VIEWPOINT FROM MEDIA LITERACY NOW
Media Literacy Is Essential to Equity, Well-Being, and Democracy By Erin McNeill
Media literacy is an essential life skill that all students need and deserve in the 21st century. Therefore, equity in education requires that media literacy is taught in a comprehensive way from kindergarten through grade 12 in our public schools. But more than that, media literacy is also key to overcoming systemic racism, which is a root cause of inequity in education. I’ve had a number of conversations in recent months that started: “I had no idea how big the problem of white supremacy extremists was in this country.” Systemic racism and white supremacy have become much more visible to those, like me, who have had the luxury and privilege to go about our lives in ignorance. According to Stanford psychologist Steven O. Roberts, media is one of the key factors that support systemic racism in the United States today. By legitimizing overrepresented and idealized representations of white Americans while marginalizing and minimizing people of color, across many media forms, those messages contribute to the attitudes and beliefs that create a support structure for systemic racism.
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The MLN team gathered some examples of what he is referring to: • Across formats, Black males are overrepresented with negative associations, such as criminality, while underrepresented overall — for instance, as characters in video games; as experts called in to offer perspectives and analysis in the news; as computer users in TV commercials; and as “relatable” characters with well-developed personal lives in entertainment programming. (Source 1) • News and opinion media overrepresent poor families and welfare recipients as being Black and are almost 1.5 times more likely to represent a white family as an illustration of social stability than a black family. (Source 2) • Scripted TV police programming, through which many people develop their understanding of the criminal justice system according to Color of Change, do not accurately depict racial disparities in the system. In addition, Black people are underrepresented in front of and behind the camera: viewers rarely
American Consortium for Equity in Education