Thursday, May 12, 2011

Assigning a race

Shawna Polivka
SP102706@ohio.edu

The United States has been a melting pot full of all sorts of people of many races, colors, ethnicities and cultures for over 200 years. However, we are still battling many stereotypes from religious, cultural and racial wars. As a result, terminology can be a very touchy subject.

No one wants to offend anyone when it comes to the media. The mass media should be impartial and open to all ideas. It’s hard to please everyone when trying to decide which words best describe a certain group of people. As seen in the article, “Undocumented or illegal?” the media does not want to discriminate even those who are not residents of our country. We are taught to accept everyone.

I just can’t help but wonder, How does one please everyone in a group?

The media revises themselves every year with the new addition of the AP Stylebook. The authors must surely take a lot of instances into consideration. If they can’t solve the problem, who can? Perhaps they should put together a table of many races and ethnicities and talk about it and how people feel.

I recently read this article on the 2010 Census. Citizens have the option to write in their own race. I think everyone should be able to write in what they believe they are. Why does it really matter if the nation is 79.6% (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html) white? The United States of America was founded upon freedom!

Race in media is still a big problem. Just look at the Obama campaign (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/21/politics/animal/main3957940.shtml) from 2008; race was a hot topic. To me, if we really want to get rid of this problem, we need to stop thinking about separating everyone all together into races. I don’t think we should lose our culture, traditions and our family backgrounds, but just stop dividing each other because of the color of our skin or the amount of money we make or who is carrying a real Coach bag. At the end of the day, we are all the same thing: Human beings.

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