Is TV advertising racist? Or, prone to ethnic stereotypes?

Introduction: The media project I chose looked at black and white stereotypes in commercials. I watched popular shows like Chuck, Glee, American idol, Gossip Girl, and Saturday morning cartoons.  I was surprised that racial stereotyping would be present in these commercials. Even though racial stereotyping in advertising has gotten less prominent since the 1950's and 60's we are still not perfect. With TV advertisements showing only one side of different ethnic groups, many people aren't sure what to think.

Investigation: Over a few different weeks I watched different TV shows and documented whether they had blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, or a mix of races. I wrote down what show I was watching, and the number of mixed race commercials, to just white commercials. I was pretty sure that I would find that a lot more commercials featuring white people but I had no idea that there would be so much difference in how many commercials had all races, and how many had just white.  

After just my first few days researching I quickly started to notice the ethnic stereotypes that were aimed at different ethnicity's much more then white. For example some of the time white people were businessmen or women they had nice suits and ties and VERY nice cars, some of the time they were
just normal people walking in the park with their family, and sometimes they are lower class people or single moms or dads. But most of the black people I saw were homeless or gangster. They were portrayed in one way.

 I think that the commercials that stereotype the most are the ones that include all races, because you get to see the differences right next to each other. For example: there is this one commercial that bugs me every time I see it. It  has lots of greetings that people use when they talk on the phone (I think it was for AT&T) there are all these white people on the phone saying "hey!" "what's up?" "hello!" then this black girl comes on and she says "SUP GURL!" That is the only black person you see in the commercial.

The other day I was searching something in google and I typed "Why are" and one of the first things that came up was "why are black people loud"  do you think this has to do with any kind of media?

 My thoughts: So, are commercial advertisements racist? My research seems to say yes. When all of the people in commercials driving VW'S or Fords, maybe modeling some new clothes from JC Penny, are white. One thing that bothers me more than that, though, is the way many white people try to imitate some black people's style or slang in a funny way, like there is something wrong with talking or acting like that. I know that I have done this myself but I didn't really think about it until this project when I was noticing how TV portrayed different races.

So what I think is that nobody notices the stereotypes that TV makes, probably because they don't pay attention. But the only black girl I saw during this project in commercials is ghetto, unless they are a mother or they look over thirty. All of the young black boys I've seen in commercials are gangsta, while most of the young white boys are skater.

 Many commercials also seem to purposely mix up the races, in one McDonald's commercial it literally had a pattern of races: black kid, white kid, Asian kid, Hispanic kid, black kid, white kid, and so on. They wanted to appeal to everybody.

Maybe commercial makers just think that they will appeal to more people if most of the people in the commercials are white, or that they will appeal to more people if the black people in commercials are portrayed one way. Is that right?  If white people get a chance to be portrayed in different ways, don't other people deserve that to?