Whilst doing this research I have become aware of a wide range people such as Shami Chakrabahti, who cite specific media products (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird) or events as a great influence with regard to their career choices. But media effects theory suggests that real measurable long term effects from media is very difficult to establish beyond doubt:
“Television, movies and new media have been blamed for every kind of social problem and antisocial act, and countless studies have set out to quantify their harmful effects. Gauntlett argues that much of this blame is misplaced, and that the methodology used to justify it is deeply flawed. Screen media is a central part of modern social life, and an importance influence upon how we see the world. But its 'effects' will necessarily be complex and indirect, whilst many of the ill effects attributed to screen media are really the result of more serious social problems” http://www.theory.org.uk/david/book7.htm 08.12.10
Some of the parents I spoke with for worried about the potential negative impact of the media on their family. One interviewee worried about negative female models and the American emphasis in British media so excluded TV from her house, but promoted a more multicultural world view through her use of books, and music. Another wondered if “Did words like “coon” in TV programmes like “Till Death Us Do Part” contribute to racist language among white people. The South American parents: all worried about the “safety” of the internet, but they had also searched the internet to find TV programmes that they had grown up with, to show to their UK born children, to help them develop a sense of South American identity. .
My research with six single parent families indicated that contact with the culture of the missing parent is greater than may initially be apparent: suggesting the “need” for media input is less than I anticipated. Cabarello (2010) in her study of Lone Parents of Mixed Children Then and Now found a range of contact with the missing father and their culture, she also found many lone parents of mixed children were middle class and that in both two parent and one parent households with mixed children mothers “ strongly feel a responsibility to impart racial and cultural literacy to their children” p11 The media is a main tool in this process. Katz (1996) noted that the women in his survey who had partners from a different background were more adventurous; but that those with a more fearful disposition in general, also tended to be more concerned with the impact of racism on their children and this was reflected in the importance that they put on developing cultural literacy. So while the use of media to help generate a sense of cultural identity is common practice, emphasis on it may be more important in “insecure” homes and as Rockquemore and others suggest this emphasis on black culture within an otherwise white culture may have unexpected consequences.
Rockquemore’s (2002) American research on Negotiating the Color Lone found that:
“white single mother’s of (black/mixed respondents were not overtly racist, but instead racialized the negative feelings they had about the respondents fathers. Those racialised feelings were communicated to their children…subtly as criticism for the non custodial parent with continued emphasis on this blackness.
So there may be a negative edge to the cultural literacy. Barn and Harman (2005) also warn that:
“Emphasis on black culture and achievement and the historical context of enslavement and oppression by white people may be unhelpful.. There is a possibility that some young people may develop negative feelings towards white people, including members of their own family, thus white parents may feel isolated or rejected with negative implications for parent-child relationships. “
And Tate(2003) in Everything but the Burden, Nigs R Us or How Black People Became Fetish Objects, raising the spectre of white parents as consumers of their child’s cool black image,
“Our music, Our Fashion, Our hairstyles, Our music, Our dances, Our anatomical traits, Our bodies, Our soul was still considered ever ripe for the plucking and the biting by the same crafty devils who brought you the African slave Trade and the Middle Passage”
So while it may seem logical for white parents to try and use the media to impart black cultural literacy, it is not always a neutral or uncontested activity.
When I gave birth to my son 22 years ago perhaps I was trying to stand apart from the UK norm, but today according to the 2001 UK Census the ”population who identify as being of “mixed” ethnicity is the third largest and one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in Britain.” (Caballero 2008) And for the first time the UK has a generation of young black people brought up in single white parent households. (Owen 2007) Although the mixed population is greater than other parts of Europe, this mixed phenomenon is world wide. Yet if my son had gone into care the chances are that social services would have felt a black family was more appropriate as adoptive parents than a white family:
“Children of mixed parentage who have a white and a black parent are no different to other black children. Almost invariably they will be identified as black by society… Such children, with parents from different races, should feel good about having one white parent and one black parent. Society will make them feel good about being white. It follows that the children are best placed in homes which will redress this balance and make them feel good about being black too” Barn and Harman 2005
As a white parent of a black child I clearly find this approach problematic, but I also subscribed to the idea that my son would be exposed to his white side naturally, and that I would have to find other ways to represent his black side, even though I was not sure what this meant, and give him the tools to deal with the racism he would face. I included selected use of the media to do this and two of the parents I interviewed followed a similar approach.
“Well first of all it is important that children see how their parents demonstrate or introduce new stuff to them by doing it all at home where they can see. Books and films only then to remain in the things you have already started in their lives as a way of life to them. Take for instance I speak 3 languages to my daughter and all of them mean the same thing but in Swedish, English and my mother tongue i.e. African dialect. Then when she sees movies and they say similar things she understands directly and by so doing she can see many more films from my country and keep learning more by watching films. But it is good that the movies have moral that can keep guard of their growth so they don’t copy wrong idea that won’t work for them in a society as they live in today i.e the western world. So it goes from the state of learning what ways and diversities of culture from different background and then they know how t to apply it in different society in a positive way. But I think the end result of everything you introduce to children is how they create other new ideas to keep a balance of where they are and what they know. So in my own words I think you start by teaching them slowly at home.” (Nigerian single father with a young Swedish daughter)
“I think first and foremost you HAVE to give that child a positive self image and confidence, so they are able to deal with anything that comes along…I have done this by using media in part, using multi cultural resources that depict positive images of black people, or people from other cultures. This has been books, films, news items, music, everything, it’s embedded in our daily life” White British single mum with a black Kenyan step-son.
