How do cultural influences (television, media, etc.) make whiteness the norm and people of color “the other”?
Certainly if we’re talking about white people living in predominantly white communities, it is certainly true that many people will grow up without having direct contact with people of color. And because they don’t have that direct contact, the information that they have is coming to them largely from second hand sources; maybe from the television they’ve watched, the movies they’ve seen, the jokes they hear people tell, the casual comments they hear relatives making. So that the information is coming in stereotyped packages, typically. One of the problems with stereotyping and the self-fulfilling nature of it, is that if you’ve heard these things, and then you meet somebody, you are likely to look for those characteristics. Certainly if we think about how young children begin to understand race and the images that they are exposed to, we can say that white children receive many images in which they see themselves reflected. Their parents go to the library, they check out library books
