The Daily Show and "Black Correspondents"

I wanted to continue the theme of my last blog post, African Americans on news stations, but with a little different angle. A few articles I read recently discussed media's perpetuation of the idea that African Americans are the "others" in our society. "When editors think 'an American person', they automatically think 'White'...Automatically, media personnel (most presumably White) think of the normal American as a White person". Only "when cued by the need to represent a group of Americans they realize they should add in some non-protypical types, they recognize their responsibility to reflect America's ethnic diversity."

While the article was referring to images on magazine covers, I think this can also apply to newscasters, correspondents, and politicians. On news stations, a reporter covering generic stories is most often white. However, when there is a story specifically about a race issue, a certain ethnicity, or a certain country being covered, then a minority is called in as an expert on the situation.

The Daily Show has a very interesting parody of this situation, and is a theme through several of their episodes. Whenever they have a story on a "race issue" (i.e. racist comments against Obama in the media, the arrest of Henry Louis-Gate, etc.) they have Larry Wilmore, their "Senior Black Correspondent." Or, if there is a story about the Middle East, India, or North Africa, Aasif Mandvi covers it. He covers any of these countries as the token "Middle-Eastern-looking-correspondent", while his actual ethnicity is unclear.

The media possibly has become more diverse, but I feel that minority correspondents and newscasters are still treated as the "other", and with increasing quantities of them, should start covering more generic stories in order to be seen as "experts" in fields other than situations pertaining to their race.