The Grand Finale...!

I think race/ethnicity and gender are important issues that need to be addressed and taken care of in today’s society. Too much time has gone past for these issues to not have been solved yet. If our world is going to succeed in any way and eventually become “equal,” as everybody claims, major steps need to be taken in that direction. First of all, people need to get over their racial stereotypes, and their bigotry. People also need to stop thinking of women as home-makers and start accepting the fact that they are becoming a predominant part of the business world. They are also not sexual objects, as they are perceived either. Human beings. Everybody person who lives and breathes on this Earth are all the same. Some are not closer to animals than others, skin color does not matter—white, black, yellow, brown, orange, red—they’re all the same.

            As media professionals, I believe we are the first ones to help make a step towards a more equal society. We hold the power to influence people to a great extent. So far, the media has been using it to mold the minds of people how they see fit. That just doesn’t cut it anymore. People need to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them God. Yes, that is what people say when taking an oath, but it’s true. The straight truth has been held from people for so long, that nobody knows what is true and what isn’t anymore. Media professionals can change this. We have the opportunity to do something nobody else before us has done: create equality among different races and different genders. Although these changes can, and most likely will, take a very long time to implement, something can still be done. Our problems can still be solved. Racial minorities will have a larger base in the media. Women will not be sexualized. News coverage will be objective.

            One thing that stops us from achieving our goals of equality is who controls the media. No matter how many people go out there and try to make a difference, it always comes down to the small conglomerates who hold the majority shares of every media type out there. So until those people change, nothing will change. As much hope as I have in our generation to change the way things run, I do not see this happening for a long long time. Look how long it has taken to make the small amount of progress that has occurred. Slavery was banned over 100 years ago, and segregation laws have been banned for almost 50 years. And we have done so little to diversify our media.

            For blogs, I believe they can be beneficial. I believe with blogs people can really speak their mind and say what they want to say, even when they weren’t able to at any other time. Personally, I feel like I wasn’t able to express completely my opinion because it was an assignment and I was graded on my thoughts. I feel like if I disagreed with something we were talking about, I would get counted off. I did like the aspect of commenting on other people’s blogs. Even though we didn’t read everyone’s thoughts, we still got to get a taste of what other people thought. And then we got a chance to either agree with them or disagree with them, depending. I thought that was helpful because it also gave me insight to what other people thought about my writing, and my ideas. It helped me to further establish my opinions and ideas relating to gender and race.

            Overall I think the gender and race class is an important part of our curriculum. It helps people to break out of their shells and see what is out in the world, other than what they are used to. People are creatures of habit, and we stay with what we know. But classes like this help people to see that there is so much more out there that they may not even be aware of. I do feel that there are better ways to go about learning this, because I felt like some of out curriculum was one-sided and didn’t show everything that happens.