Black Response To The Negative Images example essay topic

Audience Perception of the Stereotypical Black Image on Television In the introduction to the section on understanding social control in Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Paula Rothenberg states "The most effective forms of social control are always invisible" (507). One of the most prevalent forms of invisible social control the creation and perpetuation of stereotypes. Studies have shown that stereotypes can become so ingrained in the minds of those exposed to them that the target of the stereotype might not only believe the mythological image, but also inadvertently act out the image they are expected to play (Snyder). In addition, those who subscribe to the stereotypical images of others will "notice and remember the ways in which that person seems to fit the stereotype, while resisting evidence that contradicts the stereotype" (Snyder 514). Stereotypes control by creating false images that work to maintain the status quo and keep those who hold power in their positions of power. For stereotypes to be an effective method of social control, they must be created, dispersed and perpetuated.

Though the process of using stereotypes as social control is invisible, as Rothenberg declares, the distribution of those images is anything but invisible. The average American watches between 30-31 hours of television per week (World Book). That constitutes the number of hours for a full-time job. This statistic illustrates that television is an incredibly powerful medium for dispersing information, entertainment, and misinformation: "negative images of African-Americans propagandize misinformation about African-Americans" (Cosby 137). Misinformation about disadvantaged groups in America has historically found plenty of airtime on television: "television brings to an otherwise heterogeneous audience a single set of values and social descriptions produced to the specifications of the owners of the broadcast industry and their advertising sponsors" (Matabane 21). These images have been shown to affect the way these groups are perceived and acted towards by the white mainstream (Ford 1997).

The combination of the prevalence of negative images of minorities and the scientific proof of the effect these images on the behavior of the majority group lead to an invisible form of social control perpetuated through a most visible medium. This paper will discuss the ways in which black and white audiences respond to positive and negative stereotypes of the Black image on television. It will also analyze the effects that perception of the Black image has on prejudice, discrimination and oppression in our society. Thomas E. Ford, in a 1997 Western Michigan University study, found that "when whites are exposed to negative stereotypical television portrayals of African Americans, they are more likely to make negative judgement's of an African American target person. However, exposure to negative stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans does not affect their judgement's of a white target person" (Ford 271).

The exposure to these negative images then only affects how the white viewer judges a member of the stereotyped group. The Ford study based its hypothesis on the effects of priming in making judgement's about particular social groups. Two groups of white students were shown comedy skits depicting either negative stereotypes or neutral behavior starring black actors. Then the subjects were asked to, based on circumstantial evidence, determine whether a young man, Todd in half of the situations or Tyrone in the other half, was guilty of assaulting his roommate.

(An earlier study showed that almost all surveyed associated the name Todd with a white man and Tyrone with a black man.) The connection between the primer- the skits, and the judgement was not known by the subjects; they were told the studies were unrelated. Researchers found that subjects who were shown the negative stereotypical images were more likely to assume Tyrone, an African American, was guilty than those who had seen the neutral images. Todd's guilt rating was not affected by the priming. Ford explains these results: "the stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans primed or activated a stereotypical representation of the African American category, making that representation more likely to be used to interpret information about the African American target person" (Ford 271). The subjects recalled the violent stereotypical image they had just seen when they tried to determine the likelihood that Tyrone committed a violent act. The prevalence of negative stereotypical images of Black Americans on television, especially as criminals, is undeniable.

From the beginnings of television, Blacks have been singled out for their "blackness". This singling out based solely on race and not individual characteristics only widens the racial gap and legitimates the division of humans based on a defining principle that some scientists doubt the very existence of- that being race. The first Black images on television were of Amos and Andy, scamming, dancing, and acting like buffoons. Buffoons whose previous radio characters had been played by white actors. From to Beulah to 21 Jump Street to Seinfeld, normative portrayals of people of color have been noticeably absent.

While historically limited to comedic roles, some Black actors have managed to include themselves in the TV drama. There has yet to be a dramatic television series with an all or mostly Black cast. When Black characters are introduced into white dramatic television settings, however, they are usually dealing with issues of race (Ross 142). The resolutions to these problems of racism are almost always reduced to the prejudices of an individual and rarely do they discuss the significance of racism on the institutional level. These programs depict the need for change at the individual level, and if each person could only change their own prejudices, everything would be all right (Gray 85).

