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Abstract:
Communication and media strategy are integral parts of effective campaigns that target defined populations. What is often underutilized is the application of critical race theory as the framework to analyze power structures present throughout the process. This leaves students with a practical understanding of mass media but no agency to redesign how the practices that reinforce power, racial assumptions and social inequalities might shift and evolve. This paper explores challenges to introducing this topic and a case study of experiential learning that asks first-year college students to confront biases and evaluate advertisements targeting residents of Chicago communities.
Keywords: Journalism Race Bias, Diversity Media Education, Critical Race Theory
Introduction
The examination of race and culture continue to be prevalent topics for mass media educators, whether the scope is national or global. The nuance of American racism is predicated on systems that replicate in varied forms throughout generations. In the United States, race is defined and measured. In White By Law, Ian Lopez describes race as a social construct that maintains superiority of White identity by unconsciously accepting the racialized structure that alienates people of color (Haney-López, 2006). These structures are discussed at length in constructs like biased policies that disenfranchise voters of color, inequality in the criminal justice system, and the gentrification of communities that mimic segregation-era ideals. However, mass media often represents the inconspicuous, and far more replicated, depictions of race that lack cultural awareness and often relegate people of color to stereotypical images. Normalizing this type of media feeds into perceptions that allow racist structures to maintain their dominance in mainstream media.
Identifying and deconstructing structuralized white supremacy in mass media presents a pedagogical challenge, as teaching this requires instructors and students to confront their own biases and examine the process, development and execution of media strategy as crucial parts of maintaining the effects of societal racial power. Lopez argues that if these "hierarchies of social worth are to be brought down, it will only be through choice and struggle." Critical race theory suggests that power structures based in white supremacy and racism fuel assumptions and conditions that allow oppressive systems to continue. To eradicate the product of these conditions would require us to decenter ourselves and deliberately choose to view something...