African American Women in the News

Gender, Race, and Class in Journalism

Marian Meyers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135279943
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Journalisme

African American Women in the News offers the first in-depth examination of the varied representations of Black women in American journalism, from analyses of coverage of domestic abuse and "crack mothers" to exploration of new media coverage of Michelle Obama on Youtube. Marian Meyers interrogates the complex and often contradictory images of African American women in news media through detailed studies of national and local news, the mainstream and Black press, and traditional news outlets as well as newer digital platforms. She argues that previous studies of African Americans and the news have largely ignored the representations of women as distinct from men, and the ways in which socioeconomic class can be a determining factor in how Black women are portrayed in the news. Meyers also proposes that a pattern of paternalistic racism, as distinct from the "modern" racism found in previous studies of news coverage of African Americans, is more likely to characterize the media's treatment of African American women. Drawing on critical cultural studies and black feminist theory concerning representation and the intersectionality of gender, race and class, Meyers goes beyond the cultural myths and stereotypes of African American women to provide an updated portrayal of Black women today.

African American Women in the News is ideal for courses on African American studies, American studies, journalism studies, media studies, sociology studies, women's studies and for professional journalists and students of journalism who seek to improve the diversity and sensitivity of their journalistic practice.

1

The Missing Black Woman in the News

An Introduction

We have learned a lot about the representation of African Americans in the news over the past 25 years. Research has taught us that African Americans are rarely used as news sources, and when they appear in news coverage, they are primarily portrayed as a problem and a threat – as impoverished, as criminals, as self-serving politicians and, in general, as deviants straining the social fabric that binds us as a nation.¹ This depiction hasn’t changed significantly over time. About 20 years ago, Fair (1994) proclaimed that: “Studies of media coverage of race suggest that non-whites and non-white culture have long been neglected in U.S. media except for activities that are criminal, violent or confrontational” (p. 35). More recently, Campbell, LeDuff and Brown (2012) revisited earlier studies of race, myth and the news to conclude that “news coverage continues to perpetuate the same myths about race that it has for at least 15 years” (p. 17) – specifically, myths that link African Americans to crime, reinforce their marginality and proclaim that barriers to assimilation no longer exist. Other news scholars also agree that the news reflects “modern racism,”² which denies the continuing existence of systemic racial bias and discrimination against African Americans, while attributing their lack of economic and social equality to deficiencies in personal responsibility and initiative.

So it appears we know quite a bit about the portrayal of African Americans in the news. Or do we?

It seems that we do know quite a bit about the representation of African American men in the news, but very little about African American women. Previous studies of African Americans in the news have by-and-large ignored Black³ women. While some have clearly stated their focus is on African American men, others have elided gender, ostensibly including both men and women in their discussion of African Americans in the news. But are African American women, like African American men, similarly represented as impoverished and a threat to society? Are they, as studies indicate, over-represented as criminals and under-represented as victims? And are they blamed, as modern racism proclaims, for their lack of success and therefore denied assistance because any failing is seen as their own doing?

This book attempts to answer these questions – and others – through six discrete studies examining the representations of African American women in the news over the course of the past 15 years. It employs qualitative, textual analyses – principally discourse analysis, narrative analysis and the constant comparative method – to explore various aspects of their portrayal in local broadcast and national cable network news, in Black and mainstream⁴ newspapers, and in YouTube video clips. The over-arching research questions are: (1) how are African American women portrayed in the news; and (2) how does this coverage reflect intersectionality – that is, the complex and varied ways that gender, race, class and other markers of social identity are inextricably linked within a hierarchy of dominance. In short, this book provides an in-depth look at the representation of African American women in the news from an intersectional perspective that integrates gender, race and class.

African American Women in the News is an attempt to remedy the gap in our knowledge of race and the news, as well as contribute to our understanding of the ways that race, class and gender shape representation. Examining the representation of African American women in the news from an intersectional perspective can tell us much about the current status of African American women in society, as well as whether the conclusions of previous research are applicable to African American women. As the chapters in this book make clear, intersectionality is central to representation – and conclusions based on studies that ignore the complexities of intersecting aspects of identity are, inevitably, limited and limiting.

This book takes as its starting point the notion that representation matters, that the cumulative effect of mediated popular imagery on the public imagination is to instill certain understandings and beliefs that have specific and anticipated outcomes. This position is supported by numerous studies. Dixon’s (2008b) research into the effects of network news on racial attitudes found that exposure is associated with racism and the belief that African Americans are poor and intimidating. Gilliam and Iyengar (2000) similarly concluded that when Whites are exposed to crime news in which there is a Black perpetrator, they are more likely to hold more punitive attitudes toward crime, as well as exhibit higher levels of racism. Oliver’s (2003) review of research concerning the effects of media portrayals of African Americans and crime indicates that viewer bias “not only reflects existing stereotypes of black men as ‘dangerous and criminal,’ but also likely serves to reinforce stereotyping in ways that can implicate essentially any black man as potentially threatening or violent” (p. 11). Dixon’s (2008b) assessment of the research likewise found that the association of people of color with criminality on local news programs “can activate crime stereotypes regarding African Americans that can be used (by viewers) in subsequent judgments” (p. 321). And while audiences can interpret the news in various ways, “for the most part the media’s audience lacks the time, resources, and information to independently construct alternative definitions and frameworks” (Potter and Kappeler, 1998, p. 18).

