For hundreds of years, ever since the first enslaved Africans were brought to this continent, we have endured persistent stereotypes that routinely portray black people as lazy, deficient, poor, hypersexual and criminal. These can be found everywhere and anywhere—TV, film, books, newspaper, popular culture, embedded in legal and social practices and more. Although some of them have become more subtle over time, they remain a persistent and integral part of our society. They are not only deeply traumatizing and damaging to the psyche of blacks—they also give non-black people a warped sense of what black people are actually like.
A new study by Color of Change indicates that national news outlets routinely distort the reality of black families—misrepresenting and stereotyping them in inaccurate ways. The study examined content from stories published in cable, national and local news and online opinion coverage spanning two years from January 2015 to December 2016.
Major media outlets routinely present a distorted picture of black families — portraying them as dependent and dysfunctional — while white families are more likely to be depicted as sources of social stability, according to the report released Wednesday by Color of Change, a racial justice organization, and Family Story, an advocate of diverse family arrangements.
“This leaves people with the opinion that black people are plagued with self-imposed dysfunction that creates family instability and therefore, all their problems,” said Travis L. Dixon, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who conducted the study.
Among the representations shown: absentee fathers, black families on welfare, black families as overwhelmingly poor, and blacks as criminals. This isn’t as much surprising as it is disturbing. The outlets which were included are high-profile and have a wide reach in terms of audience—which leads to increased visibility and mass spreading of these perceptions. That’s bad enough, but it’s also dangerous since these kind of stories often become the “data” that policymakers use to justify regressive policies that only serve to hurt black people and black families.
[The stories and commentary pieces reviewed by researchers included content from] ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
Also included in the study: newspapers of national influence such as The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune as well as regional newspapers, conservative websites such as Breitbart, and Christian news sources like the Christian Post.
This presents another problem since this paints a reality which isn’t based in fact.
Black families represent 59 percent of the poor portrayed in the media, according to the analysis, but account for just 27 percent of Americans in poverty. Whites families make up 17 percent of the poor depicted in news media, but make up 66 percent of the American poor, the study said.
Black people are also nearly three times more likely than whites to be portrayed as dependent on welfare, the study showed. [...]
Blacks represent 37 percent of criminals shown in the news, but constitute 26 percent of those arrested on criminal charges, the study said. In contrast, news media portray whites as criminals 28 percent of the time, when FBI crime reports show they make up 77 percent of crime suspects.
But who needs actually statistics and facts? We are in an age in which facts don’t seem to matter—despite our technological advancements and overwhelming access to knowledge and information. Why is it that facts don’t matter here? Because, well … racism and white supremacy. Neither of which are served by any form of reality or sense or by portraying black people as humane and dignified.
This also serves as a reminder that what is considered news and is chosen to be reported is the result of human beings and their inherent bias. The old media adage is that “if it bleeds, it leads.” That remains true and it’s also true that the more a story feeds into people’s fear, ignorance and stereotypes, the better. There is little incentive for media to do any storytelling to portray blacks in all our diversity—short of black-run media. And even then, it’s not guaranteed. After all, in this day and age everyone wants to win the ratings game—so anything that is outlandish and reinforces these harmful beliefs is up for grabs.
Imagine if the news showed black people in various ways that didn’t pathologize blackness. A presentation of a world where black people can be anything—from Blackish to Queen Sugar to Real Housewives of Atlanta and everything in-between. In other words, not super good, not super bad—just fully human. If that were to happen, where would we be as a country—politically, socially, economically, with regard to race relations and otherwise? Who knows? But it’s certainly good food for thought.