Marketing Violence: The Special Toll on Young Children of Color

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 2003 by Levin, Diane E, Carlsson-Paige, Nancy

In children's media, characters are given a persona, which includes racial and ethnic features and which children see repeated again and again on television and in other media. For example, in most violent children's programming, there is a rigid dichotomy portrayed between the protagonists, the "good guy" characters such as the Terminator and Power Rangers, whose violent behavior is linked to positive qualities, and their less developed "enemies" such as Cobra in the GI Joe line and Spiderman's "enemies," whose violent behavior is linked to negative qualities. The good guy qualities are overwhelmingly associated with Whiteness and maleness, and bad guy qualities more often with nonWhite, even non-human qualities (Children Now, 1998). Girls and characters of color are less visible and play lesser roles. Characters of color are often less well developed than White characters, even on shows where some diversity exists (Children Now, 2000). Often when characters of color are portrayed, it is in Stereotypie ways as seen with characters such as Speedy Gonzalez, Chiquita Banana, and Frito Bandito that make a subtle mockery of Hispanic culture (Rodriguez, 1999). The situation is the same with video games. A recent Children Now survey of video game content found that human characters were almost exclusively White in video games for young children, that nearly all heroes were White, and that while almost all African American females (86%) were victims, when males of color do appear, they were primarily athletes, wrestlers, or fighters (Children Now, 2001).

We can often sec racial stereotyping in the depiction of good guy and bad guy characters in Disney films. Because Disney is one of the largest institutional shapers of children's culture, the whole childhood culture is affected by the images created by Disney. In the 1992 movie Aladdin, Aladdin himself, who is the good guy, is depicted as an Arab but his appearance is Anglicized and he speaks in standard American English. all of the bad guys in the animated film are also Arab, but they have beards, large, bulbous noses, sinister eyes, heavy accents, and wield swords (Giroux, 1999). The film's opening song depicts Arab culture as "barbaric" and violent. Such an image enmeshes racial stereotyping with images of violence. In a second example, the 1998 Disney film Tarzan portrays the central character as a White man. Even though Tarzan lives in Africa, there are no Africans or people of color present in the film (Sun, 2001).

Toys linked to these images in the media reinforce the stereotyped messages about race conveyed in the films. Many toys linked to the Aladdin movie perpetuate these stereotypes. For example, in 2001, Fisher-Price, a long-standing marketer of toys for very young children, came out with small action figures called "Bandits"-Arab-looking characters wearing turbans with mean-faces, large-noses, and wielding weapons; the "Bandits" are a recommended toy for children ages 3 and up.

Children are aware of the stereotyped messages conveyed to them via mass media from a young age. Two out of 10 Latin American and Asian American children and 4 out of 10 African American children report that they see children of their race very often on TV compared to 7 out of 10 White children. Children of all races associate certain qualities-having lots of money, being well-educated, being a leader, doing well in school, and being intelligent-more often with the White characters on television, and associate other qualities-breaking the law, having a hard time financially, being lazy, and acting goofy-more often with the minority characters they see on TV. Children think the roles of secretary (79%), boss (71%), doctor (67%), and police officer (53%) on TV are usually played by White people, while the roles of criminal (59%), maid (35%), and janitor (35%) are usually played by African Americans (Children Now, 1998).