Cultural Oppression Using Media

Society have transformed in the way that people actively collect and spread knowledge. Television, magazines and the Internet are among a myriad of technological resources people are taking advantage from in order to gain information about what is going on in the world. The mass amounts of media portraying gender, race and economic status as problematic to society, creates a level of toxicity where people are being categorized under gross assumptions as to their character. These media portrayals extend to more than just African Americans, but all marginalized groups. The information delivered by the media carries strong feelings of alienation and inferiority toward people of poverty, but at the same time justifies itself with the values that tradition has held onto. There is no doubt that media is an important way for everybody to learn about the world, but people also need to learn how to take the information presented to them subjectively, even questioning their own values at times. In order to combat this framework, adolescents need to be taught the skills to analyze the author’s response, by locating certain bias and being able to decipher mixed messages. Thus came the Hip-hop Project. The Hip-hop project was a way for students to take certain artists depictions of youth and culture, analyzing both the positive and negative portrayal and come up their own interpretations to how there are perceived by others. Instead of accepting what the media said about their culture, the students challenged these ideas, by offering their own experiences and reasons. In addition to the empowerment that these students received by learning to question and think about the information the media delivers, they were also able to build on their basic skills of research reading and writing. Educators seem convinced that our students don’t want to learn how to question the media. It is crucial to capitalize on these skillsets to ensure our youth grows up with a strong mindset, especially about who they are as a person and culture.