akicif - no, I'm doing homework! for real!

A while back, during one of the relatively-recent, um, intense discussions of race in fandom, someone somewhere brought up the point that people tend to consume media up the social hierarchy--that is, women will watch TV shows about men, but men won't watch TV shows about women, and minorities will watch TV shows about the majority, but not the reverse--as a matter of survival in a society dominated by the group they learn to understand by consuming that media. (I may be oversimplifying and/or missing the important part of the theory/argument/observation, but that's the point I remember someone somewhere making.)

Does anyone know what I'm describing? Can you point me to an explication/discussion of it, perhaps in a form I can cite to my Children's Lit prof?