Portrayal Of African Americans Research Articles

Racism and Anti-Racism in American Popular Culture: Portrayals of African-Americans in Fiction and Film.

Racism and Anti-Racism in American Popular Culture: Portrayals of African-Americans in Fiction and Film.

Designing Ethnicity: The Ideology of Images

representation to its margins, and even to its center. Second, while lauding this development, Hall said that despite seeing more difference, which is a gain for ethnic groups struggling to be represented, constantly see ourselves represented in frames we don't want. In analyzing images of African-Americans, every attempt was made to maintain a sense of contradiction within what Stuart Hall calls the of representation.' Articulated one way, the increasing number of African-Americans shown in advertising and other media is a political victory in the struggle for ethnic representation. An advertisement for an AfricanAmerican hair care product, for example, portrays a successful two-parent family (Fig. 1). The semi-formal, business dress of the mother, the furniture, the large, framed art image on the wall, the basket of fruit, the stylized, no-curtain window blinds, and the father's golden neck chains all indicate a strong, affluent home and work life. This is the kind of positive portrayal of African-Americans that the media are beginning to present, and as such represents a gain in the politics of representation. But the copy, Being Number One Is Up to You, is an appeal to individualism as the root of success and therefore contradicts the

Racism and anti-racism in American popular culture: portrayals of African-Americans in fiction and film

From Uncle Remus to the novels of Alice Walker, the ideological battle over the deep-seated racism of American society has been played out in the realm of popular culture. Covering the period from the American Civil War to the present day, this study traces the development of racism and the struggle against it in fiction and film. The text emphasizes the ways in which racist and anti-racist popular culture both respond to developments in racist ideas and help to shape or oppose them. Novels and films are examined in the light of major economic and political experiences, motivations and preoccupations of black people, and the interrelations of race, gender and class.

Twenty years after kernen: The portrayal of African Americans on prime‐time television

In order to document the present‐day portrayal of African Americans on television, a content analysis was conducted on a sample week of all national network commercial television series regularly containing an African American character and aired during prime time in the 1987 fall season. An analysis of both character and program attributes reveals an improvement in the participation and portrayal of African Americans since the publication of the Kerner Commission Report, with African Americans portrayed in a diversity of dramatic and comedie roles and settings. Yet, the casting of African American characters generally remains governed by many of the dominant myths about preferred social roles for African Americans, with African Americans being more frequently portrayed in all‐black, comical settings.