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The conversation about diversity in Hollywood often centers on fairness. It's unfair that It's unfair that women It's unfair that black, Asian and Latinx actors were just over a quarter of speaking roles went to people of color in 2015's top movies ― that Asians and Latinx nabbed tiny slivers. made up less than one-third of protagonists in top movies in 2016. completely left out of acting categories in the Academy Awards last year, and the year before that.

It is unfair. Although the Academy announced a small list of Oscar nominees featuring more black actors in 2017, for years, researchers have counted and recounted the vast population of bodies making up content in TV and film, only to find, again and again, that the industry's struggle to represent people of color, women and other groups the way we see them in real life ― as people with likes and dislikes, habits and whims, hopes and fears ― is endemic.

But it's not just unfair. Even if we don't stop to think much about the summer blockbuster we watch to sit in a cool theater on a hot day, or the show we turn on while we're making dinner, entertainment media saturates our lives. And for decades, researchers have worried over the effect those stories have on viewers.

"We're pretty confident that, the more TV you watch, the more media you consume, the more likely it is that media ― almost like radiation ― builds up," Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, told The Huffington Post. "And the accumulated effect is to make you feel that what you're seeing is somewhat normal."

"What you see often becomes a part of your memory," echoed Ana-Christina Ramón, assistant director of the Bunche Center, "and thus a part of your life experience."

It can even serve as a proxy for experiences audience members haven't actually lived, shaping their views on people of color and women ― and shaping the way those people view themselves.

"There's this body of research and a term known as 'symbolic annihilation,' which is the idea that if you don't see people like you in the media you consume, you must somehow be unimportant." Nicole Martins of Indiana University

We spoke to several sociologists and researchers about the power of representation, and what the lack of it might mean for people who don't see themselves up there on the screen. Since the 1960s, research has found expressions of unequal power in media that, according to Michael Morgan, can be "very dangerous" and "very damaging" to people watching.

"I think the moral argument is self-evident. Stories matter," Morgan, former professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of dozens of reports on media effects, told HuffPost.

"Stories affect how we live our lives, how we see other people, how we think about ourselves."

That sentiment was common among the researchers we spoke to, although all of them noted that the sociology of representation is a topic infrequently covered specifically. It comes down to a problem common in academia ― the problem of finding subjects and funding, as mentioned by Glenn Sparks of Purdue University and Nicole Martins of Indiana University. Simply put, it's costly to look into media effects in a large enough group of people over a long enough period of time.

Martins managed to co-author one study, however, about television's effect on self-esteem with Kristen Harrison of the University of Michigan, published in 2012. Focusing on children, the pair found that TV made subjects feel good about themselves ― if those subjects were white boys. Girls and boys of color, on the other hand, reported lower self-esteem as they watched.

"We feel pretty comfortable that it's this lack of representation that could be responsible for this effect," Martins said.

"There's this body of research and a term known as 'symbolic annihilation,' which is the idea that if you don't see people like you in the media you consume," she explained, "you must somehow be unimportant." (In a 1976 paper titled "Living with Television," researchers George Gerbner and Larry Gross coined the term with a chilling line: "Representation in the fictional world signifies social existence; absence means symbolic annihilation.")

In Ramón's words, "You may wonder, 'Do I matter? Does society value me as a person?'"

The cathartic experience of finally relating to a character on screen has inspired heartfelt essays. As part of a HuffPost series called "When Representation Mattered," our own Zeba Blay, who is black, explained how she felt empowered by the Spice Girls' Melanie Brown. "She was unapologetically loud and unapologetically fierce in a way that (in my mere 10 years) I had never seen a black girl have the permission to be," Blay wrote. HuffPost's Carol Kuruvilla, whose family hails from India, described how the soccer flick "Bend It Like Beckham" made her feel less alone by not forcing its Indian protagonist to conform to a trope. "Jess wasn't just the nerdy best friend, the submissive shy girl, or the exotic temptress (all tropes that are far too common for Asian women)," Kuruvilla explained.

Character tropes ― molds that shape dialogue and casting decisions to produce the nerdy Asian math student, the sassy black sidekick, the icy female boss ― do their own damage, too.

