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What Television Teaches Kids

by Alvin Poussaint, M.D. and Susan Linn, Ed.D.

TV's Pitfalls and Potential

What are our kids learning from television? All television is value-laden. Whatever lessons TV provides, it also broadcasts subtle messages about race, ethnicity, gender, and class. For children, these messages are particularly potent because the foundations for racial attitudes are formed in childhood.

When most television programs feature people of a particular ethnicity, or portray certain ethnic groups in a consistently distorted manner, children acquire stereotypes and misinformation about racial and ethnic groups different from their own. Black school children, for instance, have reported that white kids expect them to be comedians because they see so many black sitcoms on TV.

According to a 1996 Children Now survey, kids overwhelmingly think it's important to be able to see people like themselves on TV. In that same survey, children from groups who are under-represented on television, such as Asians and Latinos, talked about their feelings of being left out, or ignored by society.

Television's unrepresentative view of the world is damaging to all children. It's not good for white children to be taught a sense of superiority based on race. Nor is it good for minority children to be inadvertently taught that their ethnic group is inferior or overlooked by the rest of society.

TV does have the capacity to debunk racial and ethnic bias. Studies show tangible benefits to exposing children, even preschoolers, to programs that feature positive interracial and inter-ethnic relationships. Children watching such programs increase their capacity to cooperate, and develop more positive attitudes about racial and ethnic groups.

How to Talk Back to the TV

Television can have a powerful effect on how your children perceive the world. You can help them understand that TV is often not a true picture of what the world is really like. Ask your kids (and yourself) the following questions as you choose what programs to watch this season:

Does this program feature characters from ethnicities other than European-American?

Does this program model positive relationships between people of different races and ethnicities?

How are minority groups portrayed on this program? Are they either all bad or all good? Smart or stupid?

Are minority groups represented only as minor characters? Are they leaders or followers? Are they subservient or powerful?

What's the range of their occupations? Is one group consistently portrayed as wealthy? Is one group always portrayed as poor?

Does this program employ put-down humor? Comedies that rely on negative humor often get their laughs at the expense of characters' physical characteristics.

Does this program feature racial satire? Satire can be a great way to raise an adult's awareness of social injustice. However, it's beyond the comprehension of young children because they are extremely literal in their interpretation of situations. A program that uses racial epithets to prove a point may actually be teaching those words to young children who can't appreciate the larger, ironic context.

Keep talking with your children about the lack of diversity on television. In doing so, you can help them begin an important lifelong dialogue about prejudice, racial and ethnic discrimination, diversity, and inclusion.

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