[Cosby Show] Racial Representation in Mass Media

The concept of race, while it exists in other countries as well, has by far the most impact in the United States.

When I was growing up in South Korea, I knew that there were people with different colors of skin in the world, but I was completely unaware of any stereotypes or issues involving the concept because it was not a problem in the country. People did not pay attention to it or accentuated it as a problem.

It is not really a fair statement to say that the U.S is behind the reconciliation of race issues because of the nation's history, and many are still sensitive to the history.

In class, we've discussed the representation of African Americans in mass media on how the majority of contents involving African Americans tend to be a form of comedy.

However, as the article pointed out, such comedies can also be a tool of pointing out social faults. The Cosby Show was one of the first sitcoms to represent African Americans in the light of upper class families with financial successes and stability. The characters are respectable, intelligent and hard-working representations of the African American community.

One of the argument points mentioned in the article is that the Cosby Show was not a realistic representation of the African American community. The critiques argued that the show created "a deterioration in the social conditions of most black Americans" (pg. 6).

In all honesty, why the gap has gotten smaller, the general social image of the African American community is still on the lower side of the economic scale. Although the author mentions in the article, that the financial situation for the African American community improved from the 60s or 70s to the 80s when the Cosby Show started airing, even to this date, the general consensus of the African American community's economic activity compared to the overall population of the U.S still falls short.

As for the issue of the Cosby Show being consumed by mainly caucasian demographics, I believe that in order to change the general trend of mass media, especially television, one must be able to appeal to the majority of the consuming demographics, which is the Caucasian community. The production of mass media contents are heavily controlled by the Caucasian community as well, and they are not going to produce contents that they have a dismal projection for. Whether one likes it or not, the majority of the demographics are consuming comedy involving African American communities and the contents that are similar to the Cosby Show. The changes need to start somewhere, and it is better now than later to start embodying the changing economic scale of the society into mass media to educate and spread the message that the African Americans are no longer in the lower economic group and can be taken seriously in mass media contents.