In an article from USA Today magazine, it illustrated that if you have watched, listened to, and read media all your life, you probably have filed these images into your thinking process: African-Americans are mostly rap stars, professional athletes, drug addicts, welfare mothers, criminals and/or murderers; Latinos are illegal aliens, ignorant immigrants who take, but give little back to the country and can't even speak the language, or drug-crazed thugs who have no respect for law or order; Asian-Americans are either weak, model citizens or inscrutable, manipulative, or uncaring invaders of business, especially in the United States; Native Americans are illiterate, drunken Indians who hate all Caucasians and sleep away their lives. (Saltzman, 1994) If you are like most middle-class Americans, most of what you know about members of other races or religions comes from what you read in the paper, hear on radio, or see on television. It is easy to see that racial and ethnic stereotypes still dominate

For example, when the subject is a white male, reference to his race and gender is rarely noted, whereas descriptive phrases, such as "black leader" or "female candidate" are often employed in addition to that person's name and title. Images and beliefs concerning women are far more prominent in our society than those of men. Women are always the ones cooking, cleaning, doing household tasks or taking care of children. They are portrayed as being emotionally and physically inferior and submissive to men. Women are visualized as weak creatures. They tend to be confined to a life dictated by family and personal relationships. Men almost always dominate television programs. Figures show that in television drama women are outnumbered by men 3:1 or 4:1; in cartoons women are outnumbered 10:1; and in soap operas women are outnumbered 7:3. (Ingham 1997) In daily shows such as soap operas, women are usually hysterical, crying and emotionally out of control. This personifies women as being the inferior sex, which leads to many false stereotypes. Women as sex objects are the most common stereotype of women on television.

Sunoo, Brenda Paik. (1994, November). "Tapping diversity in America's newsrooms." Personnel Journal, 73 (11), 104.

It is for these and other reasons that Dr. Cosby wrote her book to emphasize the real human cost of media misinformation and indifference. Dr. Cosby also states, "As a mother, I am very aware of what children watch and how they are influenced by TV, movies, newspapers and art. The way the media distorts our differences is a covert divide and conquer strategy which I regard as a violation of human rights." (Johnson, 1995)

As for stereotyping, the familiar saying, "Don't be too fast to judge a book by its cover" is easy to say, but unfortunately most look at the cover before opening the book.

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