Social and economic class Assignment | Online Assignment

Submit your Final Project, which should consist of a 1,500- to 2,000-word paper in which you do the following: Discuss the history of your social issue as expressed in popular culture in general. Define the audience for each of your artifact categories and explore whether this audience has changed in any way. Consider whether this audience is local, global, or regional. Discuss what each of your chosen popular culture artifacts communicates regarding your issue. Analyze how at least one additional social issue relates to at least one of your popular culture artifacts. Race/ethnicity Sexuality Gender Social and economic class Violence Indecency/free speech Analyze access and distribution limitations for each of your popular culture artifacts. Determine whether or not access and distribution forces control content. Explain your reasoning. Explain whether your popular culture artifacts send messages that define social values or provoke change. Analyze how your chosen popular culture artifacts connect or do not connect with your personal values.

Race: Modern Popular Culture

Olivia Muldrow

Walden University

Race: modern popular culture

Introduction

Race has been used to describe the different categories between the human race. By definition, race is an idea that human species exist in distinct groups based on their inherited differences in terms of their physical traits, geographical location, and linguistic groups. As such, humans have been categorized as either the European race or simply whites, African race, Latinos, Indians, and Asians, among other races. However, genetic studies in the more recent times have refuted this idea and asserted that there are not biogenetic distinctions between the supposed races. The studies further explain that the existing races are just but a cultural invention that reflects imposed attitudes and beliefs on various populations. Additionally, sociologists consider race as a social construct, and as such, the understanding of race has continued to change over time. This paper highlights the changes that have characterized the modern popular culture of a race.

The human race is believed to be one and is all classified as one species of Homo sapiens; this is despite the variations that exist in Homo sapiens. However, the categorized racial groups that we know them today may just be reflecting the distinct culture that the diverse species of Homo sapiens exhibits. Some of these cultures have been discriminated against, bringing the idea of racism. Typically, racism, defined earlier as whiteness supremacy, was an invention of the Euro-American colonialists who used this to peddle and justify their colonialism and slavery tendencies. Due to this, race, in the whole of our history, has continuously remained connected to white supremacy, a racial hierarchy system in which the whole world has been ordered. This has been through the use of popular culture depictions such as anti-Chinese minstrelsy, depictions of whites ensnared by Asians, black taking demeaning roles in early films, among others (Mueller, Williams, & Dirks, 2018).

In the recent past, white supremacist has been undergoing a strategy change. This may have been occasioned by the changed beliefs of their once audiences. Earlier, those who embraced the white supremacy ideology were indulged by depictions that peddle the idea of the white race as superior to other races. However, the depictions were no longer be consumed; a wide range of audiences condemned such depictions. For example, the film industry got revolutionized with Holly wood movie studio putting to a halt the casting of some characters in an attempt to stop the offensive nature of such characters to blacks (Finn & Aeyeshah, 2016) and the depiction of such a race as inferior to the white race.

In an attempt to resist the audience change, those that were peddling the white supremacy idea, for example, have now re-invented new ways to continue peddling the idea. They are now rallying behind the notion that the white race is in danger of extinction. Their audience and members are now characterized by the youth-oriented males that have now revitalized the movement (Center on extremism, 2019). The new alt-right is now heavily borrowing from the neo-Nazism, paleoconservatism, and fascism. The supremacist, now the Alt right’s strategy, is to perpetuate violence and crimes such as domestic terrorism. They, too, perpetuate non-ideological crimes such as violence against women. Their audience is now expansive, both in the online platform and in the real world (Center on extremism, 2019).

In conclusion, the diverse races that are in existence are just but a creation of the pro-white supremacy ideology that is perpetuated based on the cultural differences. As such, popular cultural practices have been used to depict certain races as inferior and disgusting. However, the audience of such depictions has progressively been rejecting such depictions leading to a change in strategy and audience of such depictions to continue perpetuating the ideology.

References

Center on extremism. (2019). New Hate and Old: The changing face of American white supremacy.

Finn, M., & Aeyeshah, W. (2016). Representation of Race, Ethnicity and Culture in Digital Media. https://doi.org/10.1177/1326365X16640349

Mueller, J. C., Williams, A., & Dirks, D. (2018). Racism and Popular Culture: Representation, Resistance, and White Racial Fantasies. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76757-4_5