My educational textbooks state over and over again that the United States of America is growing more diverse and has statistics to back this up. Recently moving to a larger town, I know there are places much more diverse than the small town I grew up in. I see it, others see it, but does the media accurately reflect it? This is the question that lead me to flip the channels in search of commercials, rather than shows.
My mission was to see if commercials actually reflect the growing diversity by showing multiracial people. I watched various channels for an hour and recorded how many men and women were shown using the following categories: white, Hispanic, African American and Asian American.
There were 72 men and 44 women shown in an hour of commercials. 55 of those men were white, 10 were African American, 5 were Hispanic American and 2 were Asian American. Of the 44 women: 33 were white, 8 were African American, 4 were Asian American and none were Hispanic. I think the numbers speak for themselves: the media of the USA does not accurately portray the people that make up America. When will all be considered equal?
i've often thought the same thing - just have never done the leg work to see how close the statistics match up. interesting, huh?
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