Race and Ethnicity Group 2

In order to further inspect the issue of race representations in popular media, our group will take a look at how race is portrayed within children's television. According to Jebens’ article
“Nickelodeon: The First White Kids Network”, there is roughly a 12 to 1 ratio of white to African American character representation on Nickelodeon (5). While underrepresented in overall media, we will attempt to uncover stereotypes of African Americans by examining the children and teenage shows of Keenan and Kel from the Nickelodeon network and That’s so Raven from the Disney network. Further, we will explore the effect these stereotypes have on children’s perceptions of African Americans in the real world, and how these apply to the Postmodern popular culture theory. The never ending stereotyping of the African American race has been and still is very prevalent within our childrens daily television consumption and can range from their diet to their overall intelligence levels. Many theories could be used to examine the reasons for this profiling, but the postmodern train of thought might best explain African American’s portrayals for the easier identification with the “urban style”. Either way, all of the negative qualities shown throughout children’s media are certainly not lending to a correct or positive image of African Americans as individuals.