Inner-city life
Often times, people that live in inner cities are portrayed as violent and in the lower class. “On My Block” does a great job in showing the struggles of citizens who live in the inner-city of Los Angeles. The tv show on Netflix first aired in March of 2018. Once you start watching OMB, you won’t be able to stop watching because you can connect with it. On the show there is a variety of characters on the show of all different races, and ages that are an important factor on how they are treated by others.
This piece of media reinforces the norm that mexicans and blacks are involved in gangs and cause trouble. With this happening in the show many people may begin to feel scared of those races because they are seen as “dangerous”. One of the main characters, Monse, is a young girl in high school whose boyfriend is involved in a gang, and she stated that “he isn’t safe so why would I want to be alone with him”. Even though Cesar never did anything bad or unsafe yet, he is trying to get out of the gang, and she still thinks he is dangerous. Later, the friend group goes to a halloween party and finds a white boy dressed as a mexican guy, the characters that are actually mexican take offence to it and started to verbally fight. Cesar is a mexican and in a gang with his brother Oscar (everyone is frightened by him) and he showed up to the party to straighten the boy out, which worked because he got very scared but still did not take it off. In reality, other races do not respect each other even when they should. There are always people making fun of one another and it is time to stop.
There are multiple occurrences of gunshots and beating up others on OMB, which makes it a norm. The characters basically just shrug it off whenever that happens, and the kids call out what kind of shot it was, such as a .33, etc. The entire town goes on lockdown often because someone was killed and they don’t want anyone else being killed. OMB tends to show people in the lower-class by characters involved in gangs and drugs. Oscar sells a large amount of drugs to people and that is how he gets the money for such a nice car. Oscar gave up on school to take care of his brother, even though he was one of the smartest in is class, the highest education he got was up until 8th grade. The viewers may get the impression that inner-city citizens are uneducated and their only job is selling drugs. For people in gangs, there is really no way out, once you are in, there is no out unless you choose to die. Jamal mentioned that “Cesar was born a Santo, and he’s gonna die a Santo.”
Throughout the years, society has been working on not discriminating people based on the color of their skin or on their social status, but how far have we really come? There is still so much discrimination in the world, it often causes hate and fear against everyone. Many stereotypes that say; all Mexicans are violent or that black people are not educated enough aren’t always one hundred percent true.