Beatriz Carrillo: The Portrayal of Our Communities
The media frames immigration around the economy and innocent white U.S. citizens. The media forgets the other side of the story; immigrants are also humans. Often, immigrants and Latinos in general, are portrayed as a burden on the American way of life. They fail to discuss all the positive things immigrants and Latinos have contributed to the United States. They ignore the damage that all the negative portrayal of our community has on all of us. Our negative portrayal leads to discrimination against Latinos and immigrants, lack of recognition of our contributions and no portrayal of the real problems of the Latino community.
The media portrays Latinos as undocumented, criminal immigrants. As a result the general stereotype is exactly that. Latinos, even those who were born here, are stereotyped as immigrants and treated like criminals. Stories that perpetuate this stereotype are covered while stories that go against the stereotype are not even discussed.
The media does not recognize the contributions Latinos have made to the United States. The media ignores the fact that Latinos have lived in the United States since the U.S.-Mexico War. There are many Latinos who can trace their ancestors in the United States further than many white people can. However, instead of addressing these contradictions the media continues to stereotype Latinos.
Since all the focus on the stereotypical Latinos, the media misses all of the real problems facing not only Latinos but the United States as well. Latino schools are poorly funded and teachers are scarce, this is also a problem with many schools across the country with different demographics. Latinos are racially profiled and convicted at higher proportions than whites. However, none of these issues ever make it to the news. The only stories about Latinos are the ones that perpetuate their stereotypes.
There are many problems facing the Latino community and the media does not do a good job of reporting it. Our problems are ignored and Latino stereotypes dominate the news. We are nearly invisible and in order to begin moving forward we must first change our portrayal in the media. We must overcome the stereotypes so people can see the challenges of our community.
Comments
The media’s rendering of society that doesn't fit the pattern of the status quo are not advantageous to our progressive culture. Over the past few generations, communities such as Gays and African Americans have battled for the equal treatment that the rest of us take for granted, only to see their hard work let down by stereotype-promoting dramas and situation comedies. Thanks to wildly-popular shows such as Good Times, Sanford and Son, and Will and Grace, most of us would find it difficult to encounter an average person on the street who does not consider at least most of the qualities of Fred Sanford or Jack McFarland to be true of all African Americans or gays, correspondingly. Surely, while our society has made great strides in its tolerance of people from all walks of life, our media still has some progress to be made. Case and point: the writers of a new CW television program, “Easy Money� have their next target in view; payday loan companies. If the show, which premiered on Sunday, October 5, gains popularity as Sanford and Son and Will and Grace did, the possibility is very real for society to obtain a erroneous depiction of a legitimate business model. Our society could get an fictitious idea about the people who run payday loan stores, called “loan sharks� in Easy Money’s trailers. This, in turn, could lead to unreasonable actions such as Ohio’s HB 545, which would cast payday lenders out of the state and bring about disturbing consequences. This just provides additional evidence that we can’t turn to the media to learn about the world around us.
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Posted by: Payday Loan Advocate | October 10, 2008 5:45 AM
We are living in a democratic country and we as a citizen has the right to decide which is the best for us. We also have the right to participate and cooperate in the decisions of the government legislator about financial independence. The government legislators are sometimes deciding not for the best interest of its citizen. Sometimes they are much on self-serving. Is this what you call public servant? And they say that this is for the good of the people in the society, so that in they end the people will be able to re-elect them or re-employed. The people of Ohio have the opportunity to voice their concerns about financial freedom. This election day, those who depend on the access to payday loans when faced with surprise expenses need to fight to keep that access. Banks and credit unions are fully supporting House Bill 545 because HB 545 will eliminate the competition—payday lenders—and in doing so, the banks will benefit from an extremely profitable service: overdraft protection. Opponents of the payday loan industry make a big hullabaloo about the “monster� 391 percent APR on faxless payday loans, but if we’re being honest, it should be noted that the APR on overdraft protection usually exceeds 1,000 percent. Who’s the monster now? Plus, voting NO on HB 545 will help prevent the loss of over 6,000 jobs in the state of Ohio. It’s probable that if employees of the payday loan industry were to lose their jobs, due to such government overregulation, they would leave to work and even live outside of Ohio, which will create a tax and spending-power deficit for an already struggling state economy. Additionally, there will be over 1,600 empty storefronts, which will deter potential businesses from starting up in Ohio. Read the discussions people are having about HB 545 on the blog at http://ideatreks.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/ohio-house-bill-545/. NO on HB 545 makes sense if Ohio wants to fix its economy.
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Posted by: Payday Loan Advocate | October 30, 2008 8:33 AM