The empathy and cajoling to acceptance by the "liberal" character is generally presented in repressed language like "come on, they " re not that bad" (Malik 95). To avoid the tension that comes with seriously discussing issues of racism, even when they will be neatly resolved in a thirty minute time slot, television producers and audiences generally prefer humorous venues for discussion (Ford 272). Herman Gray performs an extensive analysis of the 1990's hit FOX comedy show In Living Color in his book Watching Race. Tamara Rawitt, the show's producer, comments on the role of humor in portraying racial issues: "The humor can work on a very subliminal level, and it's saying a lot of unsay able things... However prevalent racism is, it's still a taboo topic. But through comedy, we " re cleverly allowing certain things to come through.

We " re saying it still exists, and it has to be eradicated before progress can be made" (Gray 135). What Rawitt does not acknowledge is that in their presentation of racism and the attempt to make it well known, the show presented so many negative stereotypical images that it may have been perpetuating racism more than eradicating it. Audiences oftentimes use the images they see of certain groups to design how they act towards those groups. We would all hope that FOX viewers could differentiate between Homey the Clown, a drunk, violent, Black party clown and the average Black man, but there is no guarantee. Following Ford's findings on priming, a hypothetical can be created: A mother may have the choice between a white birthday clown and an equally capable Black birthday clown, but when the image of Homey comes to her mind, the possibility of that kind of behavior occurring at the party would only be applied to the Black clown. On the role of humor Ford asserts: The disparagement of social groups through humor makes ambiguous the social norms defining acceptable behavior, thereby creating a situation that fosters discrimination.

Disparaging humor may create a climate in which the norms defining acceptable behavior are temporarily relaxed, and discrimination against out-groups is no longer socially unacceptable. In this climate discriminatory behavior can be easily rationalized as falling within the bounds of social acceptability. [272] Humor allows people to "get away" with comments that would not otherwise be tolerable. The mother could say she didn't want a "Homey" at her party and think it is okay, though she is being discriminatory, because it was "just meant to be funny. One who tells racist jokes always swear "I'm not racist, but... ". before he offends the sensitive listener. The listener is then scolded by others when she is offended for being oversensitive.

The humorous context in which the racist comment is made is supposed to excuse the offensive nature of the statement. An example of the backfire and negative effects that can result from presenting racism in a humorous context on t elev is ion was the audience response to the British television show Till Death Do Us Part. Alf, the main character, was a reactionary, racist bigot. The show's writer intended to "ridicule, through Alf, the kinds of attitudes which underpinned the British popular psyche and later explained how, 'I wanted to create this character that was pig-ignorant and of course the nation fell in love with him' " (Malik 93). The problem with the construction of Al was that he had too many identifiable characteristics and "nothing else in the text could destroy the pro-Alf characteristics. If you identify with a character on aesthetic or dramatic grounds, then a part of you, whether you like it or not, will probably identify with what they stand for, despite your own reservations" (Malik 93).

The absence of any regular Black characters on the show allowed no Black response to the negative images. White America's favorite, Archie Bunker and All in the Family were modeled after Till Death Do Us Part. In the presentation of such images, the producers show ambivalence, not action towards changing the status quo or disrupting the strength of these images. Gray classifies the images of Blacks created by Black Americans on In Living Color as no less ambivalent than those created by whites like Archie or Alf. In Living Color's construction of blackness "at its best disturbs existing regimes of blackness"-like the ones on Beulah, et al- "and, at its worst, provides the cultural terms through which racial subordination is legitimated and reproduced" (Gray 132).

Because there is overwhelming research proving the link between stereotypical images and the way people deal with the target of that stereotype, the inundation of negative stereotypes on television does not serve the purpose of dispelling racism, but more likely perpetuates it. Each of the previous studies have looked at the effects of negative stereotypical images of Blacks on audience perception, Leslie Inniss and Joe Feagin look at the effects of the positive Black family, The Huxtables on The Cosby Show. Feagin and Inniss examine the real-life Black middle-class perception of the fictional Black middle-class Huxtable family. The majority of mass media claimed that Cosby improved race relations because of the ability of both Black and White audiences to relate to the issues, but later researchers disagreed. Some believe the "show's popularity has set back race relations because its view of Black assimilation fails to take into account the context of the world outside of the four walls of the Huxtable household and because it allows whites to excuse institutional discrimination and to become desensitized to racial inequality" (Inniss, Feagin 692). Whites could point to The Cosby Show as the example of Blacks achieving the American dream and assume any Black American who was not as successful as they wanted to be was lazy or a failure and inequality played no role.

