University TV ads feature ‘white and wealthy’
p2pnet news | Advertising:- TV ads from most major US universities show campuses as, “overwhelmingly white, privileged environments, likely deterring many minority students from applying,” says a paper being presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association.
“The study that the paper summarizes closely examined videotapes of the 30-second television spots that 43 colleges aired during the 2006-7 Bowl Championship Series,” says the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Brian Bourke and Michael S. Harris, assistant professors of higher education at the University of Alabama, analyzed the images, narration, characters, scenes, and music in the ads, applying key concepts from the field of critical race theory, says the story, going on >>>
The researchers found that the overwhelmingly majority of the students and alumni depicted in the advertisements were white, with minority members generally being depicted only as token members of larger groups.
The, “common image of a group of students strolling the campus, for example, typically depicted three or four white students and a single student of color,” and, “In trying to convey the message that their graduates are successful, the universities typically showed images of alumni who are white and wealthy.”
With the use of “people of color” as “token display pieces in their advertisements, these institutions communicate to any would-be students of color that their experiences will be marked by tokenism,” the Chronicle of Higher Education quotes the paper as saying, adding as a result:
“The message that these advertisements send to potential students of color does untold damage to the public missions of these institutions to increase access and attainment among all populations, not simply those that are part of the dominant white and wealthy elites of the state.”
Also See:
Chronicle of Higher Education – University Television Ads Depict White Dominance, Study Finds, March 24, 2008
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March 25th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Has anyone actually checked the colleges in question to see if the TV spots are an accurate representation of the ratio of white and minority students? If not, that’s one thing, but if the ratio of white to minority students is 5 to 1, then it would be just as wrong for the TV spots to represent the colleges as having a large amount of minority students. It would lead potential students to believe that they would find a lot of diversity among the students only to disappoint them when they find that the majority of students are white.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I don’t think the future students are being misled or fooled.
They’ve got to be smarter than that.
Isn’t the idea to be “colorblind” anyway?
March 25th, 2008 at 9:33 am
REMEMBER: ONLY WHITE PEOPLE CAN BE RACISTS.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Racism is dying but is not dead yet.
We still have to watch out!
March 25th, 2008 at 11:38 am
“TV ads from most major US universities show campuses as, ‘overwhelmingly white, privileged environments’…”
I call that “Truth in Advertising”. The operative word being “privileged”. I’d say those who lack the financial means (a nice way of saying “not rich”) are much more likely to be discouraged by these ads than “people of color”. But everybody knows it’s okay, perhaps even encouraged to discriminate against poor people. You can beat the crap out of, or even kill homeless people and society will barely blink, as long as they are white homeless people. If they were not white it would be a hate crime…
March 25th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
White middle class males are the most descriminated against people on earth. And we cant spell.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Of course. It’s the token black guy.