Although I went into it with an open mind, Jhally's article just seemed like yet another article placing all whites into one category and blacks in another. I understand that our society has a tendency to do that, but it's hypocritical for race X to be bashing race Y for putting all of race X under one umbrella stereotype. While Jhally's article doesn't do that as severely as Bonilla-Silva's for example, there are still plenty of assumptions regarding whites and blacks.
Take for example Jhally's statement (page 2) that "...the Huxtable family presented black characters that black and white audiences could relate to." Why can black audiences relate? Because they're black? When watching Paris Hilton's old show The Simple Life, there wasn't anything I could relate to even though she was white. Just because someone is the same race doesn't mean they can relate to one another. And why does Jhally think white people can relate to the Huxtables? Because they're wealthy? Well that's certainly a gross generalization. According to the US Census Bureau, there were 195,112 white non-hispanic individuals with income below poverty thresholds compared to 40,125 black individuals.
Scholars need to stop assuming that all black people are poor and white people look at them as inferior. They also need to stop asserting that all whites are rich and are racist. On page 5, Jhally says "...what The Cosby Show has confronted, many have argued, is the deep-rooted racism of white Americans who find it difficult to accept racial inequality." Really? Being white does not make someone racist just as being black doesn't make someone a gang member. And what does "deep-rooted" mean? Because many white European immigrants weren't even living in the U.S. at the time. So perhaps the real problem with race in our society is the assumptions scholars and researchers make, and not actually the "beliefs" of each person.
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