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ОглавлениеIntroduction: Racialism and the Media
Look at the poster of King Kong. Now imagine replacing King Kong with Los Angeles Lakers’s basketball champion Lebron James. Draped across James’ left arm is model, Gisele Bundchen in a similar teal dress. His mouth hangs wide open as if he is growling just like King Kong, and in his right hand rather than holding a club he bounces a basketball.
This was the April 2008 cover of Vogue Magazine. It perpetuated a number of issues concerning normalized stereotypes, biased racial framing, and problematic historical myths concerning African American culture. For example: the comparison of black men to apes, the notion that black men are obsessed with white women, and the historical myth that black people coming out of Africa are like apes and have an animalistic or violent nature. This cover fueled a significant amount of controversy concerning racists and racism (Hill, 2008; Lebron, 2008; Morris, 2008; Stewart, 2008). The design of the cover is too close to the King Kong poster to argue that it was not the inspiration. So, why would photographer Annie Leibovitz create it? Is she a racist? Why would Lebron James agree to pose like King Kong? Is he okay with racism? Why would Vogue Magazine use this image on their cover? Are they comfortable perpetuating racism?
In another example, the recent blockbuster movie Black Panther (2018) featured the Jabari Tribe of Wakanda where the leader M’Baku is called Man-Ape. The tribe is known as the White Gorilla Cult and they use the loud, repeated ←1 | 2→grunt of the gorilla during conflict. The Jabari Tribe also lives in the mountains where it is colder, so they wear fur to cover up. In the movie this tribe displayed an aggressive image that could be connected to the historical myth of black men as apes or black people as animalistic. This was apparently part of the original comic book, written by a white man, but why would a black director and writer Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole keep this stereotypical idea of an ape cult in the movie version? Are they racists? Why would actor Winston Duke play a character where the black man is called a man-ape? Is he okay promoting racism?
The purpose of this book is to explore the notion of racialism. Some people suggest that the first Black American president brought with him a post-racial society. It is obvious that that is not the reality. However, the nature of racial ideology has changed in our society. Yes, there are still ugly racists who push uglier racism, but there are also popular constructions of race routinely woven into mediated images and messages.
Racialism is the normalization of racial images and messages that impact cultural representation. Sometimes it is racist and sometimes it is not. Many media ←2 | 3→constructions are based on racial images and messages that have become common and accepted in our society today. It is not a good thing, but it also may not be a racist thing.
The Vogue cover is similar to the King Kong poster, yet is it possible that photographer Annie Leibovitz is not a racist? With what I know about Lebron James, especially beyond his basketball talent, I don’t believe he is okay with racism. And I think Vogue Magazine would probably prefer not to perpetuate racism on their cover. I doubt that Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole would be okay with propagating the Jabari tribe as apes if they saw it as a racist image. And I’m sure Winston Duke didn’t want to promote racism in the dynamic role he played. So, the question is, how do we explain these racial images and messages outside of the extreme notion of racism? My answer is racialism.
In the twenty-first century, we need a more nuanced understanding of racial constructions. Denouncing anything and everything problematic as racist or racism simply does not work, especially if we want to move toward a real solution to America’s race problem. Under the umbrella of racialism, racism is alive and well. Particularly, it encompasses the more historical actions and ideas tied to hate and violence. For example, a white person calling a black person the n-word, hanging a noose in the D. C. National Museum of African American History and Culture, wearing blackface or a KKK robe, and an Alt-Right rally that ends with one person dead and nineteen people injured. These are obvious racist acts. Racism is included under the umbrella of racialism, but my goal is to focus on something else. My focus is on the racial images and messages constructed by the media that do not or should not fall into the loaded category of racism.
Racialism
We live in a society filled with racial situations, messages, practices, and images. In this book, racial constructions are examined using a more nuanced approach. Racialism is a concept that includes, but moves beyond traditional racism. It involves images, ideas, and issues that are produced, distributed, and consumed repetitively and intertextually based on stereotypes, biased framing, and historical myths about African American culture. These representations are normalized through the media, ultimately shaping and influencing societal ideology and behavior.