Although the above research did not address the representation – or audience perceptions – of African American women in the news, this book takes as a given that, like race, gender makes a difference, as do class and other signifiers of social identity. And because the news shapes public attitudes and discourse as well as public policy (Kraft and Furlong, 2010; Vavrus, 2002), news coverage involving African American women also has material consequences – socially, economically and politically. For example, the stereotype of the hypersexual, promiscuous Black Jezebel affects whether African American women who are raped are treated as legitimate victims or blamed for their victimization, which influences their prospects for justice. Whether the news media perpetuate stereotypes and negative images has implications not only for how the majority population thinks about and acts toward African American women, but also for how the African American community – women and men – sees them.

This book is indebted to Black feminist theory for its conceptualization of the multiple ways that intersectionality structures representation and popular imagery. It also draws on critical cultural studies⁵ for its understanding of the role of mainstream media – in this case, the news – in maintaining and supporting the social, economic and political status quo, while at the same time existing as a site of struggle over competing ideologies and meaning.

Methodologically, African American Women in the News employs qualitative textual analysis because it is, as Campbell, LeDuff, Jenkins and Brown (2012) note in their own book about race and the news, “an approach best suited for answering how and why questions” (p. x) – which is the central concern of this book. The goal here is not to quantify the various aspects of coverage, as in ranking the frequency with which particular stereotypes may occur, nor to address aspects of reception or production beyond, in some instances, a discussion of sources cited within the news or the noting of how differences in organizations that create the news may affect content. Rather, the intent of this book is to increase our knowledge of the myriad ways that intersectionality shapes representation within the portrayal of African American women in varied news contexts, as well as to better understand how those contexts affect representation. Toward this end, Chapters 2 through 7 look across a range of media, from mainstream newspapers to the Black press, from YouTube to local television, as well as cable network news.

Different news formats have different points of focus, which may be shaped by newsroom imperatives, economics, technology, social values and the routines of reporters, as well as the interactivity of online media and social networks. For example, network television coverage focuses on national politics and policy, while local television news tends to revolve around crime. Similarly, video clips on YouTube, an increasingly popular and important source for news as well as entertainment, provide images and other content that often extends beyond what is considered acceptable in most mainstream media outlets. By analyzing the news in varied media platforms, this book includes diverse media perspectives and foci. In addition, by conceptualizing race as inseparable from and simultaneously constituted by multiple aspects of social identity, African American Women in the News advances our understanding of racial representation in the news as both gendered and classed.

Cultural Studies, Race and the News

Guerrero (1993) points out that “race is one of the most emotionally and politically charged subjects in the American social psyche and media imagination,” and that its social and political meanings “are not fixed but are matters of ongoing construction and contestation; whether in volatile debate or subtle transactions, the negotiation of racial images, boundaries, and hierarchies has been part of our national life from its beginning” (p. 41). Not only is the social meaning of race a matter of negotiation, but the news itself is contested ground, viewed by critical news scholars as a site of ideological struggle and competing worldviews and beliefs.

The field of British cultural studies early on recognized the uniqueness of the news’s role in legitimating the dominant power structure through its claim to represent an objective reality (Hall, 1977, 1982; Hall, Connell and Curti, 1977; Hall et al., 1978; Hartley, 1982). News scholars working within this critical paradigm assert that the news acts as an agent for the social, economic and political elite, and as such the news acts to support the values, ideas and points of view that keep this elite in power by creating ideological consensus. Although the dominant ideology is frequently referred to in the singular, it actually consists of multiple interlocking ideologies – including, but not limited to, racism, sexism, heteronormativity and capitalism – that work together to sustain and uphold the status quo. However, the dominant ideology is neither monolithic nor secure, but must be continually fought for against the encroachments of alternative or oppositional ideologies (Hall, 1977, 1982; Hall, Connell and Curti, 1977; Hartley, 1982).

Social, political and cultural hegemony depend on a combination of force and consent, with hegemony most effective in winning the consent of the subordinated when its ideological underpinnings appear natural, normal and common-sensical (Althusser, 1971; Gramsci, 1971, 1983). The news therefore must appear neutral, disguising its ideological roots to effectively build and maintain support for the prevailing social order. This “neutrality” is won through a variety of mechanisms – the choice of words and use of language; the delimiting of arguments so that truly oppositional positions are never presented as legitimate considerations; and the framing of stories so that they appear not to be ideological at all, but instead seem natural, grounded in everyday reality. Although any number of interpretations are possible given the polysemic nature of texts – that is, their inability to close off alternative interpretations – some discourses are privileged and most likely to shape meaning because they carry the weight of cultural assumptions and expectations (Eco, 1990). The “preferred reading” of the news, produced through language and symbolization, reflects and becomes the basis of popular consensus (Hall, 1980).⁶ As Hall (1977) states: “The media serve, in societies like ours, ceaselessly to perform the critical ideological work of ‘classifying out the world’ within the discourses of the dominant ideology” (p. 346). In this way, the news – and popular culture more broadly – is a battleground for the discursive struggle over meaning and ideology.