As illustrated earlier this is not an unsurprising or natural response, but as already it can be problematic for instance one of the women I interviewed had a daughter of mixed North African British heritage, but when she tried to introduce African material into their home and joined a mixed parentage group, her daughter rejected the sense of pain and difference that this exposed her to, partly because none of the representations of black culture fitted in with the black culture she had roots in, or her own comfortable sense of being British. But she did find the story of Harriet Taubman useful in other ways as an inspirational female story. While another parent who tried to introduce her son to his black African roots, through books and the electronic media just meet extreme hostility, to his black identity until her son grew up.
In the interview with my son he acknowledged that much of the media we used together, as evidenced in my practical project, had black male leads in it, and that films about Malcolm X say were inspirational to him. But he also believes all media in the UK is ideologically and white owned that none of the media he was exposed to was on its own really helpful in creating his sense of identity, and that even if he had grown up in a world only populated by white images he would still be the person he is today. Worse he feels that misrepresentations of black people in the media contributes to the racism he experienced growing up (and the women at the BHM meeting would agree with him) as it contributes to people’s negative stereotypes of young men like himself. Current research on stereotypes does suggest that they can be very powerful, both in a positive and negative sense:
What is the function of storing knowledge about other people? How does this function help us understand how stored knowledge is translated into interpersonal behaviour? In this article, we suggest that a) stored knowledge about a social group (e.g. a stereotype) can provide useful information for interacting effectively with group members, and b) automatic social behaviour that arises from the activation of a social category can be the result of perceivers preparing to interact with a group member. This preparation to interact, in turn, results in systematic and measurable automatic behaviour” Cesario, Plaks and Higgins 2006
It is early days to suggest what this research contributes to media effects theory and cultural identity, but their findings that stereotypes automatically influence our behaviour may challenge the idea that media effects are not measurable and it may be relevant in establishing whether the media can be used as a tool to create positive identities.
Racist argue that white people are racially superior to people with any black blood and that stereotypes are rooted in biology. Current research does not support their theory:
“There is much more genetic variation within a racially defined group that there is between any two such groups on the assumption that the purpose of classifying a thing is to convey information about that thing, this observation suggests that classifying by race is, at least from a biological point of view, pointless or even meaningless.” (Dupre 2005)
Some black people also argue that there is something essential about a black person that makes them black and they would include all children of mixed black origin into this concept. Others favour the idea that difference stems from culture, history and sociological concepts of race and that the different histories of black and white people, the unconscious and conscious impact of these histories on people’s sense of identity, plus cultural differences, plus racism and essentialism, plus representations and stereotypes of these differences means that the identity of these children is currently contested. And as my son and the women at the BHM meeting noted, one of the difficulties in using the media to provide a model of what it is to be black and male is the role of the media in maintaining a white hegemonic model of society. Mistry for instance notes that
“Gramsci’s notion of hegemony …..can be used to identify both elements of the old racist stereotypes and new, but destructive, representations of racial minorities in the current media of seemingly liberal society. Thus, it is unsurprising that racism, though perhaps more covertly pervades our society.”
While Pilkington, in considering racial disadvantage in the UK notes that:
“press and television news are often characterized …as racist. we need, however, to make a distinction here between what Stuart Hall (1995) calls”overt” and inferential”racism. Overt racism is apparent when “favourable coverage is given to (those) who are in the business of elaborating an openly racist argument” while inferential racism is evident when coverage is seemingly balanced but “ racist premises” (are)inscribed… as set of unquestioned assumptions” (see appendix for an example of this type of news story from the Daily Telegraph) The cumulative effect of stereotypical and negative representations of minority groups in the news and more generally in the media and popular culture, it is often argued, is “ to promote and consolidate a racist “commonsense” which serves to justify and help maintain a racial “inequality” (Gordon and Rosenberg 1989:38) While representations of minority communities are subject to selective perception by audiences and their meanings open to diverse interpretations, the assumption is that individuals, who do not have first-hand experiences of these communities will have no reason to challenge them” Pilkington 2003
All this chimes with my son’s understanding of the racism he experienced, in that he felt people behaved towards a media generated stereotypical version of a young black man, rather than to him as an individual.
