The last laugh..

Ethnic humor can sometimes be taken to the extreme. I agree that if your willing to go to a comedy show then you shouldn't be offended from the material because it's all in harmless fun. However i can also see how sometimes the vocabulary and delivery can come off in an offensive way. I think it's important to be able to engage in this humor when it involves any race and be able to laugh about it. Cultural competence definitely comes into play with this because even when you are without members of your race, you should be able to have the skill set to engage with other cultures. If you aren't aware of your cultural bias then becomes difficult to effectively engage with out members from your group. I went to a high school that was dominantly Caucasians. Me being an African American in the suburban town i grew up in, i was used to being out numbered. There was an incident in our school where a Caucasian female wrote a blog on myspace about the "n word" and how she didn't see why it was such a big deal. She used the word various times in the blog and things got ugly. It was all over the news and she was suspended for the time being. My friends of course turned to me to catch my perspective and i told them i was completely offended, especially since i was friends with the girl who wrote the blog. They seemed kind of caught off guard at my response and it took me a while to understand their shock. Me being an African American it would only make sense that i would be offended by this, however since most of my high school friends were white they almost didn't see me as being African American. Even though they were aware of the cultural difference, they didn't apply the knowledge to see the feelings of the situation to my group as a culture. Even though i lived in a white community and went to a predominately white school, i still am an African American as well as my family, therefore making us the out group.

Media portrays marginalized groups through representations that we then learn from. When we see a positive experience and then our behavior is altered, we can carry it over to our real life interactions with people. However this shouldn't derail from what it actually the reality of that group.

who is raising these kids..

We have talked this week about how children are turning to media and we discussed emotional competency theory, social cognitive theory, and the parasocial contact theory. I believe the idea that children look to their environment to learn how to manage emotion is true. I think that when children watch TV it definitely correlates with their positive and negative interactions. The example of the Lassie study, showed how children can be exposed to something positive, and then that lesson will be embedded in them even if its just a temporary effect. The study that involved the bobo doll, where a child watched an adult punch the doll and when the child was alone with it they beat the doll up, just shows how impressionable children are. They observe what they see and believe to be true and then implement it.

The video we watched in class called i love my hair by the sesame street character, at first seemed like such a positive video for African American children that might have conflicts with loving their hair. However then once we discussed it in class it brought up many points that weren't so good. For one, other ethnicity's will watch that and say "my hair can't do all that", which may be sending the wrong message that one race may be "better" than the other. Another point was the fact that why does the African American child need to be reinforced that their hair is a good thing. It just shows that they already have a notion that they are "different" and it doesn't measure up so they have to reinforce it. On TV and in magazines many black celebrities don't have their natural hair or even curly hair, so i think that impacts young girls in the sense that the straight long hair is the only thing that looks good. I was shocked when i heard someone in class say their friends mixed daughter cried and said she hated her hair after getting made fun of at the age of 3! It was just bizarre because children shouldn't be focusing on copying someones image but instead being independent and self sufficient with their own identity.

Stereotypes: will it ever end...

Stereotyping can be very harmful. It very much exists today, and we even discussed personal experiences of it in class. Event schema's are a crucial part of stereotyping and i don't believe that will stop, even though it can be silly. After 9/11 airports became very cautious of the Arab race, which isn't fair because not every Arab is a terrorist. But clearly stereotyping isn't fair. It's not right to think that when someone is over weight that they are just lazy, when sometimes its in your genes. It's not right to assume that every black male walking down the street is going to rob or mug you. In American we have such a wide variety of cultures and ethnic backgrounds that we tend to categorize (stereotype) certain people from what we are used to seeing. I saw on the news that a school in Pennsylvania wanted to separate students based on gender and race while taking tests for a certain amount of time during the day. This seemed crazy to me because of far we have came in this country to get away from segregation. As far as seeing if the scores would be higher when being around people just like you cant be evaluated accurately that way. Possibly separating gender can help from being distracted, but the thought that white students will score better around white students is bizarre.

People are always going to judge others. For that reason alone i believe stereotyping will always be around. Even when i was in grade school and we had to pick books from the library, i would literally choose my book by the cover. As silly as that sounds, that's exactly what we are doing to other human beings everyday. Beyond stereotyping race other case also can have a big impact on others. For examples are the way someone may dress may automatically put them in a category to be stereotyped. In this world today if we see a girl with shorter hair, basketball shorts, and a t-shirt we will stereotype her and say "she must be gay". It can be so hurtful to someones self-esteem when these accusations aren't true. Even though this may never end, we all should work on not always voicing our stereotypical thoughts because you never know how deeply hurtful you are being.

gender roles

I enjoyed our discussion in class on the differences between women and men's personalities. The clip of Dave Chappell's stand up was very funny, partially because it was true. Women are more emotional than men are from a general stand point, and he did a good job of putting that into comedy. However Mastro's reading gave a different perspective on negative stereotypes of gender roles and female friendships. I completely agree that media consumption has an influence on people's perceptions of the real world. Teen movies do have an impressionable impact on youth today.I believe this is partially because even as girls may be portrayed as more socially agressive and deal with friendship issues, they seem to glamorize it. The movie mean girls depicts bullying and the "queen bee's" of high school, but yet it's a subject that is real and does actually happen. While it's entertaining to watch, is it really impacting teenagers negatively? I have read and seen on TV young girls who are committing suicide due to bullying in school as well as online. Since this is a real life issue it makes movies such as mean girls less entertaining. The article also mentioned that female to female friendships foster more positive outcomes such as peer intergration and adjustments in school, and that can result in important positive roles for adolescents and young adults. If they portrayed males in movies like this it wouldnt be as entertaining or beneficial. At the end of the day the industry has to make money, and teen movies sell. Whether the outcome is a good lesson or not, we can all agree that teen movies are based off of real life. The question is, how much is too much?