By Casey Gannon
On Thursday, Oct. 25, the University of Maryland Hate-Bias Response Program hosted an event regarding racial imagery in the media. The panel discussion was titled “Racial Imagery and Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Media.”
The discussion aimed to educate students and faculty about the harmful ways people of different ethnicities can be portrayed in the media. Its purpose was also to give tips about how to not display offensive racial stereotypes in the media.
The panel included three guest speakers: Dr. Bayley J. Marquez, a new professor in the Department of American Studies; Jordan Alexandria Ealey, a first-year Ph.D. student in the theater and performance studies program; and Jenna Gerdsen, a third-year Ph.D. student in the theater, dance and performance studies program.
The conversation began with the audience discussing images from the media displaying racist content. These images included a cartoon of Serena Williams after her loss at the U.S. Open last year, Consuela from “Family Guy,” and singer Kacey Musgraves in an ethnic outfit deemed offensive. Marquez began the panel discussion, remarking that Indigeous people in the media are often portrayed in a past tense.
“[Indigeous people] are not people who are fantasized around people who are stuck in the past,” Marquez said.
Aside from Marquez talking about Indigeous people, Ealey shared her experiences with racist hate-biased imagery. Ealey is of African-American descent, and she talked to the audience about how it can be difficult for black women to deal with stereotypes about their gender and race.
“On a personal level, I speak as a black woman in that sometimes [they] are often asked to fulfill those roles that people who have these images in their head already have,” Ealey said.
Gerdsen, a woman of Japanese descent, recalled that one of her worst experiences with racial stereotypes was on her wedding day. Her mother-in-law had told her she looked like a China doll. Her mother-in-law also continually commented on Gerdsen’s family’s homemade food spread, insisting that they could have paid for catering instead.. She was referring to Chinese labor being cheap, Gerdsen said.
While Gerdsen was able to resolve issues with her mother-in-law, she took offense to these comments for several reasons. The main issue was that Gerdsen is not Chinese. She explained to the audience that Asians are often lumped into one group.
“The more you’re sort of thinking in these terms, and you have this unconscious bias, of more sort of harm you’re going to inflict on other people that is an end user on this now, right?” Gerdsen said.
Sophomore psychology major Esha Sunthankar attended the event for her multicultural psychology class. Her class needs to write one paper on any Maryland dialogue talk happening this semester.
“I thought about attending this one becuase the title seemed really interesting to me,” Sunthankar said.
Sunthankar noticed that the images displayed in the panel discussion were similar to images that she’s discussed in her class.
“We go over images like they showed a lot in class, and I thought it was really interesting to hear from three different sorts of ethnicities’ different experiences that they have each had with racist imagery.
Sunthankar has not noticed that hate-bias imagery is a large issue on campus, but she has noticed it before and thinks University of Maryland students do their best to avoid hate-bias imagery.
“I definitely think that [hate-bias imagery] can be at some points. I mean, this is a majority white campus, Sunthankar said. “But, from my experience, I feel like UMD has been pretty inclusive.”