Examples Of Anti-Blackness In The Media

Anti-Blackness in the Media Lester D. Emanuel III

Department of Communication, University of Connecticut

AFRA-3898-Variable Topics: Global Anti-Black Racism

Instructor David Embrick

5/3/2023

Introduction

We live in a society where there is a plethora of information right by our fingertips. It’s a time where you can just wake up and look at the news directly from your phone, but the information is not depicted to the same standard. For black communities, the media has historically played a major role in stereotyping, and perpetuating harmful narratives that limit their representation and contribute to systemic racism. The media plays a vital role in shaping our understanding of the world around us, which includes our perceptions of

People use social media everyday for different reasons. Regardless of one’s reasoning, the majority of the time you cannot control the way black are presented to you and your only opinion can be formed on what you see and not actual facts. This can be a big issue if people are intentionally represented in a poor way. Social media platforms and various digital spaces have the potential to spread anti-blackness, with the promotion of white ideologies and politics. An example of this promotion of colorism. Colorism is a form of discrimination based on skin color, typically within the same racial group, where people with lighter skin are more highly regarded over those with darker skin. Side effects of this cause people to be more destructive within their own race. When this happens it causes hierarchies to form in a group that is already highly discriminated against. So much so that Kiara Childs investigated the effects of colorism with famous influencers. In her findings she saw that the company Beautyblender strategy of appealing to undertones excludes people with darker skin colors which contributes to rhetoric that blackness is inferior (Childs, 2022). The idea that companies are not providing skin tones that are darker directly contributes to anti-blackness. Things simple as this causes people to want to be lighter so they can feel included. When people are not comfortable with the skin they were born in it causes them to feel alienated. In doing so, it teaches people to hate themselves and continues the false narratives of people needing to appeal to a certain skin tone. This is a direct attack on blackness because it does not factor in black people of all tones, just the ones that are deemed acceptable. Childs put so much pressure on the company that in the months following they added 8 new shades, 3 of them being darker tones (Childs, 2022). Which in