A response to Gregory Mantsios' essay, Media Magic: Making Class Invisible.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines media as "a medium of communication (as newspapers, radio, or television) that is designed to reach the mass of the people". For decades media has helped stratify culture by serving as a means to inform the public of the occurrences that take place in our society. The mass media is arguably the most influential in molding public consciousness (Mantsios 101). However, the more the media plays a prominent role in highlighting situations in our society the more media stereotypes became inevitable. Which can serve as both positive and negative attributes. Stereotypes usually classify individuals by their class, ethnicity, occupation, gender, and sexual orientation, which are used to give their audience insight on the particular situation or individual.
Stereotypes in more ways than one can bring about problematic outcomes. For instance, using such types of classification transform assumptions on a particular group to signify realities, can be used to justify ones position or power, and can create social prejudice and inequality that was not evident to begin with. Although not all stereotypes and biases are deliberate many create false categorizations of individuals, who on the exterior may appear to resemble as simplistic classification.
I recently read an article titled Closing the Education Achievement Gap; the article was about a major provision that the government was doing to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which would provide 00 billion dollars, which would come from "our" pockets in the form of taxes, to schools with children from low-income families. The goal of the revision is to raise the achievement of children in low-income schools with higher-income (predominately white) families. When reading over the editorial and reviewing the pictures that accompanied the article,...