Racism is a powerful word with a powerful meaning. Who's to say what's racist and what's not. In a way it's subjective. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Sometimes people see or believe the same things and sometimes they don't. What's really important though is how people react to these things in which they deem racist. But that's not our focus here.
             What we want to know is how prejudice is society against African-Americans. More specifically, does racism play a part in advertising? Wilkes and Valencia (1990) conducted a study on Hispanics and Blacks in television commercials. They looked at the incidence and importance of these groups in commercials. Wilkes and Valencia found that both groups were underrepresented with respect to their proportion of the population.
             They also found that the number of Hispanics and Blacks in commercials is increasing. Dominick & Greenberg (1968) reported blacks in only 5 percent of advertisements. Gerbner, et al (1981) reported that blacks were in 20 percent of commercials. But Sterns, et al (1987) reported that 11 percent of ads contained blacks. So in comparison to Sterns, et al, Wilkes and Valencia's findings are correct with respect to the percentage of ads with blacks. Wilkes and Valencia report just under 17 percent of ads contain blacks.
             In accordance with some of those in society who claim that racism is not as bad as it used to be, I hypothesize that the number of ads containing African-Americans will be higher than that of Wilkes and Valencia. I also hypothesize that the number of ads containing African-Americans will be a fair representation of the proportion to the number of African-Americans in the population, which is 12 percent. My final hypothesis is African-Americans are not disproportionately delegated to minor roles.
             We counted advertisements in four magazines. The advertisements we ...