So what are these stereotypes? Daley (c2007) suggests that the media, has a limited range of black stereotypes from The Tom or Good Negro, The Coon, The Tragic Mulatto, The Mammy and the Brutal Black Buck, and none of them, including the Good Negro model, are attractive stereotypes. Hall, according to Mistry identifies three models: The mammy, the native and the entertainer. But American research notes: “contemporary media representations of African Americans can be best described as paradoxical; blacks are simultaneously underrepresented and overrepresented in American media culture” ( Watkins 2000) while most commentators believe media representation of black people to be negative Quoted in the same article Dates (1980) notes that black youths are heavier television viewers than white youths, and that they “generally rated black television characters more positively than did non-blacks. Thus, she asserts that television does not have a negative influence on the self-esteem of black television viewers”. Roberts also notes this heavier use of the media by young black people in the US. (Roberts 2000) However, Graves fears that this heavy media use itself disadvantages black youths as it means less time to develop more academic skills.(Graves 1996)
If long term representations of a group of people do have an effect on its audience what would such representations mean for the black (and white and mixed) people? Alexander (1996) in her study of young black men living in various parts of London found that the stereotypes about them did not match the rich tapestries of their lives, but she also found that the men she studied used a huge range of stereotypes to negotiate all aspects of their lives, from assumptions about clubs in different parts of London, to assumptions about white people, and that these stereotypes of produced effects that confirmed these stereotypes e.g. fights with people from different areas As a result of her research Alexander challenges Baumann’s idea of fixed identities and Troyna’s views that (1979)
the reactions of black youth to life in Britain fall into three categories, mainstreamer, compromiser, and rejecter, which can be read off from the forms of social life enjoyed by the individual. The mainstream listens to pop music: the compromiser to soul music and “sweet” reggae: while the rejecter inevitably turns to Rastafari and its associated culture of hard reggae, …Black culture therefore is thus seen as a refuge for personal failure and feelings of inadequacy which expresses a negative stance towards the wider society from which it is excluded. The equation of expressive cultures with deviance and hence with criminality is easily and consistently drawn.” Alexander 1996)
But unfortunately she does not explore the role of the media in these young men’s lives. .
However, the importance of stereotypes to their sense of self calls to mind Gramsci’s idea of spontaneous consent and Althussers’s ideas about interpellation that suggest that the white media position black people in such a way, that their disadvantaged position seems the call out as something natural to black people drawing them in to maintain their disadvantage even when as consumers and producers they are move actively engaged with the media than ever?
“within this arena Ricky was able to manipulate black stereotypes to create an image of success and of personal power. He remained aware, however, of the limitations upon this image because of its failure to penetrate beyond the bounds of a narrowly defined sphere in white black masculinity was both positively definted and circumscribed. Within this arena, his primary, if not sole, identity was defined by phenotype, to move beyond that would be to redefine this identity and render it powerless. “ Alexander 1996
The concept of stereotype threat may also be relevant (ReducingStereotypeThreat.org) , for this suggests that people trying not to act in a stereotypical way may actually land up reinforcing the stereotype itself instead helping sustain the circle of disadvantage that many young black men from single parent household inhabit. .
So for someone like my son, even when provided with positive black media messages, the predominant media messages he received often via other people was negative, and in responding to these messages, whilst trying to find his own way in Britain, he drew on them, in a way that reinforced the negatives. So during his teenage years, this is what happened with him, he felt that society was labeling him as black, gangsta, and ghetto, and that much of the media put out for young black and mixed black and white is gangsta ghetto,(both from black and the predominantly white media) and so he “lived” this black stereotype and his attainment level and sense of belonging within school for instance was very much diminished as a consequence. And this process was further influenced by the growth of rap culture during his youth. But and this is where other cultural models and concepts of the media may also apply, he was also aware that yes, he may prefer, media that in some way reflected who he was, i.e. black and male, but it was often other aspects of these media products that also drew him in, some were guilty pleasures just for fun, while others he enjoyed for their message of friendship and escape and in the long run, he felt that the impact of the media on his sense of identity was less than other factors in his life and that what impact there was very much in conjunction with other aspects of his life, such as visits to family in Kenya. This approach to the media fits in with Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model of Child Development and confirms Tate’s view that “By choosing these approaches he (Baumann) denies the existence of differences of gender, sexuality, class, ability, kinship and location and how these would cross cut any unified putative search for culture”
In the 22 years since my son was born a mixed heritage man has achieved the unthinkable and become the President of the United States .In the history of black civil rights there have been many false dawns and periods of great backlash, but in Obama’s era, more and more media personal are black or mixed and the rise in reality TV has brought a greater variety of ethnicities onto TV so real and substantial change may be occurring. But the history of negative representations and stereotypes, are still culturally embedded In the US there is some evidence (Brown J and Pardun C 2004) that culturally the two media worlds :black and white, virtually never meet and with more segmentation of the media and greater use of the internet, it is easier for audiences to avoid cross over media. Brtain is not America but in Britain most media is still white dominated, even when much British culture, especially youth culture, is black in origin. However, under the new Equality Act:
“along with other public bodies, the BBC will need to show how it has considered active steps to advance equality, eliminate discrimination and foster good relations between people from different groups across various activities and functions.”
So while in theory improvements should follow; negative stereotypes may still impact.
