Afro-Phobic Or Afro-Publicist

Afro-phobic or Afro-publicist 1

Running head: AFRO-PHOBIC OR AFRO-PUBLICIST

Afro-phobic or Afro-publicist?

The role of the media in the social identity of African Americans

Stephanie J. Dautenhahn

Sociology 493

Afro-phobic or Afro-Publicist 2

Abstract

There has been much debate over the perception of African Americans in the media and how it affects their self-identity. It is easy to find examples of bias in portraying African Americans, but not a lot of causal research to prove that it causes problems with self-identity. A case can even be made that the amount of media presence by African Americans, whether biased or un-biased, has greatly helped to unify and give voice to a small minority group.

Afro-phobic or Afro-publicist 3

Afro-phobic or Afro-publicist?

The role of the media in the social identity of African Americans

Introduction

According to the United States Census Bureau (2001), 12.3% of all people reporting as one race reported they were "Black or African American". This ethnic identity is now the second biggest minority in the United States. It also refers to a group of people who have been in this country for as long as it has existed. However, through the persecution of slavery, the rigors of segregation, and the continuing latent prejudice; African Americans are still searching for their true identity.

African American Identity

Just as children that were adopted tend to long for a true identity most of their lives, so is the plight of the African American. Stolen from their homeland and forced into enslavement in a new country, African Americans were basically victims of identity theft. Although much progress has been made in the way of an American identity for African Americans, a true identity has not yet been found. According to W.E.B DuBois (1903) "The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self". (p. 68)

Many African Americans feel the same as Kali Tal (1996) when she says, "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world." She also states, "One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro, two souls, two

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thoughts, two unreconciled arrives; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." A quick look at American history makes it easy to understand where this split identity stems from.

According to PBS' African American World Timeline (2004) there is a long standing history of not granting African Americans an identity. Before 1787, of course, African Americans were slaves and only thought of as chattel. In 1787 the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It provided for the continuation of the slave trade for another 20 years and stipulated that a slave counted as three-fifths of a man for purposes of representation by government. In 1865 some headway was gained when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, outlawing slavery and establishing a Freedmen's Bureau to assist former slaves. Also in 1865 Union General, William T. Sherman issued a field order setting aside 40-acre plots of land in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida for African Americans to settle. Yet, in 1866, all-white legislatures in the former Confederate states passed the, so called, "Black Codes" sharply cutting the freedom of African Americans and virtually re-enslaving the race. Since that time there have been many gains and set-backs for African Americans.

Given the history of the United States' treatment of African Americans, it is easy to understand how they could struggle for their true identity. Perhaps James Jones (1991) says it best when he states, "Black personality is in part an adaptation to the political contours of racism. The conflict between the freedoms and rights of United States citizens is juxtaposed to the denial of freedom and rights that is the history of the African American presence in this country. If we view personality as the resultant of coping pattern and socialization directives, then black personality is, in part, the cumulative representation of the effects of racism over four centuries. It reflects over time, the effects of the form and structure racism takes, and comes to signal the

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nature of race relations at any point in time." (p.305) This would lend credence to the fact that African Americans do, of course, have an identity, but it is dependent on the identity of the Caucasian race at that time.

Alain Locke (1925) explains the progressive and upbeat side of African American identity:

In the last decade something beyond the watch and guard of statistics has happened in the life of the American Negro and the three norms who have traditionally presided over the Negro problem have a changeling in their laps. The Sociologist, The Philanthropist, the Race-leader are not unaware of the New Negro but they are at a loss to account for him. He simply cannot be swathed in their formulae. For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life. Could such a metamorphosis have taken place as suddenly as it has appeared to? The answer is no; not because the New Negro is not here, but