Media’s Unrealistic Portrayal of African Americans

All types of media outlets have become an integral part of every American’s day to day life. “By 1971, more than 95% of all households in the United States and Canada have televisions.” (Schneider, Gruman, & Couts, 2012). In the last decade, adolescents have increased their daily usage with different media outlets significantly, in 2009, an average adolescent spent an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes viewing various forms of media compared to only 6 hours and 19 minutes in 1999 (Schneider et al., 2012). With this increase of media consumption, comes an increase in how the media can influence our thoughts. As our book discussed, the media has various tactics it employs to influence the viewer, from agenda setting to political priming. (Schneider et al., 2012). The media tends to portray African Americans as intellectually subordinate to Caucasians through various forms of racial stereotypes. (Gordon, 2015). In a recent project conducted by Maya K. Gordon, she researched if there is a link between negative media stereotypes of African American students on academic performance, self-perceptions, and career interests of African American youth. (2015). What she found was sadly alarming, “that media use contributes to lower academic performance, lower self-perceptions, and less interest in college-oriented careers.” (Gordon, 2015). This post will discuss the history of the media’s portrayal of African Americans, Gordon’s findings, and finally attempt to discuss ways we can combat the effects of the media on the African American youth.

This project was conducted because of the extreme education crisis currently occurring in African American educational structure. “Major cities with predominately African American student population, such as Detroit and Cleveland reported graduation rates in 2009 as low as 45.1% and 42.3% respectively” compared to 82% graduation rate for White students. (Gordon, 2015). There are many social issues that contribute to African American student’s academic struggle including: school climate, racial identity, peer and parental influence, and academic self-concept. (Gordon, 2015). With a lot of studies conducted on the social issues listed above, none were conducted on the influence of media on the African American student.

The media influences African American children a lot more than the average White child because African American children, in particular, “reported an average of 9 hours and 45 minutes of media usage each day, with television and music accounting for the largest proportion of their media use.” (Gordon, 2015). Racial messages are sent through various forms of media through stereotypes which can influence and impact the African American child who is consuming almost 10 hours of media a day. During slavery and post slavery time, “Black people were portrayed as lazy, stupid, violent, hypersexual subhumans that enjoyed serving and taking care of White people.” (Gordon, 2015). That depiction that was used years ago, are still prevalent until this day. “Analyses of prime-time programming during the 1990s and early 2000s found that African American characters were primarily limited to comedic roles, which sends the message that they should not be taken seriously.” (Gordon, 2015). Local news programs, were also more likely to portray Black criminals than White criminals which was an overrepresentation based on real-life crime rates. (Gordon, 2015). Children Now conducted a study in 1998 where they conducted a national survey with a multiracial sample of 1,200 boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 17 years old. The study found that children of all races associated “being well-educated, doing well in school, and being intelligent with White characters. In contrast, they associated breaking the law or rules, being lazy, and acting goofy with minority characters.” (Gordon, 2015). The children also associated “criminal, maid and janitor” with African Americans while “roles of boss, secretary, police officer, and doctor” with White people. (Gordon, 2015). From this study alone, it is apparent that children recognize the messages about race being portrayed through the media.

In this current study conducted by Gordon, she was able to verify that higher media consumption correlated with lower academic performance, lower academic self-perception, and less interest in careers that require a college education. (2015). The study recruited 247 participants that were African American high school students from predominately Black high schools. 72% of participants were female and the children ranged from ages 13 to 18 years old. These students were provided surveys with varying questions about media usage, music exposure, media identification, academic performance, academic self-perceptions, career interests and parental involvement in television usage. In Gordon’s discussion, she mentioned that the most striking result of the experiment was the indication that “parental involvement may be an important factor in understanding media connections to academic outcomes in African American youth.” (Gordon, 2015). She explained that the children that reported lower parental supervision while watching television had the highest correlations to being less interested in careers requiring college education. (Gordon, 2015). While the children that have parents, who take on a more hands on approach do not report high in wanting to attend college and/or finding a career that requires college education. (Gordon, 2015). She did also mention that this is just correlational data and this data cannot determine causality. I think it was very important and interesting to have a study like this conducted and I hope that I see more being conducted on a wider scale in the future.

