Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society: Ray Suarez - L&C Ch. 15

The media is controlled by the rich, the powerful, and the educated. As described by Ray Suarez in “Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society”, the media is powerful in shaping the way society sees its own self. However, when the media is controlled by the wealthy, these images are contorted. The media often portrays blacks and Latinos getting arrested at gunpoint, almost never white men. The cameras shoot footage of minority mothers weeping for their sons/daughters that were tragically killed in their neighborhood while never showing middle income or high income mothers doing the same. It is not because middle and high income families never lose a family member in a tragic manner but because the people who have money also have power to control what goes on in their lives. They have the power to control the cameras in going into their houses as explained by Suarez. The poor do not have this control and are often seen as “raw material” for a higher-status person to examine and make conclusions about. Thus, the media portrays low-income people as having a lower status than others. The news has the power to influence how society sees the world and it has the power of shaping how people interact with each other. It is important to note that if the media portrays low-income neighborhoods as dangerous and filthy, the rich and the middle class will never want to interact with the people who live in these places, thus, making inequality greater between classes.

He also says that we have an “ever-shrinking portion of the population owning a greater and greater share of the wealth” (pg. 363). This is true and will make everything even more unequal. Poor families, especially blacks and Latinos, do not have net worth to inherit to their children in order to give them a leg up in society. Thus, they will never be able to have control over their lives and control over the social resources that are available. The media is going to continue to be controlled by the rich because it is seen as if it was a “hazardous material that can only be handled by properly trained individuals” (pg. 363). Thus, the media portrays class because it is controlled by class.