Americans are moving toward Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial equality, yet a gap between races remains. This racial segregation is prevalent in the media, particularly in advertisements, magazines, and television. Today’s media have been more inclusive of different ethnic minorities, as the numerical representation of, for example, African Americans has increased. The media, however, have been condemned for exhibiting and perpetuating the racism still existent in our culture. This critique is due mainly in part to the media’s contribution to the social construction of minority stereotypes. Through the media, stereotypes generally distort the images of minority groups, thereby revealing white Americans’ attitudes toward minorities, particularly African Americans. The most dominant attitude promulgated by the media is one that emphasizes low status roles of African Americans. Although more minorities are being represented in contemporary media, the progression of race relations is often diminished by racist overtones that insinuate inferiority of African Americans. Subordination of African Americans through media stereotypes reflects an asymmetrical stance on race relations. An asymmetric race relation is founded in the notions of white domination and black inferiority, with whites on the higher end of the seesaw. While most degrading stereotypical portrayals of African Americans as slaves, porters, coons, and bucks, have faded, depictions of African Americans still remain unfavorable. The issue with these stereotypical representations, regardless of whether they are true or false, is that they depict African American caricatures as narrower and more disparaging than what appears in actuality or for white Americans. By molding and fostering assumptions about a particular race, such negative portrayals of African Americans hinder the construction of other