Race in the media is a touchy subject because many people, primarily black people, find the racial tendencies of television to be offensive. I'm going to tackle race on television head on just to see where it leads me. I can't pretend that this is all my own idea though.

According to the video that I viewed as part of a mass communication class called Color Adjustments, racial tension can be traced back to the beginning of television, when one of the first crossover shows, Amos 'n Andy, made the move from radio to television. Amos and Andy were two black men who stumbled and bumbled through various situations to great comedic acclaim on radio.

The radio show was thought up by a pair of white comedians who lent their voices to the characters and adopted an exaggerated accent to make the race of the two characters obvious through dialogue alone.

To some blacks, they represented a step forward, as they did give black people a presence in media. At the same time, however, the Amos 'n Andy stereotype took quite a while to break, and some would say that it has never been broken. The picture of black people as comedic characters not funny for their own sake, but funny because they fail, is a recurring theme throughout television.

Further steps were taken with shows like Julia. That show portrayed a successful, normal, everyday black woman raising a son in a world populated in equal measures by white and black people. She was seen as an equal by whites, and it was not seen as unusual by anyone that she was successful. However, she was no different because she was black either.

The same formula worked for The Cosby Show, where the black people in the cast could have just as easily been white, for all the role that their race played in their lives.

The idea of "white black people" was successful, it is argued, because it is non-threatening, and even affirming, of the conservative status quo. The idea that minorities can, through hard work, become upper class just like anyone else and erase their ethnicity completely makes the establishment happy. In this way, positive images of black people are simultaneously negative.

The only positive show that was mentioned in the video that I viewed was a show called Frank's Place, which was, as the trend would demonstrate, canceled after only a few seasons. It dealt with the difficulty of being a minority in America, but dealt with it in the context of the life of a successful hotel owner in New Orleans.

The primary problem I had with the conclusions reached by the video was that nothing was held up as very positive. The shows that depicted a negative view of the lives of black Americans were hailed as realistic, but too negative. The shows that had successful black people as their main characters, as in The Cosby Show and Julia, were too positive and unrealistic.

The only show that fell in the middle ground, Frank's Place, was treated quickly and dismissed as an aberration.

So, I would ask what is to me the next logical question. If there are no examples of positive race relations on television anywhere, what is to be done about it?

The conclusion reached by the video is that every person in America must hope that positive portrayals of black people come from black directors and creators, and that stereotypes must be monitored closely to make sure that they don't come across in television.

The conclusion reached in a discussion after the film ended was that every kind of show depicted had its place. It seems simple enough, I suppose. Take every show that is seen as a "white" show, and make a "black" show just like it. Dramas, comedies and unclassifiable shows should be available and visible, and stereotypes should end.

However, I wonder if this is a cop-out. Shows that recycle formulas that work for white casts and insert some ethnic humor and characters are standard fare on UPN and the WB, and those shows are denounced as derogatory and stereotypical.

Apparently shows with all-black casts, like Sanford and Son and Amos 'n Andy, are derogatory because they show black people in a black world, but placing black characters in regular shows with normal casts is wrong because white people could have filled the role as well.

I guess you could say that I'm confused about what's right and wrong in the larger picture of media. Also, as a quick side note, I was asked to chide readers about the rolling of the Quad.

While I only actively participated towards the very end of the effort (i.e. I threw one roll of toilet paper when nobody was looking), I did notice that there was a little bit too much of the trees showing.

It took 30-plus years for the football team to shut out Carolina a second time (the last time was in the 1960s) and it could have been celebrated more raucously. It's a shame when the parents and alumni get more excited about a sports victory than the student body.