WHITENESS IN AMERICAN MEDIA
Anysa Holder Midterm Research Update October 19, 2003 MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES II Media fantasies are belying the continuing problem of race in our society; the lack of diversity, segregated neighborhoods and niche marketing. ... Looking in terms of larger picture, or our society as a whole, I strongly believe we are far from the End of Race in our American society. I believe that the Media is one of today’s biggest reinforces of the race concept, or the idea that the color of one’s skin allocates your identity, your class, or your mobility or that it has any affect on your life in general. ... I believe it has developed into a concept constructed surrounding a specific attribute (the color of your skin) and has been previously and continues to be to this day programmed into our ways of life as the norm, by none other that the Great Normalizing machine: the Media. While some may argue that the media has actually become more diverse, I argue that if this is even the slightest bit true that it is actually just a ploy to cover up the many other tactics they use to deploy ideas of white supremacy or normalcy upon us. ... Another issue is justifying that the media actually has effect on the lives of people, in which case I will need to find case studies that show that the media does in fact affect a large part of the population. Furthermore, it then needs to been shown how the media accomplishes this supposed task, figuring out why they do it, and who is behind it all. Richard Dyer’s White supports the idea of media brainwashing his analysis of the representation of whiteness in the media. ... The media has taken it many degrees beyond that using photographs, films, television series, advertisements and other forms of media to get this ideology across. ... In fact, Dyer had originally published an essay on the idea of whiteness back in 1988 in a British Journal.