Depiction of African Americans in the Media Dissertation Example

Free Depiction of African Americans in the Media Dissertation Example

Name: Instructor College: Course: Date: Theoretical Issues about the depiction of African Americans in the Media Three examples of movies that perfectly illustrate historical and theoretical issues about the depiction of African Americans in the Media include Roots, The Black Panther and coming to America. In the roots movie, for instance, African Americans are portrayed as slaves while in The Black Panther movie, African Americans are portrayed as people with the ability to lead. T’Challa in The Black Panther movie, for example, returns to Africa after learning the death of his father who was a king. He plans to inherit the leadership position. While the Roots movie portrays African Americans as generally poor people, coming to America movie represents African Americans as people that can poses wealth like any other people. In coming to America movie, for example, Prince Akeem’s African father is wealthy. Second, the Roots movie portrays African Americans as people who are behind technologically while The Black Panther movie depicts African Americans as people who are developed technologically like any other nation (Merolla et al., 864). When T’Challa returns home in The Black Panther movie, he finds that his country has advanced in technologically. The status of the country was not the same as that when he was leaving. Another critical difference is that the Roots movie portrays African Americans as illiterate people while The Black Panther movie portrays African Americans as intelligent people. The Roots movie describes African Americans as people with little educational backgrounds. It is because of this reason that most of them are not able to fight for their rights since they do not understand the concept of human rights (Merolla et al., 869). Some of the similarities in these three movies include the fact that both films portray African Americans as people with high potential and also as harmless people. In coming to America movie, for...