Racialism and the Media. Venise T. Berry
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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