Media & Minorities Last Post!

I like the overall message of this book, and the way she discussed it in the conclusion.  "The first is that representation of race serves to protect the racial hierarchy in America..."  I agree with this. I do think this is the point of the book and I think that as a holistic work it does a good job showing this.  There are times though where her lack of detail in argument and in examples, could possibly lead to her not being taken seriously, which I think is a big problem.

I found it problematic, like Lexi, that she spent so much time talking about this "coconut" comment, going in depth about what it meant. I think Lexi explained this best, so I'm going to leave my comments at her argument being the best one to reference in terms of this coverage.

I also found some of the political campaigns that she chose to use for reference problematic.  I found it annoying that she kept presenting saying Solarz was white, but also calling him Jewish.  Wait, what?  As in, he is racially white but religiously Jewish?  I wasn't really sure what she was trying to say here. Honestly, it bothered me that it wasn't clear.

In the campaign between Locke and Craswell, she leaves out gender almost entirely in the discussion of analysis.  WHY?!  It is important when it comes to politics as well.  It's something that you cannot just "ignore" for the sake of the piece.  It is a factor.

Also, using the campaign of Jay Kim when he had just been convicted for accepting illegal campaign contributions and was under house arrest, seemed ridiculous.  Why would you choose that?  Obviously, things are going to be skewed in coverage about a corrupt politician.

Lastly, in her conclusion...this honestly just pissed me off.  "Since the mainstream media's exclusion and representation of all four racial-minority groups..."  Um, the four you covered.  There are not "4 minority groups".  It's been bugging me all along that this book focuses on four groups but doesn't even acknowledge that minorities are not just four groups, and even her groupings probably would not be agreed upon.  It was just frustrating for me and I wish she would have said more clearly that she realized her study was not all encompassing and completely representative.  Because it wasn't.  She spends a lot of time talking about representation, without seeming to acknowledge how she was being exclusionary herself.  I'm not saying she could have covered everything, but acknowledging it more blatantly would have been a step in the right direction.