The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America / Robert M
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The Black Image in theWhite Mind Swoies ill Commllnicarion. Media. and Pubhc Opinion + A series edited by Susan Herbst and Benjamin I. Page The Black Image Media and Race in America THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago and London ROBERT M. ENTMAN is professor and head ofthe DepartmentofCommunication at North Carolina State University. He is author ofDemocracy without Citizens (1989), coauthor ofMedia Power Politics (1981), and coeditor ofthe forthcoming Mediated Politics. ANDREW ROJECKI is assistant professor ofcommunications at the University ofIllinois, Chicago, and author ofSilencing the Opposition (1999). The University ofChicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University ofChicago Press, Ltd., London © 2000 by The University ofChicago All rights reserved. Published 2000 Printed in the United States ofAmerica 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN: 0-226-21075-8 (cloth) Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Entman, Robert M. The black image in the white mind: media and race in America / Robert M. Entman, Andrew Rojecki. p. cm.-(Studies in communication, media, and public opinion) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN0-226-21075-8 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Afro-Americans in mass media. 2. Mass media and race relations-United States. 3. United States-Racerelations. I. Rojecki,Andrew, 1946- II. Title. III. Series. P94.5.A372U55 2000 302.23'089'00973-dc21 99-086742 @The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements oftheAmerican National Standard for Information Sciences-PermanenceofPaper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. FOr'lElnUy --RMIE ForSusa" -AR Contents List of Tables and Figures ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii I TheRacial Chameleon 'I White Racial Attitudes in the Heartland 16 i Culture, Media, and the White Mind: The Character of Their Content 46 4 The Meaning ofBlackness in Network News 60 5 Violence, Stereotypes, and African Americans in the News 78 6 Benign Neglect in the Poverty ofthe News 94 7 Affirming Discord 107 8 Black Power 125 9 Prime-TimeTelevision: White and Whiter 144 I 0 Advertising Whiteness 162 II Race atthe Movies 182 I 'I Reflecting on the End ofRacial Representation 205 Appendix: Data Tables 227 Notes 241 References 271 Index 293 VB Yables and Figures Tables 2.1 Spectrum ofWhite racial sentiment 18 4.1 Topics ofsoundbites for Whites and Blacks, 1997 network sample 64 8.1 Who best representsAfrican American opinion, 1994 127 9.1 Power relationship by audience and genre 149 9.2 Interracial relationship by gender 151 9.3 Interracial relationship type by audience and genre 153 10.1 Images of contact among Blacks and Whites as proportion of opportunities in all ads 168 10.2 Luxury/ fantasy ads on sports programs, MTV, and BET 171 Figures 2.1 Racial denial groups 24 4.1 Numbers ofstories with soundbites, for Black and Whites 65 10.1 All-Black and all-White luxury and fantasy product ads 166 11.1 White casting and average box office gross 194 11.2 Percentages ofBlack and White male characters shown in different guises 197 11.3 Percentages ofBlack and White female characters shown in different guises 198 IX Preface This study attempts to say something new about race and about the media, two subjects that have generated more scholarlyand journalistic writing, and more public concern and even outrage, than most. Why another book? Al though we build upon the wisdom and insight ofmany who have gone before us, we believe there is still too little understanding about race or media and, especially, about the relationship of the two. We try to analyze dispassion atelyWhites' complicated sentiments towardAfricanAmericans, to describe not only the well-known negatives but the poorly recognized positive yearn ings and tentative hopes. We explore the many ways that television news, en tertainment, and advertising, as well as Hollywood film, register and help both to alter and to perpetuate WhiteAmerica's racial disquiet. We write in hopes of influencing scholars' understanding of the vital intersection be tween cultureand race relations. Butwe also take ourresponsibilities as pub lic intellectuals seriously, and present our findings and analysis in a form we intend to influence the wider public discussion. We should explain the almost exclusive focus onAfrican Americans. We do not have much to say about minority groups subject to many ofthe same cultural and political forces as Blacks, such as Latinos, Asian immigrants, and Native Americans. Certainly the media influence the dominant group's ideas about the other groups too. And we fully recognize that members of these other groups can suffer gravely from Whites' stereotyping and nega tive emotions. We focus on Blacks for four basic reasons. The first is national political significance: Blacks are the most consistently visible subjects ofpolitical dis course about non-Whites in the United States. Other groups are more geo graphically concentrated and that makes them less universally potent as political symbols. The importance of anti-Black sentiments to American politics throughout the country, even in places where few live, has been doc umented repeatedly. 