During the past two days in my American Studies class we have been talking about African Americans and how they are portrayed in television shows specifically in drama TV. Is it better to have no African American people in a TV show, or have one and not give them any role or screen time and be demeaning to them? Before we looked at these shows in class I thought that TV was better and that African American people had big roles and were actually wanted in TV. Now I think that they are only there so that the television companies can be politically correct and say that they are representing a minority. 24 is one of my favorite TV shows, and before today I thought that the African American president in the show was one of the main characters in the first few seasons, but after watching a clip from that pilot episode and seeing that the screen time of the African American president is only like 2 minutes in the whole one hour episode.
How many drama television shows are like this, where the African American people are stereotyped, or portrayed negatively? Will American get better, will television make dramas where African Americans are good and main characters where all eyes are on them? What can we as viewers do to help? Where are the lines of racism drawn?
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I never really noticed the placement and casting of black people in television before we discussed this in class either. I felt like black people had become pretty prominent in TV compared to the past. However, after talking about it in class I realized that many of the shows I was thinking about were sitcoms and not dramas. I find it disturbing that Americans can't handle watching show that has a black person being serious, conflicted, and having problems in their life. They always have to be the funny one. Why is that? Why is it okay to watch a white person go through personal problems and not a black person?
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