Tatum Chapter 2: The Complexity of Identity -- "Who am I?"

Tatum writes in Chapter 2:

"The truth is that dominants do not really know what the experience of the subordinates is. In contrast, the subordinates are very well informed about the dominants. Even when firsthand experience is limited by social segregation, the number and variety of images of the dominant group available through television, magazines, books, and newspapers provide subordinates with plenty of information about the dominants" (24).

The question that might be asked is:
Why do white people dominate representations of culture in the media?

But for discussion I would like to ask: Is it understood that television, magazines, books, and newspapers give a fair representation of anyone with whom you would happen to have a "firsthand experience"? Is popular culture actually representative of what is lived on a personal level?

Tatum later writes in Chapter 3 about how her son, watching a Black man running down the street, asked if he was running away from a crime scene. Tatum asserts that his cultural biases were taken from common misrepresentations of Black men in the media. This was something she felt had to be corrected right away. So, using Tatum's terms, if the media does not portray "the subordinates" properly, is it fair to say that they portray "the dominants" in an accurate and fair represenation? Or is media always somewhat of a misrepresentation, and we should be investigating not "the truth" of how one group in society knows about another WITHOUT ANY "FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE," but instead where we really learn about others. When we talk about knowing the experience of others, we cannot overlook the fact that this knowledge should remain at a personal level--for it is there, face to face, that we really get to know people as people, not as a "dominant" or a "subordinate." On a personal level, we look each other in the eye and share our lives, and that is the only acceptable and "true" form of knowledge we can have of anyone else, regardless of whether they are a "dominant" or "subordinate."

Maybe we could address the problem here raised by Tatum by focusing on how and why we are not informed by "first-hand experience." Instead we rely on representations of reality for our knowledge of the world and of others before we even meet them.