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Hey, have you looked lately at the diversity (or lack thereof) in children’s television?

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few examples of TV characters who are not necessarily stereotypical blond hair/blue eyed leads. And that’s a good thing. I guess my questions are - are there enough? And why is it so important? Well, according to the Center On Media And Child Health:

“It has been estimated that, at high school graduation, most children will have spent more time watching television than any other activity, with the exception of sleep. Social learning theory suggests that children incorporate what they learn from television into personal schemas that guide their thoughts, behaviors, and self-image. The medium of television, therefore, has become a powerful tool of socialization, particularly in its ability to act as a mediator of multicultural experience. Television programming does more than simply entertain; in its presentation of characters, storylines, and cultural issues, television can communicate messages of worth and importance, or messages of exclusion and stupidity. Prime time television remains predominantly White and male, and recent studies show that children from a range of ethnic backgrounds associate White television characters with wealth and intelligence and associate minority television characters with ignorance and humor. The potential for television to communicate messages of diversity, respect, and tolerance remains, though, and the availability of more diverse programming can help to teach children respect and appreciation of differences across cultures.”

So, if the ethnicity of your child isn’t the norm on TV, that can affect not just her, but the way other children think about her. And, if your child is represented on the small screen, she needs to have her friends well-represented, too.

“Dora The Explorer,” which debuted in 1999, features a Latina lead. Sure, it also features a compulsive shoplifting fox, a pantsless monkey with boundary issues (Some of Boots’ stranger utterances include: “I love riddles. Call me ‘Mr. Riddles,’” and “I love nuts, I love chocolate, and I love, love, love bananas!”) and an omnipotent backpack. But mostly? It shows Dora and Diego, two kids who have neither blond hair nor blue eyes. And there’s “Dragon Tales,” with Latino kids, and “Cyberchase,” which includes a TV rarity: a smart African American girl. Too bad she’s a cartoon.

What else? I’m flipping the channels here. Ahah! There’s “Little Bill!” Another animated African American kid. Oh! Jeff, the Purple Wiggle, is Asian. And, hmm. I just found “The Backyardigans,” which is sort of attempting to portray a multicultural cast, albeit with multicultural animal-kid things (What are they, exactly?). And that leads me to “The Doodlebops,” who also seem to embody that not human/almost Teletubbies/other colors thing.

I am not a big fan of showing diversity through that lens, the “children of different ethnicities portrayed as blue penguins who get along with yellow talking worms” lens. I get the concept, but a perfectly average African American kid playing with a perfectly average Asian American kid and a perfectly average Euro-American kid? That doesn’t seem so impossible to depict, you know?

For older children, there is an increased prevalence of kids of color in kids’ TV shows. There’s “Cory In The House,” and the female romantic lead in “High School Musical,” both One and Two, is a smart Latina. And, well, what am I missing? There must be more. No? 

“Sesame Street” was a breakout for showing people of color acting, well, like normal people. Sure, Ernie was orange and Grover was blue, but Gordon was black, Mr. Hooper was white and Gabriel was Puerto Rican.

“Sesame Street” premiered in 1969. How far have we come in almost 40 years? Do our children see on television people who look like our children, who look like the people our children see, and with whom they interact? What do you think  – is the sippy cup half empty, or half full?

 

Posted on October 17th, 2007 by BarbaraCA
Filed under: Uncategorized