For the underrepresented, seeing a character who looks like them can have a limiting effect if that character is restricted to behaving only in certain ways, which don't reflect the breadth of their life's experience. If you are a black, Asian or Latinx person who sees an "inauthentic" or "one-dimensional" version of yourself, Ramón explained, you "may wonder if that is all that is expected of you in society."

"Visual media teaches us how the world works and our place in it," she said.

"When you don't see people like yourself," Morgan echoed, "the message is: You're invisible. The message is: You don't count. And the message is: 'There's something wrong with me.'"

"Over and over and over, week after week, month after month, year after year, it sends a very clear message, not only to members of those groups, but to members of other groups, as well," he said.

To all viewers, on-screen representation serves as an important (if undervalued) way to glean information about the world. Hunt pointed to decades-old research out of the University of Pennsylvania that showed a correlation between a range of topics as presented on TV ― violence, integration, women's rights ― and how people thought about those issues in real life. Over time, they found that people who watched more TV embraced what they called the "TV view of the world."

"And if the 'TV view of the world' was violent, then people assume that the world was more violent," Hunt said.

And perhaps they would, say, vote for a presidential candidate who claims the nation is drowning in a wave of violent Latinx trespassers because that's how they look on screen. Or believe that America is mostly over racism because there are secondary black characters in films. Or continue to live their lives not realizing Asian men are, indeed, quite attractive.

"Entertainment provides the seeds under which these things make sense to people, because they've seen a thousand images of 'Latinos are violent,' or 'Asians are invisible,' or 'blacks are this' or 'women are that,' so it is so easy to exploit," Morgan said, "because it's a knee-jerk reaction. It's this, 'Oh yes, yes, of course. I know that.'"

Viewers might not think that the shows and films that enrich our lives and let us happily escape after a day or week of the usual routine may affect our view of our neighbors, fellow citizens, or people around the world. And it's true that Middle Ages fantasy with a reputation for bloodshed or a tap-dancing couple in a sunny dreamland, on their own, might not have too much of an impact. But they are part of a much larger force that consistently dilutes the richly diverse experiences of lives enjoyed by people of color and women.

"We can sit by as this continues for another decade," wrote some of the researchers who diligently record the makeup of the on-screen population, in a recent report, "or can act to ensure that equality and inclusion are the hallmark of entertainment in the years to come."

Because it's not just "not fair." It's not right.

BEFORE YOU GO

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Why On-Screen Representation Actually Matters

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The conversation about diversity in Hollywood often centers on fairness. It's unfair that It's unfair that women It's unfair that black, Asian and Latinx actors were just over a quarter of speaking roles went to people of color in 2015's top movies ― that Asians and Latinx nabbed tiny slivers.

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Equinoxial and Phoebe - Traditional Song 

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Equinoxial and Phoebe - Traditional Song 

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Equinoxial swore by the green leaves on the tree

He could do more work in a day

than Phoebe could do in three

So little Phoebe said to him, "This you must allow

"You can do the work in the house and

I'll go follow the plow

"And you must feed the little pig

that stands in yonder sty

"And you must milk the brindle cow

for fear she will go dry

"And you must churn the crock of cream

that I left in the frame

"And you must watch the fat in the pot

or it will go in flame

"And you must weave the hank of yarn

that I spun yesterday

"And you must watch the speckled hen

or it will run away."

Then little Phoebe took the whip

and went to follow the plow

And Equinoxial took the pail

and went to milk the cow.

The brindle cow she turned around,

and sniveled up her nose

She gave him a lick upon the lip

and the blood ran to his toes

He tried to feed the little pig that stands in yonder sty

he hit his head upon the beam, and how the blood did fly

He tried to churn the crock of cream

that she'd left in the frame

But he forgot the fat in the pot and so it burst in flame

He tried to weave the hank of yarn

that she'd spun yesterday

But he forgot the speckled hen,

and so it ran away

He looked to the east, he looked to the west,

he saw the setting sun

He swore it had been an awful long day,

And Phoebe hadn't come

Presently litle Phoebe came

and saw him looking sad

She clapped her hands upon her hips,

and said that she was glad!

Now Equinoxial swears by all the stars in heaven

Phoebe could do more work in a day

than he could do in seven.

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During World War II American women took news jobs in the military and defense industry.

