Bill Cosby and The Washington Redskins...

In the late nineteen eighties for the first time in American television history a African American family was first seen as upper middle class functioning family lead by a doctor and a lawyer. Unlike previous shows featuring African Americans the Cosby show didn’t focus on racial issues, rather focused on values seen by most as upper-middle class. Cowboys and Indians, Redman Chewing tobacco, Land O Lakes butter contrary to what any outsider may think these are not products or games neither found on Native American reservations nor were they companies founded by someone of native culture. The branding however does have an additional tie beyond using native jargon, white men created not only the branding but also the stereotype to which the branding refers and collect the revenue that is gained from the perpetuation of these multimillion-dollar racial slurs. Although both African American and Native Americans have made marginal advances over the past hundred years, often what is presented as a advance into American culture, or advancing their own culture does more to negatively effect their respective people groups that it does to advance. A black doctor and lawyer, raising clean cut, well dressed children ranging in ages living in a two story home in a up scale urban neighborhood, proof of the American Dream right? A black family, not getting suited up in bright colors to go down to the lord’s house for a prayer meeting and to celebrate the great Martin Luther King Jr.s’ birthday, the end of racial issues right? To many the Cosby family represented what parts of America thought a black family would be like if there were not issues of race. They were in white minds normal upper-middle class folks with normal upper-middle class values. The picture to minorities however was a sell-out family that had assimilated into “white culture” and had adopted “white values”. African American Families saw the values that way due to the constant presentation of those values as being white, and more over, not being normal or attainable. If you want a good chew, why not buy the kind with the “Indian” on the front of it? I mean their people were the ones who gave the first what Americans what would come to be America’s leading cash crop, solely benefiting white men and the culture that surrounds them. If you want to buy butter, why not get some fresh churned butter, like your ancestors had at the first thanksgiving? While Native Americans sit on reservations after years of torment from white Americans and continue to be disenfranchised by American social service agencies the white people who named them “Indians” because they couldn’t read a map own and operate multi-million dollar industries by plastering their products with racial slurs. Why is this tolerated? The Native American representatives in the U.S. House and Senate from each respective tribe have been too busy to worry about their people’s problems. Unfortunately that is not the case. Someone who represents them does not represent them, but rather through an individual elected by the state around them, possibly one who gains money from further exploitation of what is assumed to be Native American culture. Although the Cosby show did not come well received the thought that native Americans could ever be seen as attaining upper middle class status without their income being directly related to Casinos or the sales of illegal substances is unfathomable. The medias’ push of stereotypes, whether it be the marketing of products through unfounded racial advertising, or if it is allowing a prime time version of assimilation be nothing more than a nightly reminder to a disenfranchised race of what they are not, racism is perpetuated daily through every form a media imaginable. One key link stands behind almost every racist center, that link being white people allowing or even promoting the continuation of, no matter the intent, stereotypes promoting racism. The advance of a people group is often laid upon that group as its own burden however after reading the articles I pose that at the very least the majority of the continue failure of minority groups to attain status equal to that of comparable whites resides in the continuation of racist patterns through institutions pair with other factors such as white privilege and a lack of racial equality in marketing and media. (Articles 36,38- Rethinking the Color Line)