Specifically, there are four significant areas under the umbrella of racialism. First, the common use of stereotypical images and messages as repetitive ideas about black culture. Second, biased racial framing which involves the shaping ←3 | 4→and creation of black cultural issues in adverse ways. Third, historical myths such as the derogatory use of knowledge and understanding linked to Africa and African traditions. Fourth, traditional racism involving purposeful hatred and malicious acts.
Sawrikar and Katz (2010) argue against the notion of white supremacy being used synonymously with racism because it situates white as the fixed reference point and places it at a higher social power than all other groups. They discuss the need for cultural competency to become the recognition and acceptance of difference with two components that are key: awareness and sensitivity. This means it is important for a person to make sure they have sufficient knowledge (awareness) about a group and that they challenge (with sensitivity) any stereotypes, biased frames, and historical myths encountered.
Delgado and Stefancic (2012) believe that there is a difference between the ideal notion of racism and the real notion of it. They explain that the ideal focuses on thinking, attitude, and discourse because race is a social construction, not a biological one. They also discuss how racism is used as a means for society to create racial hierarchies allocating privilege and status.
we may unmake it and deprive it of much of its sting by changing the system of images, words, attitudes, unconscious feelings, scripts and social teachings by which we convey to one another that certain people are less intelligent, reliable, hardworking, virtuous and American than others. (p. 17)
Bonilla-Silva (2014), in his book Racism without Racists, suggests that racial discrimination still affects the lives of people of color because new racial constructs are safeguarding the traditional racial order as good as the old ones. He suggests that for most white people, racism is simply an idea or attitude.
Most contemporary researchers believe that since the 1970’s, whites have developed new ways of justifying the racial status quo distinct from the “in your face” prejudice” of the past. Analysts have labeled whites post civil rights racial attitudes as “modern racism,” “subtle racism,” “averse racism,” “social dominance,” “competitive racism,” or the term I prefer, “colorblind racism”. (p. 259)
Carr (1997) believes that the term “racist” itself too often gets confusing.
The problem is that discrimination is no longer distinguished from its presumed cause, prejudice. Racism became both the cause and effect … It [the term] does not distinguish between the racism of the oppressor and the oppressed … There is no way to make this distinction, there is only the term racist, as an ideological phenomenon. (p. 155)
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Enlightened racism, as discussed by Jhally and Lewis (1992), moves in this same direction arguing that racial bias is not only about simple skin pigmentation but also cultural class position. Their study of The Cosby Show explored how and why white viewers identified with an upper-middle class black family.
What shows like The Cosby Show allow, we discovered, was a new and insidious form of racism. The Huxtables proves that black people can succeed; yet in doing so they also prove the inferiority of black people in general (who have, in comparison to whites, failed). (p. 98)
Racism usually promotes the superiority of white people over black people. And unfortunately, when certain racial issues are normalized within various media products we all buy in. If a child grows up seeing a specific idea or image as ordinary they learn to accept it. For example, when black men are primarily shown as criminals in the news, on prime-time television shows, for popular films, and through gangsta rap music videos, the black man as a criminal becomes the norm. Not only do members of white society start to believe the stereotype but many blacks, even though they know better, start to make assumptions as well.
Doane (2014) says it is problematic to think that diversity works better in a colorblind world or that it is moving us beyond race.
Diverse casts and commercials, successful athletes and entertainers can all coexist along with racial disparities in income, wealth, poverty, education, and incarceration. The inclusion and upward mobility of ‘diverse’ individuals do not necessarily challenge the logic and structure of an unequal racial order. (p. 19)
In other words, many scholars are already moving away from the loaded notion of racism, but the necessity for change needs to be explained more clearly. Racialism is a significant product of today’s racial ideology. It involves various racial images and messages that are seen everywhere and all the time. Such images and messages are normalized through the media and accepted by society. Too often racialism slips by unnoticed, molded into popular mediated representations.
