This awards season has been one of historic firsts. Among them, Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) became the first Indigenous person to take home a Golden Globe for best actress, delivering part of her acceptance speech in the Blackfeet language. Ali Wong (Beef) was the first woman of Asian descent to win a lead acting Emmy. Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary) and Ayo Edebiri’s (The Bear) wins at the Emmy Awards marked the first time two Black women have swept the top categories for comedy in a single year.
Even more important than the recognition garnered by these films and television shows is the diversity of programming becoming readily available to the masses. But while we celebrate the fullness of lives we’re now seeing on screen, it’s also critical that we reflect on the effects of racist tropes that have been perpetuated in the media for generations.
Hollywood has a history of depicting racialized people, with one of the earliest and most egregious examples being The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Racial representations also aren’t exclusive to the entertainment industry. A Pew Research Center survey last year illuminates problems with news coverage: Four in five Black adults say they see racist or racially insensitive depictions of their race in the news either often or sometimes.
When identities are misrepresented and manipulated in the media, it normalizes stereotypes. Racialized people are represented as suspicious, savage, dangerous, and more — “the terrorist,” for example. Dehumanization in the media has resulted in dehumanization and violence in real life.
In an Orange County Grantmakers Beyond Equity Learning Series event last October, CSU Fullerton Assistant Professor Tavleen Kaur, Ph.D. helped deconstruct racial tropes in art and media dating back to the 1800s. In her presentation, she cited the 2012 Oak Creek shooting in Wisconsin as one of the clearest and most devastating contemporary examples of how stereotypes created and reinforced by the media have been connected to violence. Targeting a gurdwara (Sikh place of faith), Wade Michael Page, a white supremacist, killed six members of the Sikh community who were visibly different — “most brown-skinned, some wearing turbans.” The SPLC shares that, in addition to being “in the white power music scene,” Page was radicalized while in the army at Fort Bragg, “the home base for a brazen cadre of white supremacist soldiers.” From these experiences, Page had learned to equate people with Brown skin, turbans, and beards as deserving the kind of violence he unleased at the Oak Creek gurdwara.
We’re not immune to the effects of racial stereotyping here in Orange County, either.
In 1906, anti-Asian hate triggered the burning of Chinatown in Santa Ana under the guise of protection from leprosy outbreak. Popular imagery at the time was that of the “Yellow Peril” — editorial cartoons that ran in newspapers depicting those of East Asian descent as a danger to the Western world. The early 1900s also brought the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan following The Birth of a Nation, spurring the growth of Orange County Klan membership. Prominent community members added their names to this list, from Brea mayors to the Fullerton City Council and the superintendent of schools. There was a particular foothold in Anaheim, where an initiation event in 1924 drew 10,000 Klansmen from across Southern California.
And it’s not all ancient history.
In 2022, 51% of reported hate crimes and incidents were motivated by race/ethnicity/national origin bias. The spike in racially motivated attacks and violence led the Orange County Board of Supervisors to declare systemic racism and social inequity a public health crisis, citing negative impacts on the health and well-being of individuals and communities of color.
We live in a county where BIPOC are the majority, yet continue to face disproportionate levels of poverty, language isolation, educational attainment challenges, and barriers to equitable civic engagement. These examples of inequity did not just happen. They were created by racist norms and systems, and to resolve them, those norms and systems must be healed and reformed.
What can be done as a first step — here, locally — is rooted in education. An easy access point for many is via the media we consume on a daily basis. By understanding the critical importance of media stereotypes, we can begin to see the effects of racial tropes and make connections that translate into action.
For every awards season darling like Beef that celebrates the triumphs and tragedies of BIPOC characters and creates rich backstories absent of stereotypes, there are many more shows and films to discover that fly under the radar. In her presentation, Dr. Kaur specifically highlighted the British sitcom We Are Lady Parts (2021), a rowdy, irreverent comedy that follows an all-female Muslim punk band on their quest to book a gig.
There are also media development tools that actively challenge critique and even disrupt the status quo, like the DuVernay Test to measure racial diversity and the Obeidi-Alsultany Test to evaluate representation of Muslim characters — of which We Are Lady Parts passes with flying colors.
The influence of mass media on our conception of race, culture, norms, and stereotypes is undeniably powerful. Those who produce have power to create and put images and storylines into the public space. But as those who consume, we also have an opportunity to resist when we see racialized people being reduced to damaging, dehumanizing tropes.
When asked what she would like people to take away from her Beyond Equity session, Dr. Kaur shared: “I would hope that people would remember that there is a lot more to the communities misrepresented on film and television. … If narratives about communities seem too simplistic, that’s usually indicative that there is a lot more to unpack.”
We can instead challenge the notion of the default narrative and ask ourselves what voices and perspectives are missing from the passive characters in movies and television shows we watch. In doing so, we can do our part to curb hate crimes happening right here in Orange County.
We invite you to make a commitment to unpacking stereotypes you see in the media with Orange County Grantmakers and join us for an upcoming Beyond Equity event for more insight about equity and equality in Orange County.
Taryn Palumbo earned her Juris Doctorate from Chapman University School of Law, passed the CA Bar in 2011 and earned her B.A. from Loyola Marymount University. As the Executive Director since 2018, Taryn provides strategic leadership to Orange County Grantmakers, a regional association of philanthropic funders in Orange County, overseeing and executing programming, communication, member services and community engagement, while supporting the operations of the organization.
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