Nicole's issue 3 response (since I was absent from class..)

Does racial segregation still exist and dominate the media?
I agree with not the side the it does or it doesn’t so much as I believe in how McWhorter comments on the fact that BOGLE seeks out and dissects each possible example of racial presence on television. It seems that a lot of Bogle’s argument was sturdy, but not necessarily altogether race based. He pulled together a great argument for media influence and stereotypes. He just used race as an optional part of the equation. You could have used any group of society and substituted it in to his argument and it would have been just as strong. Consequently, I’m not exactly convinced by Bogle’s argument. His debating skills, yes, not the subject matters though. Also, I saw in the ‘No’ side of the argument (McWhorter) not the argument being particularly strong, however, his inherent attitude came across as a perfect crutch to his argument that race is not abused nor the underlying theme behind all the diversity on TV. McWhorter discussed how as a child, he was raised in front of certain television programs and that even his parents (particularly his mother) were what really helped to determine how he viewed the messages and characters in the shows. That is what I think was the meat of his discussion. Not how the media portrays race and stereotypes, but how we accept them as individuals consuming the program and its’ characters. I think race has little to do with the way that characters are cast in ALL shows. I know that it does shape SOME shows and some programs will use the race card to add more elements and complications to a shows story line, but I do not think that any one race is abused and used in the media for entertainment or story line purposes…but maybe that’s just because that’s how I was raised to view TV programs [and by extension, much of the way I perceived the world I grew up in].