I believe that interventions are needed to be put in place to help combat the effects that media has on the African American youth. As seen in Gordon’s study, parental involvement did help the child understand and interpret the messages seen on television, and did not allow it to affect their self-perception as much as the African American child that had no parental involvement. (2015). So, educating parents is extremely important. It can be something as simple as passing out an educational pamphlet that discusses the implications of the stereotypes portrayed in the media and how to not let it affect their child. Secondly, I believe that predominately African American communities need to have some type of evidence-based programs that promote the wellbeing and success of African American youth. An example of an evidence based intervention program is, Strong African American Families (SAAF) which has been successful with rural African American families with older adolescent risk behavior. (ChildTrends.org, 2007). Another program, Celebrating the Strengths of Black Youth (CSBY), focuses on promoting positive racial identity and increasing self-esteem among African American children. (CSBYprogram.com, [year not given]).  It helps students build skills to handle the typical challenges faced by African American children and also provides them tools to deal with issues related to race. (CSBYprogram.com). We as an African American community need to recognize the hardships faced daily by our youth and actively engage in decreasing the negative effects of the American society.

 

References:

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology:  Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Second Edition. Sage

Gordon, M.K.. (2015). Media Influences on Black Students’ Academic Performance, Self-Perceptions, and Career Interests. Journal of Black Psychology, 42(3), 195-220. doi: 10.1177/jbp.sagepub.com. http://journals.sagepub.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0095798414566510

CSBY Program Website

https://csbyprogram.com/

Child Trends Website

https://www.childtrends.org/programs/strong-african-american-families-saaf/

 

 

1 comment

  1. This is a very interesting post and sadly all too true. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is just the media that plays a role. It sounds like social comparison theory with a downward social comparison with black students feeling threatened and behaving in a way they feel will protect whom they perceive themselves to be compared to others in order to feel better, (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, p.202). It also sounds like in many cases due to societal stigmas about how black people are perceived the self-fulfilling prophecy is being achieved, the belief is so strong by others these black students actually behave the way expected, (Schneider, et. al., 2012, p.204). This plays to the stereotype threat as well for black students. Those who don’t feel they want to conform to this stereotype or live up to the stigmas are concerned they may end doing so anyway and this also has a negative effect on their self-esteem and academics, (Schneider, et.al., 2012, p. 205). Talk about having the odds against you!

    Do you think peer pressure also plays a role? If there are black students who want to do well and perhaps even chooses to display white characteristics to be successful, would they receive flack from other black students? I’m not saying this is the right approach for a student to be successful although I feel unsure about what are white and black characteristics, but that is out of my own ignorance and frustration that these exist. I often say it would be interesting to be the only seeing person in a blind world—I wonder if things would be different when we couldn’t judge another by what they look like? Sorry off on a little tangent.

    I agree an education is needed for things to change; however, it has to be more than a pamphlet. I say this because if you look at Bandura’s Social Learning theory, I would say we need observational learning here. I think no matter the age we all learn best under the circumstances where you have someone’s attention, they can retain the information by having some type of activity [motor reproduction]—perhaps some role playing—and provide the motivation and opportunity for people to participate, (PSU WC L10, 2018, p.3). I don’t think this would be too difficult to implement with teachers and others involved with the school. Maybe peer-assisted learning or older well-performing black students would be helpful as well. It is good to see Community intervention efforts you mentioned as well, but perhaps an intervention targeted at those with who carry the stigmas and stereotypes would also be a worthy effort?

    v/r, Lisa

    References:

    Penn State University World Campus. (2018). PSYCH424: Applied Social Psychology. Lesson 10: Education. from: https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1924488/modules/items/23682591

    Schneider, F., Gruman, J., & Couts, L. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousands Islands, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

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