America and its emerging issue with cultural and racial representation

After the Black Lives Matter movement took off in America, it amplified America’s position in the terms of the representation that it provides to various ethnicities. As we know the BLM movement is aimed at providing equal footing to the African American communities living in America but the BLM movement has drastically affected the American media as well and how it represents various ethnic groups.

America is a large, developed country with better infrastructure, healthcare and economy from the rest of the world. America is also home to various races and ethnic groups. With the White community being the majority and historically being named as “superior”, the other communities face huge amounts of discrimination that sometimes go unnoticed. But when the BLM movement emerged, it was like a wakeup call for America to do something about the emerging difference between the races and bridge them so that all the races and communities can live in harmony.

But you must be thinking; how does this affect the American media? It does and sometimes in very subtle ways. As I have mentioned before, the White community in America was deemed as “superior” in history. A lot of pain was inflicted upon the people who were not the part of this community, upto a point in history where they were not given protection and basic human rights. But as the American media has took off and streaming sites such as Netflix are taking over the world, there has been a huge responsibility that has been kept on America to deal with and that is “representation”. With the BLM movement on the go, many companies, associations and corporations have used this movement to gain more traction of the politically involved youth in America, which is a huge number. Youth have become a huge part of the political movement in major countries, as we can see in America and currently the examples are prevailing in Thailand and Nigeria.

Politically active Youth have started criticizing certain aspects of the media that doesn’t align with their beliefs, because America is home to such diversity of people and at a position where it has the power to influence the rest of the world. The youth is raging for the proper representation of various races and ethnic groups. Not only Whites but Blacks, Asian Americans, people from South America as well.

Now, that all the history and politics is out of the way, let’s define what do we exactly mean by representation. Representation, according to Google means, “The way that somebody/something is shown or described; something that shows or describes something”, not until a few years ago, America has been considered for having a relatively “gross-representation” of communities that are not White. America has been over-representing the White communities and giving under-representation to other communities which are part of the same country and build the economy. While researching for this topic I came across an article whose writer wrote the following words that struck me the most “I knew black people lived in America. Why then was it almost surprising to see them waiting for the Metro, pushing carts through Safeway and standing in line with me at CVS?”, the writer then partly blames the American media for the under-representation of Black community and for their “incorrect representation” as well. The stereotypical characters from each of the communities are so deeply influenced by the history of America that it had seeped into the media as well.

The writer then says “We consume American pop culture to saturation point, as much as, if not more than, any other country in the world. Music, movies, magazines, TV shows, brands, food and advertising roll over the waves of the Atlantic and crash down over us, and we drink it all up with vigorous thirst. Only since living on the other side of those waves did I realize with keen interest and fascination comes responsibility.” The responsibility he/she/they/them is talking about is using and consuming the American pop culture effectively so that it doesn’t blind you from reality. America accounts for the country whose pop culture has had the most impact in the world and with that comes its responsibility to represent everyone equally and with the current democratic elections coming up, we can only hope for that.

I really appretiate you reading so far, let me know what you think.