This ideology rationalized attacks on affirmative action and expelled that Blacks should stop complaining (693). Lewis and Jhally found these conclusions in their study of White audience response to the show. "The Huxtables proved that black people can succeed; yet in doing so they also prove the inferiority of black people in general (who have in comparison with whites, failed) " (Lewis and Jhally 95). The Huxtables were a stereotype because they lived the ideal middle-class life and were completely insulated from racism. Feagin and Innis found that one of the major complaints Black Americans made about Cosby was its refusal to deal with racism.

The respondents who saw positive images of Black Americans on television for the first time were disappointed that the show would not explain how a middle-class Black family could deal with discrimination that it undoubtedly encountered (Innis and Feagin 701). Bill Cosby's response to this sort of criticism noted the fact that no other TV shows were required to deal with social issues. The respondents also shared the fear that the idealistic portrayal of Black life would make the world look color-blind and render Blacks complaints irrelevant. Lewis and Jhally found this illusion that equality had arrived to be a common sentiment amongst their group of White viewers. These studies show that stereotypical portrayal whether positive or negative can have a negative effect on society. They too often shape how viewers categorize the struggles and lifestyles of others.

Paula Matabane, in 1988, at the peak of The Cosby Show, found that Blacks who were heavy television viewers had more idealized notions of society and thought more Black Americans were middle class and that integration was more prevalent. Positive stereotypical images can create illusions of equality and then one is disillusioned when the world does not meet the positive TV land standard. She also found that the more television people watch, the more dependent they are on those images to process interactions with others. Camille Cosby went a step further and conducted a study in 1991 to determine what happens when the negative images prevail and how Black youths process the images and view themselves. Through multiple viewings of television sit-come and in depth interviews, Cosby found that respondents self-perception was negatively affected by the inundation of negative images within the study and in their daily lives (Cosby). Some respondents were embarrassed that their culture was represented as such, and felt the need to overcompensate by acting "less black".

Attempting to act "less" oneself is a very negative result. Though Cosby looks at the effects on the individual level, these individuals make up the social group. If a social group constantly sees itself depicted negatively, as Snyder highlights, the stereotype can become a self-fulfilling destiny. Regardless of whether Black Americans buy into the negative images of themselves, the effects these images have on White Americans is destructive. If White individuals doing the hiring in a corporation judge the worthiness of a Black applicant while recalling a negatively primed image of the Black thief they saw on television the night before (and the night before that, ad nauseam... ), the employer may rationalize the not hiring of the Black individual without knowing what his true motivation was, therein feeding the cycle of oppression. Marilyn Frye discusses Oppression in terms of a birdcage metaphor (Frye 141).

One rejected job application or one portrayal of a Black man as a buffoon or the Black woman domestic worker so pleased to serve her white family may not be oppressive; they may seem like isolated events. You can look at them as a single bar, a small barrier. Those around you wonder why you cannot just fly around that one bar ("get over it") and move on. But when you take a wider perspective and see that the individual bars make up a cage from which you cannot escape, that is oppression. The inundation of images of oneself as criminal, animalist ic, and all smiles while being ridiculed, compounded onto limited access to resources and everyday encounters with racism, form a steel cage from which the Black American must try very hard to escape. The presentation of stereotypical images on television are not the root cause of discrimination and oppression, but the prevalence of these images is most certainly not helpful in eradication the systems of oppression.

Bibliography

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Feagin, Joe and Leslie Inniss. "The Cosby Show: The View from the Black Middle Class". Journal of Black Studies 25. July 1995 (692-711).
Ford, Thomas. "Effects of Stereotypical Television Portrayals of African-Americans on Person Perception". Social Psychology Quarterly. 60.1997 (266-278).
Frye, Marilyn. "Oppression". Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. Ed. Paula Rothenberg. New York: Worth, 2001 (139-143).
Gray, Herman. Watching Race. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 1995.
Lewis, J. and S. Jhally. Enlightened Racism. Boulder: Westview, 1992.
Malik, Sarita. Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television. London: Sage, 2002.
Matabane, Paula. "Television and the Black Audience: Cultivating Moderate Perspectives on Racial Integration". Journal of Communication 38 (4). 1998 (21-31).
Ross, Karen. "In Whose Image? TV Criticism and Black Minority Viewers". Ethnic Minorities and the Media. Ed. Simon Cottle. Buckingham: Open University, 2000 (133-147).
Rothenberg, Paula. Ed. New York: Worth, 2001.
Snyder, Mark. "Self-Fulfilling Stereotypes". Ed. Paula Rothenberg. New York: Worth, 2001, (511-517) World Almanac & Book of Facts 2003, p 282, "Statistics on the average number of hours Americans spend watching television per week as of October 2001.