Race in the Media

One quote from the reading that stood out to me came in the last paragraph, “With every new instantiation of this very old story, we have yet another opportunity to make race and the social worlds that it aims to build matter less to manage, regulate, and exploit populations” (Herman Gray). I thought that this quote summed up the overall point of the article.   The article covers how we, as a culture, approach race and how race has changed over decades. However, we still have the opportunity to recognize that race should not continue to shape human history. After reading this essay and this quote I immediately thought about how in today’s culture there are celebrities and influencers that still appropriate certain cultures. In music videos, television shows, movies, etc. these “stars” are dressing themselves as the stereotype of a specific culture. This not only upsets people of these particular cultures, but it also continues to place culture and race at the forefront of their media project leaving viewers to only think about how they may be and why they may be dressed in this particular way. I believe that it can even be interpreted as a celebrity using a different culture or race to help explicitly sell themselves and their work. When I was thinking of this, Katy Perry immediately came to mind as she has culturally appropriated many different cultures in her music videos.