After hearing the topic discussed briefly during an American Studies class, I began to pay attention more to how race is displayed in modern television, and specifically how segregated television is. After watching any major TV network for 30 minutes, it becomes increasingly clear that our televisions are really still black and white.
While first examining commercials, I naturally wanted to look at the the most significant and most viewed commercials in America. So what better commercials to analyze than the those that played during the most recent Super Bowl, the most watched event in the world. I conveniently found all of these commercials on one website. The first video I watched was one that the NFL itself aired. It consisted of NFL players appearing in giant boxes to thank NFL fans for being there for them. Throughout the entire commercial, not one African-American fan was "thanked", and the only African-Americans in the commercial were a few of the NFL players.
After watching more commercials I came across another interesting example, but this one did have an African-American person in it - but just one. This Budweiser commercial was set in some upscale restaurant or club, and shows several close-ups of people in expensive clothes having a good time. The end of the commercial cuts to an aerial view of a table with about thirty people. Only then do I see the one and only African-American in the whole commercial. And to me, it almost seems like someone in at Budweiser made the director put in one African-American man in order to avoid accusations of excluding African-Americans.
Then, I began to think about television shows today. It took me about 15 minutes to finally think of even one show in which the main character or characters are African-American. I thought of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and that show isn't even on anymore. And after more thought I began to wonder if in this instance the underlying joke of the whole show was that there could even be an African-American family with that much money. The creator of the show is Andy Borowitz, a white man, which made my theory even more plausible. Also, the main character in the show is Will, who has not outgrown his roots in urban Philadelphia. This ostracizes him from the rest of his family in many ways because he is the only member of the family who acts like the stereotypical African-American teenager.
I do not understand the lack of other races being shown on television when we call this country a "cultural melting pot". Why do you think TV is so predominantly white? Do you think it matters that there is not an equal representation of races on TV?