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The following article is a part of a new series, "Listening to Youth Voices in the New Year." Each Sunday, articles written by Essex County Middle School students will be published, each week relating to a new topic. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., the essays published this week are those that relate to racial justice.
Race and gender inequality, even though some may not want to believe it, still play a big role in students' education, both in the United States and throughout the world. I myself am a Black/Latino student that believes that racism and sexism are alive in the education system globally. It's not as bad in other schools, but I have noticed that more students of color have received suspensions rather than white students for committing the same act. Recent reports show that academic and disciplinary racial disparities continue to exist in K-12 education in the United States, and girls and young women in all parts of the globe are prevented from starting school at all, or not allowed to complete their education.

The U.S. Department of Education's 2014 Civil Rights Data Collection provides a comprehensive report that gives a clearer picture of how race and ethnicity affects the way students learn and are treated in all levels of education. The report states that "Black, Latino and Native Americans have a bigger chance of going to schools with a higher concentration of first year teachers than white students." The same report states that Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students, and observed that Black girls were suspended at higher rates than all other girls, and most boys. This report makes it clear that many young people are being marginalized because of their race, which is not acceptable. Education is essential in everyone's life, no matter their race. Equality in educational settings is something that we need to work toward.

As with race, gender plays a large role in education. According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 31 million girls of primary school age do not attend school and 17 million of these girls will probably never attend school in their lifetimes. We must continue to advocate for the right of girls to go to school, because when girls are educated, they are less likely to live in poverty. It can affect their future and the future of our world. Even further, the U.S. is not immune to gender inequality in the education system. According to a Washington Post article, getting into elite colleges is harder for women than for men. Additionally, the same article discusses how the US Department of Education Data found that 11 percent of men were accepted to Brown University versus 7 percent of women in 2014. In addition, at Vassar College the 34 percent acceptance rate for men was almost twice as high as the 19 percent rate for women in 2014.

This problem is not unsolvable though. Colleges and schools can do something about the gender and race inequality that exists. As stated in the Washington Post, "Colleges won't say it, but this is happening because elite schools field applications from many more qualified women than men and thus are trying to hold the line against a 60:40 ratio of women to men. Were Brown to accept women and men at the same rate, its undergraduate population would be almost 60 percent women instead of 52 percent -three women for every two men." Elite colleges are abusing their power by making it harder for women to get into college than men, instead of giving them the equal opportunity that they deserve. Schools can also decrease the discrimination and expulsions by having greater expectations to suspend a student. Schools are exploiting students, and they have to be liberated, so the inequality in schools can decrease.

Race and gender are significant factors in education. The Washington Post tells us that soon "gender blind admissions will be the new campus rallying cry." Gender imbalance in schools is so senseless and has come to the point where some students are revolting, and want their admissions being looked at as genderless, just so they'll have a better chance of being accepted. Racism in our nation's public schools is just as bad. This type of racism affects where students will go for school, and performance in school as well. A recent study done by Northwestern University shows that "researchers found that the physiological response to race-based stressors-be it perceived racial prejudice, or the drive to outperform negative stereotypes-leads the body to pump out more stress hormones in adolescents from traditionally marginalized groups." The effects of this discrimination are appalling. Not everyone has good schooling which is not a problem we can't fix. I can't imagine not having an equal opportunity as the student that sits across from me just because I'm a student of color and they're not. Good opportunities should be evenly distributed between everyone, no matter someone's race, gender, religion, or anything else.
The original writing assignment asked students to create their own essay prompt as long as it connected to our unit theme, "Uses and Abuses of Power," and was about a topic they were passionate about. As a result, students submitted essays on racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, education reform, gender equality, and more. We are excited to share their work in this series.

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How Gender And Race Affect Education Today

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The following article is a part of a new series, "Listening to Youth Voices in the New Year." Each Sunday, articles written by Essex County Middle School students will be published, each week relating to a new topic. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., the essays published this week are those that relate to racial justice.

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I've lived as a man & a woman -- here's what I learned | Paula Stone Williams | TEDxMileHigh

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Watch from the beginning to 2:29  and from 2:26 to 4:14

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Representation In Media Is More Important Than You Think

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Watch from the beginning until 4:07.

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WHat it means to be an american 1 - Presentation by Julia Di Marco