Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 3

This week, our class went over the Black community in the press and how they have been traditionally discriminated against. A discussion item for the week was the Key and Peele skit "Is This Country Song Racist," and really started to get my mind going on how modern day social media and skits like this have turned casual racism into more comedic.

In the skit, Keegan-Michael Key shows Peele some country songs he has been writing which turn out to have massive racist innuendos. Peele gets up and leave, but the skit is of course made for the intended purpose of making the audience laugh.

After watching the video, I began to think about everything I see on social media, especially Instagram Reels, about stereotypes, not just of Black people but all races. Black people eating fried chicken, Asian people not being able to drive, Indians smelling, etc. A lot of these stereotypes are put into memes for likes and views on social media platforms as a form of comedy. While at face value they are just attempting to get a laugh and a like, they worsen racial issues by strengthening the ideology behind the stereotypes. I believe that viewing comedic videos with racial undertones over and over can subliminally affect you, to where you begin to believe those things in real life as well.

While Key and Peele developed this skit as comedic, I think they unintentionally highlighted some problems within the ever growing landscape of social media, even with the video being released 5 years ago. As AI expands, I have seen the same types of racial stereotype videos developed by prompted AI. 

I think people can do more to be aware of just how much they consume on social media can affect them subliminally. If you consume too much hatred, racism, etc... it could lead to a worse attitude towards the world when you turn your phone off.

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