The Office’s Disconnection With Minority Characters

Throughout my life I have only watched a couple of shows completely through. For many, The Office is one of these shows. With all of the satire the show has, when going back and rewatching certain episodes, there is clearly a barrier between races which is portrayed not as satire, but as everyday life. The Office reinforces the idea that African Americans have lower wage jobs, not as an in your face joke, but as background plot point which most viewers won’t pick up on.
An episode with a great example of this, called “Safety Training”, has plenty of elements which support the claim of African Americans being an afterthought and separate from the rest of society. The episode begins with Darryl, the warehouse manager, an African American, teaching the office how to use dangerous machinery. While at first the scene looks like a lighthearted scene with Michael, the boss, messing around with the machinery, a pattern begins to emerge as Michael tries to belittle the African American warehouse employees. While this can be viewed as satire, there are many other examples showing the African Americans in the show being shows as not as important. Many minor details, such as when Michael plans to jump off the roof, does not include the African Americans until Michael remembers that the whole reason for his stunt is to put them down. While this is a major joke in the episode, it also shows the viewers the message that minorities are not memorable or important.
This is also portrayed through the character Stanley, who seems disconnected from the entire Office crew for being the only African American. He does barely anything during the episode, which makes him seem to just be lazy and weirded out by how the others act, which furthermore distances African Americans in the show. Some of the shows demographics will see this as funny because of how strange he is, others could interpret it in a judging manner. The show portrays minorities as afterthoughts, which while maybe not intentional does give off a negative message towards its minority audience. This does not just impact African Americans within the show however, the character Oscar, a Hispanic gay man, is constantly belittle throughout many of the episodes. Another character, Kelly, an Indian younger girl, it’s extremely annoying and always going off on rants. All of these characters are the only minorities in the office, which not only distances races and but it’s minority demographic. The portrayals of these characters are used for jokes a lot, putting false thoughts to whites and belittling the minority audience.
The impact of individual minorities thinking that they won’t fit in is extremely severe. For example minorities who believe they won’t fit in could cause a greater separation in races and their cultures. And because of how big the show got, there’s no doubt that these messages affected a large portion of the minority demographic.
