Do Educational Films Produced With Same-Race-Communicators Promote Learning?

Abstract

In recent years, most young nations have felt a need for a cinema of their own (e.g., young African nations; French Canadians in Quebec; Peruvians, etc.); a cinema that would portray their own cultural patterns while presenting worthwhile models for observation, especially by their own people. Several movies in the United States, such as Sounder, may be achieving this commendable aim. Producers seem to have instinctively foreseen the unconscious imitation of visual images in films as an aspect of human behavior, as well as a source of monetary gain at the box office. One can remember the star system in cinema (John Wayne, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe) as well as more recent models presented to black people, like Shaft. The present article is preoccupied with the factor of identification with the race of the communicator as a variable which might influence learning by black students viewing educational films. There is a growing tendency in all communities struggling for their self-identity to multiply models of their own culture in all possible fields. Educational films should be no exception. But before suggesting to producers that they make instructional films with actors of the same race as the viewers, research must be done to discover if such an endeavor promotes or helps attain learning objectives. Research was conducted recently in the Los Angeles Unified School District with black students of grades five and six at two socio-economic levels to try to answer the following question: Do black students identify more closely with black characters or with white characters on the screen? The process of identification was