In 2018, Define American began a research partnership with the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center’s Media Impact Project (MIP) that sought to identify and contextualize all immigrant characters on TV. As described in the report Immigration Nation: Exploring Immigrant Portrayals on Television, the study found that one-third of immigrant characters on TV were associated with crime in some way, and 11% were associated with incarceration.

Wealth inequality in the U.S. has increased tremendously over the past fifty years (Piketty & Saez, 2013), but the proportion of Americans who self-identify as lower- or working-class has remained relatively unchanged over the same time period (GSS, 2021).

When I first read Boyz N the Hood, I immediately connected to the material because I went to school in Inglewood and I knew these kids. The representation was authentic and true to the Black experience, both for the protagonists and for the antagonists, and I knew that with John Singleton at the helm of his own story, it would resonate in a big way. What I didn’t know is that authentic representation is so powerful, it changed the culture: Drive-by shootings plunged after kids were able to see themselves on screen.