To be honest, I don’t think about race and gender in the media or outside of the media much. Being the first one asked in class today, on the spot, what I thought of when I hear the word “race”, I answered, “Color of the skin.” After hearing the majority of the class then answer they thought of heritage and traditions, I thought my answer sounded rather raw or uneducated. We later discussed in class if race was something man created and I think the general consensus was yes to an extent. I kept thinking about it after class and liked my initial answer better. If man created race to categorize, then it really is more about what is on the outside, the skin, than what is on the inside, traditions and heritage. When you hear “the blues”, which is a tradition or heritage, do you think “African-Americans?” I don’t. I think soulful, down on my luck music, not race. The traditions and heritage are what make people special and unique and color of skin does not matter. That was not supposed to come across as “Holier-than-thou”, I promise, so please don’t take offense to that. I am 100% sure I would have answered as the majority of my classmates had, had I not been the first one asked. And you may stick to or defend your answer, which is great too, because there are no wrong answers on a question like that. This may not even make sense to anyone other than me, but that’s the great and terrible thing about a blog. It’s just some guy sitting at his computer spewing his opinion unchecked.

When it comes to thinking about race and gender in the media, I bet the majority of middle to upper-middle class white males are probably in the same boat, and that boat is the U.S.S. Status Quo. Those in my demographic, but who are not working in the business or studying the field really have no reason to think about it. The world they see on television or the big screen probably closely reflects the world they live in so why would they analyze the media they are consuming. I picked up a Boyd Street magazine on the way home from class and quickly looked through it. Then I started thinking about this class and the blog and I looked through it again. There are approximately 170 people pictured in the 23 pages of the magazine including the ads. Of those pictured, there are, by my best guess, nine or ten that are not Caucasian. This is obviously a crude study and guess by myself but even if I am off by a few numbers, you can see that the percentage of different cultures represented is miniscule. However, is this so far off from the breakdown of racial percentages in Norman and the University of Oklahoma? Without looking at the official numbers, Norman seems to me to be very white. So maybe that is just smart business on the part of Boyd Street magazine to cater to their audience. Just like Black Entertainment Television (BET) features, I’m guessing here, mostly African-American presenters and shows starring African-Americans. Those tuning in to BET expect this and would be surprised if it were any other way.