Black Feminist Thought, Stereotypes and Representation

Black feminist scholars have extended the concept of a dominant ideology by incorporating the idea of multiple, intersecting ideologies into their analyses of representation. Patricia Hill Collins (2005) notes that the “global mass media circulates images of Black femininity and Black masculinity and, in doing so, ideologies of race, gender, sexuality, and class” (p. 122). Those ideologies have been characterized by bell hooks (1992) as “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” because the term signifies interlocking systems of domination. Collins, hooks and Angela Davis have been at the forefront of conceptualizing intersectionality, arguing that gender, race, nationality and class, as well as other socially constructed markers of identity, cannot be decontextualized or divorced from each other. Davis (1998) emphasizes that: “The objective oppression of black women in America has a class, and also a national origin” and that “the structures of female oppression are inextricably tethered to capitalism” (p. 185). For Higginbotham (1992) the “racialization of gender and class” means that “gender identity is inextricably linked to and even determined by racial identity” (p. 254).

This understanding of intersectionality, along with Black feminist thought more generally, is derived from the experiences of African American women as society’s marginal “Others” (Collins, 1991). From this perspective, African American women define the boundaries of society, with their experiences considered central to social analysis. The social location of African American women as the “ultimate outsiders” (Alexander, 1995, p. 15), as “perhaps the most consistently marginalized segment of our society” in terms of economic and political power (p. 6), provides Black feminists with a unique vantage point for theorizing gender, race and class “as simultaneous forces” (Brewer, 1993, p. 16). The self-defined standpoint of Black women, Collins (1989) adds, provides the foundation of Black feminist thought and is characterized by two interlocking components:

First, Black women’s political and economic status provides them with a distinctive set of experiences that offers a different view of material reality than that available to other groups… Second, these experiences stimulate a distinctive Black feminist consciousness concerning that material reality.

(pp. 747–748)

This vantage point has provided the theoretical foundation for Black feminist theorists to link the intersection of race, class and gender oppressions to stereotypes of African American women, which of necessity adapt over time to accommodate social and cultural change.⁷ The ideology that produces images of Black femininity, Collins (2005) explains, is never static but “internally inconsistent” and therefore “constantly subject to struggle” as it works to maintain its dominance within a changing society (p. 148):

In essence, the mass media has generated class-specific images of black women that help justify and shape the new racism of desegregated, color-blind America… This media constructed Blackness took class-specific forms that mirrored changes in actual social class formations among African Americans.

(p. 147)

In theorizing the relationship between intersectionality and the popular representation and imagery of Black women, Collins provides a useful framework for understanding how stereotypes have maintained and supported the oppression of Black women over time. She initially pointed to four socially constructed and interrelated “controlling images of Black womanhood” that reflect “the dominant group’s interest in maintaining Black women’s subordination” (1991, p. 71): the mammy, who accepts her subordination; the matriarch, who symbolizes the strong mother who emasculates her husband and lovers; the welfare mother, who is responsible for causing her own poverty and that of her community; and “the Jezebel, whore, or sexually aggressive woman,” who lies at the heart of attempts to “control Black women’s sexuality” (p. 77). Defining African American women as “stereotypical mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mammas” works to normalize and naturalize racism, sexism and poverty (Collins, 1991, p. 67). The stereotypes of the Jezebel, the mammy and the welfare queen, Collins (2005) adds, helped uphold slavery, Jim Crow segregation in the U.S. South and racial ghettoization (p. 28).

Collins (2005) later updated these images to reflect societal changes and also to emphasize the ways in which they are classed, with poor and working-class Black women stigmatized with the word “bitch” to indicate that they “lack middle-class passivity and submissiveness,” and therefore their “undesirable, inappropriate behavior justifies the discrimination they might experience in housing, schools, and public accommodations” (Collins, 2005, p. 138). Images of poor and/or working-class Black women converge around either the “Bad Black Mother,” such as the “crack” mom who abandons her children, or the “bitch,” who is “aggressive, loud, rude, and pushy” and serves to defeminize and demonize Black women (p. 123). The stereotype of the bitch is frequently tied to Black women’s sexuality, so that she may be depicted as an updated Jezebel: “Whether she ‘fucks men’ for pleasure, drugs, revenge, or money, the sexualized bitch constitutes a modern version of the Jezebel, repackaged for contemporary mass media” (pp. 127–128). Other versions of the sexualized bitch are the “ho,” who trades sex for money, drugs, jobs or other items, and the materialistic “female hustler,” who uses her body to get whatever she wants (p. 128).

Much like Col...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Missing Black Woman in the News: An Introduction
• 2. African American Women in Local TV News
• 3. CNN and FOX News: African American Women in Cable Network News
• 4. ’Tubing with Michelle Obama
• 5. Juanita Bynum in Black and White (News)
• 6. Violence Against African American Women in Local News: Freaknik as a Case Study
• 7. Crack Moms and the Narrative of Paternalistic Racism
• 8. Finding African American Women in the News: A Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index