Around the world, media stereotyping has become the major influential factor in determining a person’s character and place in society. The media has characterized people by race, nationality, sex, and appearance by assuming that everyone with the same characteristics belongs to the same group and shares the same values. Stereotyping fails to look at a person as an individual, but instead, looks at the person in terms of the group they belong to, demeaning the individual’s status. The media not only succeeds in entertaining and informing society with different stereotypes, but also affects people’s lives by shaping their opinions, attitudes, and beliefs about others. Stereotypes allow people to place an ideal picture in their head about a particular group’s cultural behavior and therefore do not encourage them to think for themselves when forming an opinion on a particular person. The media has been especially successful in reinforcing traditional stereotypes of race, gender, and authority in order to obstruct society from not questioning or examining its norm. Essential Readings In the United States race prejudice is predicted upon the belief that the colored race is naturally inferior to the white race, physically, intellectually, religiously, socially, and morally. As a matter of ultimate fact it is actually based upon the advantages, temporary and imaginary, which the white groups believe, they derive from this superior attitude to the colored groups economically, politically and socially (11). Cashmore clearly asserts that the American society has bought into an estimated guess in regards to the presumed superiority of the white race. This stereotypical belief has now truly manifested itself within the make up of the American society in which a white person might still be hired over a black person even if the credentials are not as good. Over time, society has diminished the black social status, and whites are seen as