Georgia Tsiabas looking at The Black image in the white mind article

The cultural, economic and social gap between white and black exist still in America today is largely because most white people learn about African-American life through the media, particularly television. According, to Entman and Rojecki who set out to analyze perceptions of race by surveying a wide range of American TV shows in which race is represented, including news broadcasts, dramas and commercials, as well as in Hollywood films. They discovered that overwhelmingly negative portrayals permeate American television. Entman and Rojecki look at how television news focuses on black poverty and crime out of proportion to the material reality of black lives, how black experts are only interviewed for black-themed issues and how black politics are distorted in the news, and conclude that, while there are more images of African-Americans on television now than there were years ago, these images often don't reflect a commitment to the positive behanviors of this particular race but instead reinforces white mind driven stereotypes. Regardless of whether these authors believe in them or not, most people in U.S. society are well aware of the many visceral stereotypes and images surrounding black males. These negative representations of black males especially are readily visible and conveyed to the public through the news, film, music videos, reality television and other programming and forms of media. The typical roles are all too often the black sidekick of a white protagonist, for example, the token black person, the comedic relief, the athlete, the over-sexed ladies' man, the absentee father or, most damaging, the violent black man as drug-dealing criminal and gangster thug. Change can only happen though when the media decides to re-direct its focus of this race to a more positive one instead of creating and continuing the cycle of historic negative stereotypes that they choose to continue to make a false reality within the eyes of media consumers. Remember its not what you do with the media its what the media does to you.