By: Jefferson Marshall

For decades the media has shaped people’s values, ideologies and generally how we look at life. That’s why back in World War II, propaganda was so essential for the US government that had posters and radio broadcasts to lure more people to enlist. But nowadays there are even more mediums that people are exposed to on a daily basis. In turn, there are more voices to shape one’s opinion. In the past couple years civil rights has become a very hot topic in North America. However the representation of African-Americans in the media have been mostly negative for a long time. You can see this through black’s involvement in comic books as a good portion of African-Americans are labelled at sidekicks, in sports where peace protesting is frowned upon, and how hip-hop music and it’s artists are treated like criminals. These stereotypes are put in the minds of the public and are believed as if they were true. This is the product of the media simply repeating these statements which the public eventually reckon these ugly assumptions to be correct when they are not.

Comic Books have been around since the early 1930s. Fast forward to the 1940s, where what is known as “the golden age of comic books”. Mostly because at that time World War II was taking place and comic books provided influential and patriotic stories of good standing victorious over evil. Sure, the 1940s were great time for comic books: the very popular Superman comics were selling well and was starring in his own animated television series, while Captain America was punching Nazis in the face, which is great! However, the comic book world didn’t witness the mainstream black superhero until Fantastic Four #52 in 1966 where Black Panther made his very first appearance. That means young black comic book fans didn’t really have any role models to look up to until about 30 after the inception of comic books. Now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the most popular movie franchises out right now, but what does Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America all have in common? They all have black sidekicks. War Machine, Heimdall, and Falcon respectively all share a space inside the MCU which has been around for almost 10 years. This February, it’ll be Black Panther once again breaking barriers as he will become the first black superhero to have his own solo movie within this ongoing movie franchise. In early 2015, there was speculation that this barrier could’ve been broken much earlier when Marvel Studios received the rights to one of their more popular superheroes: Spiderman. There were already two different Spiderman franchises prior to this one in the past decade and this was about to be the third. Fans already knew the story of Peter Parker

Morales made his comic book debut in 2011 in Ultimate Comics Fallout #4

and his origins involving dead parents and uncles. So this would be a perfect time to introduce to the big screen half black half Hispanic Miles Morales; who in the comics takes over the role of Spiderman after the death of Peter Parker, right? Nope! Marvel Studios decides to cast Tom Holland as the new Peter Parker. Some were indifferent, others were disappointed that audiences will have to endure a third movie adaptation of Peter Parker. So, back to comic book’s humble beginnings and even now they’re still not many strong lead comic book characters that young black fans can look up to.

Black Lives Matter protests have been a controversial topic in the news for a few years now. Nobody knows that more than former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick who started the trend of kneeling during the national anthem to peacefully protest the murders of unarmed African-Americans by the hands of the police. Not everybody took too kindly to that because many people in the media have called it unpatriotic and disrespectful to his country and flag. Talk show host Tomi Lahren said “I support the first amendment, it protects your right to be a whiny, attention seeking cry baby.” on her show The Blaze back in August 2016. The President of the United States Donald Trump even had comments on the matter referring to the 30-year-old

Kaepernick was named GQ Magazine’s ‘Citizen of the Year’ for 2017

quarterback as a “son of a bitch” and saying Kaepernick and whoever else kneels during the national anthem should be suspended by the NFL. These protests have essentially cost Kaepernick his job as he still remains a free agent even though he is still a quality player. A lot of players have carried on Kaepernick’s protest though however the NFL team owners don’t want him or any other protesters on their squad. Owners like Bob McNair when asked to comments on players not standing for the anthem he said “You can’t have the inmates running the prison.” Some grew tired of seeing a good player being shunned from the league for his political beliefs so fans protested in their own way by not watching NFL broadcasts entirely. This started to cost the NFL and sponsors alike a significant amount of revenue as six per cent of viewership drop off in the 2017 season. There is a great amount of violence in the world right now but why is it that a form peaceful protesting is getting this much flack. It seems that the people who criticize Kaepernick always have something to say when their anthem is getting disrespected but are silent when innocent people are gunned down by the ones who are sworn to protect and serve.

Hip-hop has been intertwined with African-American culture since its beginnings. Despite hip-hop’s recent surge of global popularity the genre still seems to be an enigma to some. The media assumes that once you’ve heard one rap song you’ve heard them all; that every rap song shares the same subject matter of women, money and violence. Back in the fall of 2007, rapper Nas was one of the performers at a free concert for the Virginia Tech student body following a school shooting there. Once Nas’ involvement in the concert was announced Fox News political analyst Bill O’Reilly said Nas should be taken off of the guest list due to his “violent” lyricism. O’Reilly went on and brought up things about Nas’ personal life on his show “He’s got a weapons conviction,” O’Reilly stated. “This is a school that had a mass murderer with a shotgun gunning down people—this guy has got a conviction for weapons, and [people] say he’s appropriate? Come on!” Nonetheless, Nas did end up performing at the concert at Virginia Tech where he referred to O’Reilly as a “chump” prompting the crowd to cheer. The Queens rapper did eventually comment on the situation “It just shows you what bloodsuckers like him do,” Nas said during a MTV News interview. “They abuse something like the Virginia Tech tragedy for show ratings. You can’t talk to a person like that.” Nas went one step further and addressed the issue in a song called “Sly Fox”. In the track, Nas touched on how the media is misleading the public, also implying Bill O’Reilly and Fox News are corrupt. The song included line like “Watch what you’re watching Fox keeps feeding us toxins stop sleeping start thinking outside of the box,” and “Only fox that I loved was the red one,
only black man that Fox love is in jail or a dead one”.  Even music industry royalty like Beyoncé has caught heat from the media. At Super Bowl 50, she made a surprise appearance during Coldplay’s halftime show. During the performance, some of the media perceived that she was paying homage to the socialist organization of the

Beyonce’s controversial attire at Super Bowl 50  

Black Panther Party because she sporting black leather attire. The day after the big game, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News denouncing the 20-time Grammy award winner “I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive.” However, Giuliani conveniently left out the fact that “believe in love!” was spelt out in the crowd after Beyoncé’s set was finished. Hip-hop is actually versatile genre that isn’t always conveying subjects like disrespecting women and flaunting how much money you have. These days you’ll find artists covering topics like social injustices, making it in life despite growing up poor and the importance of staying humble. Musixmatch did a study and found that hip-hop has the largest vocabulary out of any music genre. So despite what the media believes, hip-hop has a wide variety of styles and values represented in it’s music.

In conclusion, the media is a great way for the public to be informed, and for outlets to voice different opinions. Sometimes, controversial opinions with little to no evidence to support their message come along. Other times certain groups are falsely represented over and over again. Which leads the public believing these inaccurate opinions or representations to be correct. So the media may have placed too many black superheroes as sidekicks, or vilified peaceful protesters, or denounce hip-hop while slandering it’s artists. But opinions and representations are just that. They’re not actually fact. It’s good to gain knowledge through the media but it’s up to the public to think for themselves to see what actually is true and what isn’t.