User:Sidmills/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Racial misrepresentation

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I feel as though racial misrepresentation is constantly surrounding us through social media. Whether it's old photos of celebrities resurfacing or people being called out more recently for misrepresenting a race or ethnicity it has become more and more common. The topic is very interesting to me how people think it is okay to deliberately disrespect other races and needs to be talked about so it can be prevented. When I saw the article I knew instantly that I wanted to partake in it and as I read the article I felt more entitled to do so.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The leading sentence does get the point across for what racial misrepresentation is. I would maybe reword it to say, “Racial misrepresentation can occur when someone deliberately misrepresents their own or someone else’s racial or ethnic background”. Basically, just adding in that anyone can misrepresent any race, so it doesn’t seem so limited. The lead does include good points that could further be elaborated on like how people may commit racial misrepresentation in their work force or for education purposes. It also touches on how sometimes people get away with racial misrepresentation and some people do not which is an important aspect of the topic. While they are brief mentions of these topics, they are not elaborated on later to further their importance. The lead is concise and not overly detailed.

Content

The content in this article is relevant, except for the example used to describe racial misrepresentation. The content provided is relevant to the topic of racial misrepresentation, it defines it well without overly needing to be re-explain it. I think it could have been elaborated a little further or provided well-known historical examples of racial misrepresentation to strengthen the article like black facing for example. The content is up to date in some aspects as there are quite a few sources dating between 2015-2021, but there are a few around the 1991 to 2010 era. The article does not address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics as I feel that racial misrepresentation is not an unknown topic being it constantly taking place through media. It also does not bring in outside sources or topics that may be underrepresented.

Tone and Balance

Overall, the article is written mostly in a neutral tone where bias does not occur as it is factual and backed up with some sources in some areas. However, the last sentence mentions how doctors and medical students favour White Americans over Black Americans, and while there is an article to source this information. I feel as though it should not be included as it creates a bias and negative tone towards doctors saying that all will favour White Americans over Black Americans and potentially other races which we can simply not prove to be true. By doing this we are trying to provide an argument for racial misrepresentation instead of just providing facts which creating an arguing piece is not what Wikipedia is meant for. Other examples could be used in place of this that are facts and not debatable.

Source and References

           In terms of the first two paragraphs the currency of articles kind of wavers as three of the five articles are from 2004 -2010 while the other two are 2017 and 2021. There is a wide range of authors which is always helpful as you are not being bias by focusing on the same people’s article. Out of the first five references only one was peer reviewed, two were books in which I could not gain full access to and two were just websites off the internet. Having only one peer reviewed source that I could fully check to make sure was accurate and useful to the cite out of five was not very good odds and could use some work to gain better source that are more reliable. The peer reviewed article is only cited as an example and does not actually pertain to the lead information. I think the article “Dixon. (2017). Good Guys Are Still Always in White? Positive Change and Continued Misrepresentation of Race and Crime on Local Television News. Communication Research, 44(6), 775–792. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650215579223” would be a good contribution to the article to use as a reference. As for all the information being back up, the first two sentences are not cited which could be plagiarism, along with the first sentence in the second paragraph. These are big statements to make without having something to back up the information of where it came from. All the other citations are supporting links to the notable cases mentioned. I feel that there were a lot of cases added here that maybe could have been briefly explained in a paragraph, but it also works well as a link.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is easy to read and follow along with as there are not any run on sentences or spelling errors. The only thing I would correct is capitalizing White Americans and Black Americans in the last sentence of the second paragraph. All the words that readers may not be familiar with are highlighted to click on which will bring them to another Wiki page giving a definition of the word which is very helpful. The article is well organized as it has its lead and the follows into the next paragraph with examples of how racial misrepresentation could occur which helps further explain.

Images and Media

There are no images in relation to the article racial misrepresentation. I’m sure that an image could be attached if needed, however I feel like an image would potentially draw away from the article itself. This kind of article does not really need an image on the page to help add context to the article. There are lots of notable cases listed below that when you click on their pages have images attached which is helpful for those specific articles that tie back to racial misrepresentation.

Talk Page Discussion

There are no discussions that have happened in the talk page discussion on this article however, there is a note from Wikipedia. The note says that there was a petition to remove this article from Wikipedia on December 21, 2021, but they could not reach a consensus. The article is of interest in four Wiki Projects: discrimination, anthropology, sociology and psychology. The article does not go as in-depth as we would in a class setting as it ends basically after the definition is given, whereas in class we would break down where the term came from, what the term means and why it is still around to fully grasp a concept of it.

Overall Impressions

I think overall this article is underdeveloped, as for what is currently has it a decent start because it was well written and has important facts mentioned but needs to be elaborated and further developed. The lead is good, it gives a good understand of what racial misrepresentation is and examples of it, but those topics could be furthered later into the article. The one example in the second paragraph could be changed to something else as it does seem a bit bias and not needed in an article for Wikipedia.