stereotyping and/or condescension.  The black male in today’s media, for example, exists only in a limited variety of forms.  Sometimes he is the cultured, “white” figure, but far more often he is the athletic superstar, the gangster, or the ghetto music star.  In these latter incarnations, he is consistently dangerous, and this goes to the continuing of the bias in place since the days of slavery.  More exactly, he is dangerous because he is hypersexual and a distinct threat to white male dominance.  Similarly, black women are presented in today’s media as hypersexualized because this “excuses” traditions of black women as violated by white men (Fiske 45).  What occurs in both cases is an insistence on reinforcing the primitive, and this is difficult to escape when viewing any entertainment portrayal of black men and women  as associated with hip hop.  On one level, the presentations suggest a kind of admiration for raw energy.  On another, they uniformly emphasize that blacks are innately more sexually driven, and the condescending bias becomes plain.

Observing entertainment media presents other means of noting how, under the pretense of promoting equality, blacks are subject to forms of discrimination and disdain as powerful as any in the past.  There is in recent years a significant emphasis in media, from TV commercials to comedy shows, on presenting interracial couples.  On a surface level, such presentations would appear to affirm that America is at last “color blind,” and both whites and blacks are able to see beyond race.  The reality, however, is that the interracial couples tend to exist only to reinforce stereotypes.  In the NBC comedy, My Name is Earl, for example, the hero is constantly struggling to fix his dysfunctional life, which includes reconciling himself to the fact that his wife has left him for a black man.  In the context of the show, a number of stereotypes are affirmed, including that of the black man who would prefer to be with a sloppy, poor white woman than with a black woman.  Then, one episode centered on the wife’s fear that her father would be upset about her relationship with a black man, when in fact it is revealed that the father enjoys sex with black women.  In all of this, the defining element of the black characters is their sexual utility for the whites (Childs 41).  Similarly, the short-lived comedy Fat Actress had white star Kirstie Alley dismissed by all the white executives of Hollywood because of her weight.  She is highly attractive, however, to the lone black executive, which reinforces the stereotype of black men as powerfully drawn to large white women (Childs 42).  Perhaps more insidiously, Alley’s character both admires the large penis of the man and cannot take his attentions seriously.  In a word, he does not matter because he is black, except as a sexual instrument.

Arguably, the ways in which the media present gays today is more subtle in its condescending.  Decades after Stonewall and as gay men and women are winning the right to legally marry in increasing numbers of states, there is a kind of backlash of stereotyping, or what may be called a celebrating of an extreme idea of a stereotypical gay male.  This also goes back a number of years.  The immensely popular TV show Will and Grace, for example, featured two gay male characters, but was careful to make them non-threatening.  Moreover, the show enhanced stereotypes through a pretense of denying them (Castaneda 49).  Plot lines would center on issues and gay integrity, yet the program made sure that Will was simultaneously “normal” and effeminate.  He was responsible and yet subject to fits of manic fear regarding his romantic life.  The character of Jack went much further, likely based on Will’s relative stability. He was a flamboyant gay stereotype: manic, irresponsible, feminine, promiscuous, and self-obsessed.  The show is in fact particularly suited as an example of how condescension disguises blatant bias.  Will is gay but plays a normative role in his paternalistic attitude toward Grace, the heterosexual woman.  Meanwhile, this allows Jack to be even more feminized than Grace.  In a very real sense, the entire construct of seemingly promoting gay lifestyles exists to promote heterosexual norms (Schiappa 82).  Audiences could enjoy the show because they were offered comic gay stereotyping as, somehow, the outrageous character of Jack was offered as a gay man’s being his true self.  What is then seen is that the media portrayals of gay characters has essentially come full circle.  In the 1970s and 1980s, two story lines existed for gays: the “coming out” plot or the “queer monster,” in which the homosexual threat was overt and despised (Potter 217).  Today, a variety of “queer” programming exists, but of a kind emphasizing a hyper-femininity in men.  Consequently, the condescending to the minority is evident. It is as though the media is informing them that the price to increased social presence and potential equality is the demand that they fulfill the expected behaviors.

