America’s youth are not the only impressionable demographic in our society when it comes to media images.  It is too often assumed that adults are immune to media’s advertising tactics, various biases, and even racial stereotypes.  While advertisements intend to sway the consumer one way or another, media coverage of specific races often influences people just as much.

I believe that a truly diverse society provides examples of positive and negative role models divided equally among races and professions.  For example, it is important to see Hispanic politicians and business figures in addition to baseball players so that all people can believe in the American Dream and to avoid racial telecasting.

I believe that these minority role models in high profile fields outside of athletics exist quietly outside the focus of media today.  In light of the repeated missteps by figures of all races currently filling the role of cultural icons, I think we need to entertain the idea of giving the public a new set of figures to idolize, emulate, and learn from.  This new set of models is the group of people I want to interview and focus on for Profiles in Influence.

My target audience is the consumer of mainstream American media, all ages and races.  I want to expose successful individuals doing as much with their lives as athletes and movie stars, not in a paparazzi-like manner but in a way that brings awareness to their existence.  Spotlighting these individuals provides the American people with a new set of figures to recognize, emulate, and aspire to be like and will hopefully diminish racial stereotypes and typecasting.

I am not anti-celebrity.  I believe that the focus of modern media needs to expand to include more figures rather than replace the existing ones.  I do not want to remove the news of Lil Wayne’s one-year jail sentence from televisions; I do want a story on a powerful black person helping to build a school or earning an award.

My first obstacle in designing my study was deciding what aspect of this issue to focus on.  I discovered that there are many aspects of this issue and I am interested in all of them.  These aspects include; America’s inability to move past racial stereotypes, our infatuation with celebrities, where the problem begins or why these figures are left in the shadows, how to actually solve the problem, and an in depth conversation of the problem itself.

I chose to tackle the difficult task of solving the problem.  Too many people recognize the problem as I did but do not think about ways to solve it.  I talked with Dr. Bryan Washington about how this problem is a continuation of the American Civil Rights Movement.  He agreed saying that it is the responsibility of my generation to continue moving forward and that is exactly what I am trying to do.

Why am I doing this?

This project is personal.  I was born in Florida and adopted by a family from Gorham, Maine.  Growing up with few black role models I drew my images of black success and achievement from the media more than anything else.  These images led me to believe that I would be a professional basketball player and that was how I would succeed.  In high school I realized how impossible this dream was and I realized I did not have a career alternative.

My realization caused me to re-evaluate my career choice and luckily I had the resources to do exactly that.  Now in 2010 I am graduating from Lafayette College with a degree in American Studies hoping to pursue a career in public relations and media.  I think that it is important for people everywhere to see that there are people of all races succeeding in all professions in this country instead of realizing it at such a late age, as I did, or not at all.

It took me a long time to overcome being told by peers that I am not black enough because they believe being black is what they see on television, musicians, athletes, and movie stars.  I now realize that this is the result of a culture infatuated with celebrity.  As I said I appreciate celebrities.  I am a Lakers fan and I love all types of music, consuming popular culture is a large part of my life but I have realized that it is important to include the members of the black upper-middle class in my set of role models.  To me being black does often involve a struggle, but not always the rags to riches struggle that is sometimes assumed, instead the struggle I undertook was in finding my identity as a black man.