Critical Race Theory
It is through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) that this book will explore racialism in the media and investigate racialized subjectivities and norms. CRT is effective for exploring the intersection of racialism and the media based on the examination of specific media products and practices. This book is an attempt to identify, ←5 | 6→critique, and ultimately transform the root causes of racial inequality in selected programs, products, structures and practices of media (Delgado & Sefancic, 2012). Each chapter offers exemplars of racialism operating within mediated experience.
According to Delgado and Stefancic, the structural and systematic influence of certain racial ideology can create oppression, bias, and discrimination. Therefore, it is the goal of CRT to deconstruct those consequences (Rocco, Bernier, & Bowman, 2014). Delgado and Stefancic argue that “racism is an ingrained feature of our landscape, it looks ordinary and natural to persons in the culture” (p. xvi).
Production and programming in the media make up key systems, structures, and practices of knowledge. As the media constructs representations of black culture, it uses racialized words and images. This book presents a cultural critique of how mediated representations and knowledge operates in these production systems using exemplars of racial phenomena, racial effects, and racial hierarchies (Ford & Airhihenbuwa, 2010).
Bell (2000) suggests that racism is a consistency in American society. He says it lies in the center, not the periphery; in the permanent, not the fleeting; in the real lives of black and white people. So, the purpose of my analysis is to think about how we might separate racism (malicious and purposeful hatred) from racialism (consistently normalized mediated racial images and messages). The ultimate goal is to better understand how the media constructs, controls, and manipulates race in our society.
Martinez (2014) suggests that people of color can also be responsible for racism. While some argue that this is rare because racism is tied to power and control, she sees things differently.
People of color can and do reproduce structures, systems and practices of racism too, but by writing and speaking against the oftentimes one-sided stories existing in a white supremacist world, CRT scholars illuminate the fact that the social world is not static, but is constructed by people with words, stories and also silences. (p. 20)
As more scholars have started to study media and race there is a movement toward the examination of storytelling within CRT. This approach is endorsed by Solorzano and Yosso (2002) who describe how “majoritarian” stories are, “generated from racial privilege and stories in which racial privilege seems natural” (p. 27).
These stories privilege whites, men, the middle and upper class, and heterosexuals by naming social locations as natural or normative points of reference. A majoritarian story distorts and silences the experiences of people of color and others distanced from the norms such stories reproduce. (p. 23)
Each chapter in this book examines the normalization of racial images and messages in the media, particularly the way they create the basis of our knowledge ←6 | 7→and understanding when it comes to African American culture in this society and around the world. I see the term racism as having extreme historical and emotional ties pushing it into a deep abyss of negativity, fear, and hatred. When we focus on those extremes, we often miss the important, but subtle elements of racialism that are just as powerful and problematic. For example, the Jezebel stereotype is alive and well in Gabrielle Union’s role on Being Mary Jane. Despite the fact that she is a highly successful black woman working in the broadcasting industry she jumps in bed with a number of men. And the contemporary mammy stereotype fits Tyler Perry’s Madea with her no-nonsense attitude, extreme protective nature, and southern accent thrown in for comedic purposes.
Abraham and Appiah (2006) discuss how the role of visual imagery in the priming of racial stereotypes through the media involves an implicit racial propositioning.
In this process, the images of blacks function as concrete and vivid cues, exemplars, which provide context that adds to and elaborates understanding of the specific issue discussed explicitly in the text … This process of implicit racial propositioning may be one of the discursive means through which contemporary forms of prejudice manifest themselves, and through which black stereotypes are rehashed and maintained in society. (p. 189)
Despite the fact that we are seeing more African Americans in mediated products today, many of those images and messages reflect certain stereotypes, biased frames, and historical myths. In an effort to open up the conversation about race and media and to promote a move toward change in the status quo, Racialism and the Media: Black Jesus, Black Twitter and the First Black American President presents selected exemplars of how race is normalized in the media.
Research has shown that mediated images and messages are an important part of how people see the world (Means-Coleman, 2013; Napoli, 2010; Nightingale, 2011; Ross & Nightingale, 2003). While the media may not have an all-encompassing power or control over an audience, it has been documented that images and messages can impact certain people, at certain times, in certain ways (Newman & Guggenheim, 2011; Potter & Riddle, 2007; Preiss, Gayle, Burrell, Allen, & Bryant, 2007). Mediated texts offer ideas and images that feed our societal norms and ultimately influence how meaning is constructed and deconstructed around the world.