The “triple standard” of bias masked by condescension is also seen in how Asian Americans are presented in media today.  Under a guise of humor, in fact, the most blatant racial slurs are permitted, and a particularly offensive example of this is the 2007 film, Norbit.  The offense lies in employing one minority to abuse another, which may be said to express how Asian Americans are generally perceived as “fair game” by all.  In the film, black actor Eddie Murphy portrays Mr. Wong, the adoptive father of the title character.  Wong is both Chinese and a racist himself; he finds the abandoned black child and complains about how ugly black babies are (Ono, Pham 52).  This is in fact a fascinating example of how the entertainment industry believes it may perpetuate the most vile stereotypes and retain an image of modernity and open-mindedness.  In plain terms, the film is protected from any accusation of racism by virtue of a black man playing the Asian role; put another way, whites are not slurring Asian Americans, and this in turn leads to the disturbing quality of the media playing minorities against one another.  Meanwhile, Asian stereotyping exists today in the form of the “dragon lady,” or the stereotype of the seductive and deadly Asian female.  As antiquated as this type is, in fact, actress Lucy Liu has played it more than a few times in modern films.  For example, in 1991’s Payback, she is both sexual predator and dominatrix/hit woman (Ono, Pham 68).  As with black gangster portrayals and hyper-feminine gay men, Asian Americans are subject to an extraordinary and hyperbolic treatment.  Because the society asserts that all are equal, it is somehow “all right” to fall back upon the most extreme stereotypes.  This is an assumption in no way valid, and the presentations then condescend to the minorities involved.

With regard to Latin Americans, an interesting development is seen in that, if entertainment portrayals are less racist, the population as a whole remains largely ignored or vilified by the press.  In the past, certainly, the Latin American male was consistently presented in films and TV as a potent and potentially dangerous lover; in essence, a variation on the hypersexualized black male, and equally primitive.  Similarly, and just as black women have been hypersexualized as an alibi for white male abuses, Latin American women have usually been portrayed as seductive and concerned only with sex.  Much of this is gone, but the population is vastly underrepresented in the news media, and even in those regions where Latin Americans are in the greatest numbers.  What is reported, more often than not, is the Latin American as a threat, and typically in terms of how Mexican immigrants take jobs away from “Americans” and/or create a dangerous drug market in the nation (Larson 129).  The medium in question is not entertainment, but the effects remain the same. The minority suffers from a lack of power and is consequently objectified by the news, and in ways catering to mainstream ideas of the danger of the Latin American community.  This too may then be seen as a form of condescension, if only in the reality that the minority depends upon the judgments of a society which loudly affirms equality and diversity while marginalizing that minority.

Conclusion

Certainly, minorities today face a double standard of very real qualities.  The police profile by race, gays are denied Constitutional rights, and inequality is evident in terms of employment and earning circumstances between whites and minorities.  At the same time, it is arguable that nothing better reflects the double – or triple – standard than how minorities are portrayed in the media.  This may seem to rely on media portrayals of years past, but that is by no means true.  When the ways in which various minorities have been presented in film, TV, and advertising over the years is noted, what in fact emerges is an insidious perpetuation of bias.  If black men and women are no longer humble servants, they are dangerous and hypersexualized.  If gay men are no longer “monsters,” they are outrageously effeminate.  If Latin Americans are less stereotyped in entertainment, they are largely ignored in the press or vilified as threats.  Ultimately, then, America’s minorities today suffer from a double-edged sword of bias; the prejudices remain, but they are disguised within a pretense of equality and the idea of an America that embraces diversity.

Works Cited

Carroll, Brett (Ed.)  American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2003.  Print.

Castaneda, Laura.  News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity. Thousand Oaks: SAGE 2006.

Childs, Erica Chito. Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.  Print.

Fiske, John.  Media Matters: Race and Gender in U. S. Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.  Print.

Larson, Stephanie Greco.  Media & Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and Entertainment. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.  Print.

Lester, Paul Martin.  Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2011.  Print.

Ono, Kent A., & Pham, Vincent.  Asian Americans and the Media. Malden: Polity Press, 2009. Print.

Potter, James W.  Media Literacy. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2013.

Schiappa, Edward. Beyond Representational Correctness: Rethinking Criticism of Popular Media.  Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. Print.