I am a Grenade

Gregory Mantsios' piece "Media Magic" reminded me very much of Kozol (Amazing Grace) and Chang (Model Minority). Mantsios' main argument in this piece is that the media controls and shapes how we think about ourselves in relation to the class structure in the United States.  He states that "the mass media is arguable the most influential in molding public consciousness" (Mantsios 99).  Then he goes on to describe the media's "stories" about the poor: "The Poor Do Not Exist", "The Poor Are Faceless", "The Poor Are Undeserving", "The Poor Are an Eyesore", "The Poor Have Only Themselves to Blame", and "The Poor Are Down on Their Luck" that make up the way we feel about the poor today (Mantsios 100-102).



These subheadings in Mantsios' article reminds me of Kozol who sought to disprove that "The Poor Have Only Themselves to Blame."  He achieved this by showing how the poor/lower class were forced into these conditions that they cannot escape.  One of the people that Kozol interviews says

"I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil.  Somebody has power.  Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people--that is my idea of evil" (Kozol 23).

Mantsios talks about how "ownership and control of the mass media is highly concentrated" and "twenty-three corporations own more than one-half of all the daily newspapers, magazines, movie studios, and radio and television outlets in the United States" (Mantsios 99).  These are the rich that have the power and do not care about the poor.  The media and those who own it are "single-minded (profit-oriented)" and have the power to make the population believe whatever they want us to believe (Mantsios 99).

This also reminded me of Chang's piece Streets of gold: The Myth of the Model Minority.  In this piece Chang describes the misconceptions about the Asian American population and their class status.  This picture of the "model minority" that the media portrays "distorts Asian-Americans' true status and ignores [their] racial handicaps" (Chang 366).  This picture that the media paints of these minorities is designed to keep everyone else content and in line and in their place.  Like Mantsios discusses in his piece, the media is designed to control the public opinion about things like class, race, gender, and sexuality.  It is designed to keep the elite on top and unquestioned.