Born out of what sociologist, Herman Gray (1989) calls, “America’s storehouse of racial memory,” racialism is supported by the historical and ideological distinction between races in this country. As a political construct, it is also tied to social and institutional ideologies and behaviors (Harris-Lacewell, 2003). And ←7 | 8→finally, the commodification of race through commercialism is another important element to be considered as part of racialism’s significant reach (Thornton, 1996).
Chapter One, “Contemporary Zip Coons: The Problem with Funny” examines how the Zip Coon stereotype is alive and well today. It has evolved into a contemporary image in film and television that is very popular. For example, comedians like Eddie Murphy, Kevin Hart, Chris Tucker, and David Mann star in numerous roles as modern day buffoons.
Chapter Two, “Ghettofabulous: How Low Can You Go?” critically explores exemplars in reality TV, rap music, news, film, and urban/street fiction questioning how “ghetto equals black” has become a norm in society.
Chapter Three, “Advertising and Black Folks: Whassup!” focuses on advertising as it uses images of and messages about black culture to sell certain goods and services. This chapter will not only look at negative exemplars, but it will also discuss advertising that frames black culture in a positive way.
Chapter Four, “Black-ish and the Changing Nature of Black Identity” offers an exploration of core ideas surrounding blackness. Through this comedy series blackness is challenged and redefined in relation to class, gender, and environment.
Chapter Five, “Balancing Stereotypes: Black Male and Female Roles on Prime-Time Television” explains how complex characteristics can be found in numerous roles on prime-time television that challenge black stereotypes such as Jezebel and Mammy or gang member and criminal.
Chapter Six, “A Satirical Parody: Black Jesus in the Hood” investigates how religion and poverty coexist in the inner city. Black Jesus meets the people where they are and in his own way he tries to help everyone understand that life should and could be better.
Chapter Seven, “Deconstructing Intersectionality in Crash” is an evaluation of the movie Crash which demonstrates how the collision of different genders, classes, and cultures in Los Angeles influences power and experience.
Chapter Eight, “Black Twitter, Interpretive Communities, and Cultural Capital” studies the way that Black Twitter has redefined activism on a global scale by generating a wealth of knowledge and opportunity through shared experience, meaning, and collective behavior.
Chapter Nine, “President Barack Obama: Biased Frames and Microaggressions” evaluates the problematic macro and microaggressions experienced by Obama as the first Black American president. Visual and verbal exemplars are discussed in the perpetuation of biased cultural framing.
Chapter Ten, “Science Fiction and Fantasy: Going Where Few Blacks Have Gone Before” is a critical examination of black themes and characters imagined now ←8 | 9→and in the future. The world today is fifty percent people of color, so it makes sense that stories about the future in science fiction and fantasy must be more inclusive.
Race will always be a significant part of America’s ideological consciousness. As Cornel West (1994) so eloquently wrote, “… a candid examination of race matters takes us to the core of the crisis of American Democracy (p. 156).” Race matters and it will always matter because our societal structure is built on a system of Democracy that depends on it.
The media exemplars studied in each chapter of this book will show that racial phenomena, racial effects, and racial hierarchies are not necessarily the product of racists or racism. Instead racialism, routine images and messages about race have been shaped and sustained through the media over decades then accepted as mainstream ideology and developed into comfortable social behavior.
This book is definitely not an effort to let racists and racism off the hook, but rather a means to expose, deconstruct, and critique other factors that make up racialism. We are technically already there. When scholars use concepts like modern racism, colorblind racism, enlightened racism, averse racism, or subtle racism they are taking a step away. Yet, that one word, racism, still pervades the overall meaning, so I propose this repositioning. We need to think beyond racism in order to better understand the world we live in today. My goal is for Racialism and the Media to provoke a serious change when it comes to the problematic racial images and messages that we have all come to know and love.
References
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