“Just because Katie Couric said it, doesn’t make it true. Prejudice against black people still persists. The Cosby Show was also about a middle to upper middle class black family, which is not at all an accurate or relatable depiction of the majority of black families in the US.” That wasnt Katie Courics original Idea. It is a widely held view. Of course it did not solve the race problem, all I said was that it improved race relations. Your contention was that the media did nothing to improve race relations.

” Since you brought it up, I’m guessing you don’t realize that men of color are overrepresented as terrorists/criminals/drugdealers and it is rare when a white guy is portrayed as such.” Yes. It is true that nowadays brown people are portrayed as the bad guys. But these thing follow a certain fashion trend and are not necessarily the result of a conspiracy to make colored people look bad. Growing up, i remember that the Russians were popular bad guys. So were the Italian Mafia. Brown people were rarely seen.

I never said anything about the news, which is a different realm of media altogether. Since you brought it up, I’m guessing you don’t realize that men of color are overrepresented as terrorists/criminals/drugdealers and it is rare when a white guy is portrayed as such. For example, a recent poll found that a majority of Americans believe most, if not all terrorists are Muslim. This is because the media fails to report the 96% of terrorist acts that weren’t committed by Muslims and exaggerates the ones that are.

“And Outsourced does not just focus on the negative aspects of Indians, does it?”

I never said it did. I said portrayals of race in the media, no matter how positive they seem have negative effects on race relations.

“The Cosby show (another media product) is said to have greatly improved peoples perception of Black people because it humanized them.”

Just because Katie Couric said it, doesn’t make it true. Prejudice against black people still persists. The Cosby Show was also about a middle to upper middle class black family, which is not at all an accurate or relatable depiction of the majority of black families in the US.

Is Diedrich Bader’s character offensive to white Americans?

Comparing black shows to this is a fallacy. This show is about foreigners, not indian americans. Making a few good natured jokes at the liberty of another country’s people is a time honored comedic device in almost every culture. Is nationalistic prejudice better than racism? I don’t know. But let’s make the correct analogies when comparing the offensive aspects of this show with other show.

Besides, they show the Indian manager of the IT call center in the top floor as more sauve and sophisticated than Ben, the white American. Even if the indian guy is the “bad guy” in the episode, at least it is not at the expense of the depiction of his intelligence.

@Fenri “Look up the definition of stereotyping” Maybe you should look it up. Your understanding of the definition seems to be extremely narrow and race related. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype. From the wiki “Social psychologists believe that mental categorizing (or labelling) is necessary and inescapable.” . See I was right – all stereotyping is not bad.

As am I, Jews would never be caught being the uncle toms most Indians are.

You gotta fucking kidding me. Look up the definition of stereotyping, and then go crazy with your keyboard. For fuck’s sake, the media is not your friend, especially if you aren’t white, I don’t know why that’s so difficult to understand.

Also, Jews aren’t a race. Seeing that they have the acceptable skin color, anything they do isn’t going to seem too out of the ordinary. “What really harms race relations is oversensitivity” Yeah, non-white people just need to stfu and instead complaining about being seen as inferior just need to accept it. Thanks though, I’m always amused when Indians compare themselves to Jews.