lunes, 4 de mayo de 2009

What do you think about...

At the beginning of this class I thought that I just was going to learn something new about the different races in the world at the media. Nothing further from the truth. I have really enjoyed this course because my meaning of race and gender has changed. The main reason of this change is my experience here in Oklahoma. As you know, I am an exchange student from Spain. When I arrived here five months ago I came with a very different idea about race and ethnicity. In Spain, white people are the 80% of the population, while here that's not like that. And that means that in the media we just see a race.

Here I have learnt that the media is full of stereotypes against all the races and ethnicities. Also against male and female. My stay here like an exchange student is making me live and share my live with people from a lot of different countries, from Chile to Korea or Senegal. That involves learning from a lot of cultures. My concept of race has also changed because of what I have learnt on this class. I have read a lot of lectures about the different problems with all the races and gender on the media and after that I am able to realize when an advert is using stereotypes.

Now that I have studied what is the history of the different ethnicities that are living here in the US I do not think the same about the meaning of race. For me, a race is not a color or a language. Race is culture. I think that the race is in your “blood”, on your roots, in the people who you have grown up. So it's very sad seeing how the media use the stereotypes to differentiate the races and ethnicities, while its main goal should be make them as close as is possible. Obviously, I don't mean that all of us should be the same.

That is why I think that this class will help me to work in the media as a professional. May be my work in the future is not going to be so focus on journalism, because my Spanish major is Advertising and Public Relations. And inside the Advertising I like the creativity. Nowadays a lot of people think that they are creative when actually they are being ignorant. I mean that you can make an advert using a race or a specific gender which can look funny and creative, but actually you are using a lot of stereotypes and, surely, you are hurting anybody. I think that my goal after I have taken this class is focusing all that I have learned to avoid this kind of problems in the media.

Probably I won't be who achieve the peace on the world nor the understanding between all the different cultures with my work, but I think that I can contribute to that.

In short, I have really enjoyed these five months learning about the race, gender, and ethnicities on media. But I would like that in the future the students could learn about this situation on the rest of the world. I mean, in Spain we learn about the advertising on Spain, Argentina, US, France, Japan... and I think that it's better for us because we can compare our advertising culture with the other. I also know that the US is like a different world – believe me, I am an exchange student – and only with its culture it has enough. But I think that learn about more cultures is more enriching.

Thanks all you people for these fantastic five months learning from you. I only expect that you have learnt something from me.