This is Your TV on Drugs

Whenever we watch TV or go to the movies, we repeatedly find references of characters using drugs. However, the portrayal of this drug consumption is depicted in a different way depending on who is the person doing them.

Stereotypically, drug consumption among whites usually shows them as a rich and powerful group, a group you would want to emulate. Their consumption seems to be mostly linked to fun and partying, as can be seen in popular shows such as Gossip Girl and The OC.

With Latinos and blacks however, drug consumption is related to gangs and poverty. They're a group of people you'd avoid and who seem to have started using because of their dreary surroundings. Examples of this are the long-running show, Cops and, more recently, The Wire, where blacks and Latinos are portrayed as a self-destructive group.

So why should we care if white kids do drugs for fun and black and Latin kids do it to avoid their harsh reality -- at least on TV? It's important because what we see on TV does affect our ideas of how things work, as a society. And these stereotypes don't contribute to a real understanding of why drugs are used in our community -- nor by whom.

If we were to claim an unrealistic portrayal of a certain ethnic group in the media, people might seem more interested in correcting it. But since the issue is drug consumption, it is not perceived as such an important issue because, after all, drugs are illegal.

Case in point: in its website, GLAAD states that "The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation." They claim that "what people watch on TV or read in their newspaper shapes how they view and treat the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people around them." GLAAD also states that "Fair, accurate and inclusive media images shatter stereotypes. They prove that we are connected through common, human experiences. These are stories that we -- and the media -- have a responsibility to share." Well, this is something we should all consider if we want to eliminate racial discrimination from our society.

Since they're talking about human rights and the gay community, people pay more attention to this issue. But is there anyone who will stand up for a non-discriminatory portrayal of drug usage in the media? We should, since this only generates a distorted view of the diverse communities in our society.

Another clear example of this misrepresentation is something you can see in most news story about drugs -- the accompanying images are usually of a poor, black man doing crack. In reality, more white people use crack cocaine than do blacks. However the media chooses to depict mostly black people as crack users, perpetrating a false stereotype.

Not that we want to promote the use of drugs, but we definitely have to consider that the way the media stereotypes ethnic groups that use drugs is an outdated and racist perspective of our increasingly diverse and evolving society. Allowing these stereotypes to continue in the media will only support the racial disparity that we can find in jails were 90 percent of the prisoners are blacks and Latinos, even though the difference in drug consumption between these two groups and whites is nonexistent.

Comments

[realitytrumpsbull]

I've been stone-cold sober for like, 23 years, now, unless you count coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, and junk food, and have NO desire to
have anything to do with hard drugs, or even prescription drugs, for that matter. I think it's quite literally the 'business' of purveyors of ALL the above items to get you hooked, and once hooked, they 'own' a little piece of your paycheck. Forever. Screw that.
What you put in the front comes out the back,
eventually, providing it doesn't latch on
(with lethal or at least debilitating effect)
to your internal organs. If you wanna be healthy and drug-free and stuff, go with your green leafys, a balanced diet, get addicted to walking, and drink your water and get your sleep. Limit your TV intake to no more than 1 hour per day. That should be enough to give you your 'fix'. Maybe they need to make a new drug called 'SteadaTube', basically Soma with a CD of some guy talking authoritatively about nonsense, scripted, the whole bit, sounds official and professional, but all just garbage words jumbled together, and you can listen to that to help you cut back on TV viewing, put extra tracks on it that sort of sound like a ball game, a sitcom, and a game show, and then 3 minutes of just gun fire and swear words so it sounds like you're listening to a movie in the background. Make a little cardboard cutout that goes with it, that looks like the front fascia off a TV set, and you just sort of carry that around and look at the Real World through that. It'd sort of be like your 'patch'...
It's YOUR life, how do YOU want to spend it?

[oldpotsmuggler]

"Not that we want to promote the use of drugs"

You know, I actually made my living doing that one time. I wasn't able, for instance, to rent a billboard like Bacardi can, and most of the year my biggest challenge was finding enough pot for my customers, and not vice versa, but it does seem like there are as many similiarities there as differences. That and the fact that alcohol kills far more people than weed, but we are a people used to not letting the facts get in our way.

Here's an idea. Why don't we try promoting freedom for a change. If I had some big, beautiful buds and a t.v. ad full of wonderful looking barbecue and laughing people smoking them, do you think I could move some inventory? But a child might break in to mom and dads stash and then the whole world would be headed to hell in a handbasket.

No, it really seems like the better course of action would be to put a few million more people in prison A.S.A.P. After all, anything that makes people laugh, get a craving for good food, and maybe even a little spike in their libido is probably not going to appeal to conservatives anyway.

If we can't all just get along, then half of us are clearly going to have to be locked up.

[ethanthom]

I think the media forgets that what they portray is for the most part what happens.I don't want to sound prejudice,but the reason stereotypes are called stereotypes is because it is (for the most part) true.