Symbolic Interactionist Perspective Media Analysis Term Paper

Symbolic Interactions Perspective Media Analysis

Symbolic Interactions

Social inequality is different from economic inequality, though related to some extent. Economic inequality is typically caused by unequal accumulation of wealth, whereas social inequality has many different forms. Gender inequality, racial inequality, caste inequality, or age inequality are all types of social inequality that may exist in a society not merely due to differences in financial statuses of individuals. People from different social statuses often live in separate localities which may not be the case with people from different economic statuses. Classic example of such an issue is that of African-American class and the Jim Crow laws that were enacted in Northern United States between 1876 and 1965. The Jim Crow laws ordered racial segregation between the whites and blacks with many other laws like prohibition of intermarriages, separate public schools and many others. With United States' non-white president this issue seems to be resolved now. Well the intensity of this issue has reduced and the blacks today have same fundamental and civil rights by law as the whites, but the prejudice and bias towards them exists in America and has not completely vanished. According to number of studies, the blacks are still paid less in jobs as compared to their white counterparts.In a 2004 study, "Are Emily and Greg more Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?" fake resumes with randomly assigned African-American and white sounding names were sent to employers. The result turned out to be as expected, i.e. white sounding names received 50% more calls for an interview (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004). The findings in this study show that the black and white prejudice does exist in America today even though no one explicitly displays that. This issue, however not as intense as it was in the early to mid twentieth century, still exists and a black individual still faces such biases today in United States.

This paper will analyze scenes from a movie on the same topic, i.e. On discrimination against African-Americans in United States. The discrimination was at its peak during the Jim Crow laws era, hence the selected movie "the Great Debaters" is based on a true story from 1930's. One may argue that the scenario on this issue is different now as compared to the era depicted in this film; however the social bias that still exists against African-Americans has its roots in events that occurred earlier in the twentieth century. This….....