Racial Stereotypes In Netflix's Orange Is The New Black

The Netflix series Orange is the New Black emphasizes racial stereotypes within each ethnic group it portrays. The racial groups that most prominently serve as the focus of the show are Blacks, whites, and Latinas. The Blacks are portrayed as rowdy, and their backstories involve poverty and broken homes. The whites are portrayed as rich and educated, or as the typical “trailer park junkie,” and the ways they ended up in prison are depicted largely as accidents or misfortunes. The Latinas are portrayed as feisty and sassy, and their families include many children, absent fathers, drug deals, and poverty. In this essay, I am going to focus on the ways in which Orange is the New Black creates an unhealthy and stereotypical view of Latinas’ race, …show more content…
Aleida then had four more children outside of marriage named, Eva, Lucy, Christina, and Emiliano. The father(s) of these four are ambiguous. As a teenager, Daya was forced to take care of all four of her siblings while her mother partied and helped her boyfriend Cesar run his drug operation which was the only source of income for the family of seven. This included Aleida cooking drugs in the kitchen with other young, Latina, topless, women - a scene in which the four young children witnessed on a day-to-day basis. When the drug operation was discovered by the police, Aleida took the fall for Cesar and was arrested and taken to prison. The drug operation continued. In addition to completely adopting a maternal role for her siblings, Daya also served as one of Cesar’s sexual partners in her mother Aleida’s …show more content…
She meets a correctional officer named John Bennett, and they begin an innocent and genuine flirtatious relationship. Primarily, their relationship consists of drawing each other pictures, passing notes, and meeting each other for short periods of time in the yard. This soon escalates into a sexual relationship which they maintain in secrecy in the janitor’s closet. It is clear that the emotions are reciprocated on both ends, but the question at hand is whether or not that singular factor makes their relationship ethical. Margaret Farely outlines a framework for just sex in her book Just Love: An Ethical Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. She proposes just sex includes seven guidelines: do no unjust harm, free consent of partners, mutuality, equality, commitment, fruitfulness, and social justice (Farely, 231). These guidelines reveal that Daya and Bennett’s relationship is unethical because the dynamics of their relationship do not meet the criteria of free consent, equality, fruitfulness, and social