Vision Circle

This dialogue sounds a lot like it was ripped out of the uplift writings of the early 20th century. Our problem is largely a perception problem, driven partially by the media (as it is "the media") that shows the images in the first place, and partially by problematic African American behavior.

Now to be fair, there is research that links policy preferences to media images. Rosalee Clawson (Associate Professor, Purdue University) has found for example that whites tend to think of social security as a form of "white affirmative action" and that they are more likely to support social security if they see images of older white senior citizens along with news stories talking about the policy. Shanto Iyengar (Professor, Standford University), and Frank Gilliam (Professor, UCLA) have shown that the average "crime script" in local news features Blacks prominently, and that these images had an impact on evaluations of President Clinton (people shown news stories with black criminals were more likely to base their evaluations of Clinton on how he dealt with crime, people shown those images were also more likely to evaluate Clinton on how concerned he was about whites). Finally, Martin Gilens (Professor, Princeton University) in his work Why Americans Hate Welfare finds that the reason whites hate welfare is because they associate poverty with black women.

So there is reason to focus on "positive images." As they structure responses to public policy, it is important that we fight to ensure that blacks are at least accurately depicted. This fight must be waged...we must make sure that newspapers for example do not simply show images of black women whenever they run poverty stories. We must make sure that if black suspects are shown prominently whenever they are arraigned the same thing happens with white suspects.

BUT....at the same time we must realize that this dialogue is still mired in the conservative "uplift" concept. It takes the structure as a given, and only articulates change around the margins. In this case for example, dealing with the nature of images rather than the wider context. Two dynamics loom large.

The first is growing media concentration. As the stories (nonfiction and fiction) we watch, read, and hear, become more and more concentrated, the nature of those stories change. Rather than watching or reading news about our local state representatives, we are watching (on the NEWS no less) interviews with national tv stars. The new season of Alias just started on Sunday...I wouldn't be surprised if the lead-in for the local ABC affiliate's nightly news was an interview with Jennifer Garner. (I like Alias...think Garner is beautiful. But DAMN.) Rather than spend time tracking environmental dumping (a corporate crime of vast proportions) news agencies simply run to the scene of the latest carjacking.

The second is growing hypersegregation. As our metropolitan areas become more and more segregated not only on racial dimensions but on class based dimensions, it becomes easier to surveil problematic behavior on racial angles. You want to see someone on welfare in St. Louis? Just go to the North side, where all the poor people who just so HAPPEN to be black, live.

Note here that explicit racism doesn't even have to come into play on the behalf of news reporters or producers. It takes an arm and a leg to drive to the Appalachians (or their local equivalent) to get images of the white poor. Let's just go down the street! Gotta love bureaucratic efficiency.

So by focusing on the positive images without examining media concentration, and urban re-segregation it becomes impossible for black people to do anything more than change things at the margins.

Posted by at October 4, 2003 11:42 AM | TrackBack