L&C Ch. 15 Holding Up a Mirror to a Classless Society

The brief article by Ray Suarez exemplifies the importance of media for constructing and solidifying social classes. He demonstrates how the media plays a role in creating negative stereotypes that contribute to the growing inequalities from assumptions made about race and class as well as race and crime. These assumptions are hard to change considering those who lack economic capital are not able to control the images presented in the media, thus are at a continuous disadvantage to negative features pertaining to them. Suarez continues to illustrate the negative effects that these stereotypes create similar to Bourdieu’s idea about cultural capital. Since these races/neighborhoods are exposed to these negative stereotypes, the transmission of these ideas are implemented within those living there which cause a shift towards those ideas portrayed by the media. Similar to Bartrand and Sendhil’s article about Emily and Greg being more employable than Lakisha and Jamal, when a negative stereotype is presented, this decreases the performance due to the stereotype and if the media constantly reinforces these ideas, then it becomes imbedded within that community. As a result, viewers turn to media to stimulate the idea of artificial success and fantasize a myriad amount of opportunities awaiting when the truth remains that the media is merely distracting us “from the hardening boundaries of class in America” and the “increasing difficulty of class mobility” (356).