1 Second, no other group except NativeAmericans pos sesses the long history ofdiscrimination that includes slavery and genocidal Xl XII Preftce oppression, a history that helps explain the first point. Third, available methodologies allow for more reliable study ofAfrican Americans. QIite simply, in analyzing media content, we can usually identify Black persons, and thus draw comparisons to depictions of Whites. Classifying Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans cannot be done with nearly the same reliabil ity. The final reason is parsimony: the subject of African Americans is complicated and multifaceted enough. Trying to explore mediated commu nication on all ethnic minorities is beyond the scope ofanyone study ofthis type. 2 The Other Side of the Equation Assuming the legitimacy offocusing on Blacks and Whites, what about the other side of the chasm-"Black racism" or animosity? Blacks can be racist in ideology but rarely have individual or collective power to translate the ideology into racist outcomes; few African Americans occupy positions that allow them systematically to enforce discriminatory resource alloca tions. To cite a few examples of the power differential, when this book was completed in 2000 there were no black U.S. senators or governors, and the first black editor-in-chiefofa major national news outlet had just been ap pointed (Mark Whitaker of Newsweek). No African American had ever served as chiefexecutive officer ofa major mainstream media corporation. Just one African American headed a Fortune 500 corporation, and he took the helm only on 1January 1999 ofthe anomalous, government-chartered Federal National MortgageAssurance Corporation (Fannie Mae). NoBlack has been a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a speaker of the U.S. House, or a majority leader of the Senate. (For that matter, no Jewish and hardlyany CatholicWhites had reached these pinnacles.) Norhad anAfrican American ever held the presidency of an elite private university-or, of course, of the United States. All this 137 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. There remains a large difference in social status, economic resources, cultural influence, and political power between WhiteAmericans as a whole and BlackAmericans as a whole, which makes the political importofWhites' racial sentiments fundamentally different. The far more urgent questions revolve around Whites' sentiments toward Blacks, and, for us in particular, the ways that mass communication reflects and affects them. For all intents and purposes, when we are speaking about the United States as a whole, it XIll Preftce seems to us misleading toequateWhite and Black racism, even ifinscattered cities or organizations Blacks might have the power to carry out a racist agenda. In reaching this conclusion we do not mean to minimize the delete rious impacts of perceived and actual hostility, resentment, stereotyping, and other negative sentiments amongAfrican Americans toward Whites. An example clarifies the priority of studying White racial animosity: there is essentially no way to insult former president George H. W Bush, his son, Texas governor George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, orAl Gore, to take a few Whites every reader knows about, based on their ethnicity orrace. No ethnic insult exists, no term equivalent to "nigger," in the English language can be hurled at members ofthe culturally dominant Anglo-Saxon ethnic group. Nor does the culture supply any anti-Anglo-Saxon stereotype on any seri ously valued attribute; about the strongest epithet one might find is "re pressed." Perhaps Clinton could be called a "redneck," but that is a regional or class insult, not an ethnic one. Calling him "White trash" marks the idea that the targeted person is exceptional as "trash," and indeed the term "Black trash" does not exist. We have more to say on the associations of African Americans and dirt in chapter 10, on advertising. As we move downward from the core cultural group to less assimilated White groups, we find words and stereotypes that can injure by contributing to others' prejudices, and might ultimately be translated into adverse re source allocations for group members. Anti-Jewish orPolish stereotypes still have some sting, can harm members' self-concepts and deepen others' prej udices, thereby increasing the possibility that power will be used against them. But in most cases the effects