by Jake Snow

Created on: March 17, 2009   Last Updated: April 06, 2009

Welcome to the twenty-first century, the first decade of a new millennium. Looking back over the past hundred years we can see that as Americans and as human beings we have made tremendous advancements. We've accomplished momentous achievements such as landing humans on the moon, instituting universal suffrage, and cementing the equality of all mankind through the civil rights movement. True, an African-American man is now the President of this great country, and leader of the free world. With this crowning achievement in the fight for equality, some might be fooled into believing that we have reached the zenith in our never-ending struggle to secure equality for all. Unfortunately that is not the case in the slightest. Our own so-called "liberal" media on a daily basis purveys stereotypes which are damaging and demeaning to African-Americans, and push poor role models out to the youth of America

The hardest hit individuals by today's media stereotypes are African-American women. When you turn on the television or go to the movies next, pay attention to the roles that African-American women play. Think about how often you see an African-American woman being portrayed on the screen as brave, intelligent, and strong or playing a leadership role? How many films can you think of right now where the heroine was played by an African-American woman? Don't feel bad if you can't think of many, the sad truth is that there aren't many out there.

Today's entertainment industry is doing a great disservice to women in general, and to African-American women in particular. The stereotypical woman being portrayed by the media is shallow, weak, unintelligent, and incapable of making decisions on her own, untrustworthy, materialistic, and promiscuous. Is this the kind of image that young women need to be bombarded with on a daily basis? No friends, this is not the image that civil rights movement fought for, and this is not what hundreds of thousands died fighting for in the civil war. Those battles among countless others were fought in order to provide a bright and meaningful future for African-American men and women, as well as humanity as a whole.

Young African-American women are relentlessly bombarded with images of some of the worst possible role models in the world. Role models that seem to scream at them, "hey, you don't need to be smart or strong willed to be successful, you just need to be beautiful and promiscuous and you can get whatever you want!" But that isn't the

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>