America: Land of Opportunity?
...us criminals. In fact, the vast majority is not. These stereotypes simply reinforce the white man’s view of African-Americans, and prevent the African-American community from proving those images to be fallacies. The media also portrays African-Americans as only being successful at singing, dancing, and athletics. Although they relatively do excel in these fields, the majority will never be famous stars or athletes, and this sets them up for disappointment when they can not reach the goals that society promotes as being desirable. Also, the majority of African-American’s find their success in more meaningful positions while this type of African-American success is never portrayed on TV. This also reinforces the white man’s view that African-Americans are not as intelligent, capable and dedicated as white men are. African-Americans are therefore forced to sit back and watch while their images are warped by white men. They are teased with images of black people attaining a level of success most of them will never see, and of white people attaining a level of success that is portrayed as being unattainable to blacks. North American media is bombarded with images of the “American Dream”, of successful people enjoying upper class lives with expensive cars, massive homes and expensive pastimes. This seems harmless at first until the ethnic background of these wealthy characters is analyzed. White men occupy almost all wealthy roles played on TV and black men can do nothing but sit back and watch programs about rich white men. This makes African-Americans feel like they can never be as rich or famous as the white characters on TV, and reinforces the white man’s view that black people are simply incapable of attaining that level of success. American media associates happiness with wealth, success, and prestige, and basically rubs these things...