MEDIA, MINORITIES & MULTICULTURALISM
Getting to Know You?
“If we are going to help our young people on the road
to critical literacy, we must absolutely include
helping them to become literate viewers.. instead of worrying
endlessly about kids watching too much TV or the wrong
kinds of programs, we need to engage them in critical
discussions about what they are watching”.
[Patrick Courts, Multicultural Literacies: Dialect, Discourse & Diversity]
“In the United States the population of teachers is predominantly white, female and middle class, while the population of our students is increasingly diverse”.
[G Ladson –Billings, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, 1994]
Jena –realizations.
October 2007, First Lady Laura Bush is criticized by some groups in the U.S. for covering her head with a scarf during a visit to the Middle East. Her critics believe the action supports those who subjugate women. Her defenders merely believe her actions respect the culture, customs and traditions of her hosts. In the same month , news stories return to the controversial story of the so- called “chocolate Christ”, which itself is an extension of an earlier argument about Robert Mapplethorpe’ s inflammatory, “Piss Christ”. Argument’s about artistic expression and freedom of speech whether related to flag burning or editorial cartoons of Mohammed, highlight the power of pictures to stir human passions, provoke confrontation and undermine human understanding.
It would be trite to reduce all such differences to the simple observation that like beauty, sacrilege, profanity, stereotyping and pornography are in the eyes ands the ears of the beholder. Yet there is a grain of truth in this idea. On my campus it is common for faculty teaching issues of diversity to largely white students, to report that the students, resist, reject and dismiss claims about bias or stereotyping. This is an absolute given when touching on sacred-cows like Disney and the corporation’s portrayal of African Americans, Native American or Hispanics. “You’re reading too much into it”, becomes the clarion cry of many students as they dismiss such claims or concerns with little thought for how or why those groups being depicted might object to some of these media representations.
Oddly enough, the same students are more than willing to recount in great detail and with much emotion and outrage negative images and stereotypes about the south – or Appalachia, that they have encountered in their own lives. It is an example of what I call, putting the ME in MEaning, not to mention MEdia.
Douglas Kellner argues that “radio, television, film and other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our identities”. Senator Barack Obama , has recognized these influences in his own life. ‘What are the images available for boys and Black men?” he asked in 2006. Talking of his own youth he added, “ you could be Shaft or Superfly or Geraldine …I had bought into those stereotypes”. Of course cultural outsiders often buy into stereotypes as well – especially when they have no direct or immediate contact with those country or culture being depicted. In such cases their experiences and perceptions rather than being direct and immediate, are instead mediated.
When John Mellencamp sang a song with lyrics that include the phrase, “Jenna take down your nooses”, Jena Mayor, Murphy McMillian experienced his own case of putting the me in MEdia and MEaning. He complained that Jena, Louisiana had been for months, “mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied”.
Readers should understand that this is a personal reflection- professional in part, but also the personal story of a white male, raised as a child in a land that had all but destroyed it original inhabitants. A man who would ultimately travel thousands of miles across the world to settle in a country guilty of the same crime.
It is about the past, but also about our present. In September 2007, at the GOP presidential debate at historically black Morgan State University in Maryland, the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was noted. 2 members of the so-called Little Rock 9 were in the auditorium that night; a prolfile in courage. Missing from the podium were 4 major Republican candidates: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. Talk-show host and debate organizer, Tavis Smiley, referred to their absence as an example of “dissing black and brown folk”. Candidate Mike Huckabee said their absence made him “embarrassed for our party” and Senator Brownback of Kansas called their decision not to participate “bad for our party” and “a disgrace to our country”.
While discussion of race, class, gender and sexual preference can often be heated and often unfortunately too often function from a victim & villain paradigm, serious questions about media representations and their impact, especially on impressionable children and adolescents need to be asked. As a speaker at the GOP debate observed, if we cannot learn to see each other and listen to each other, 50 years from now we will be repeating the same mistakes.
This is more than a matter of media content or representation. It is about the context in which those images are created and consumed- including who benefits from them and who might be hurt by them. It is not about the blame game or victimization- both words invariably polarize debate and seldom bring reconciliation or respect. Imagery and ideology that were socially acceptable at some point cannot simply be re-introduced into society without strong reactions. In July 2007 for example, NPR reported the outcry that followed a commemorative publication of Tintin in the Congo and the decision books stores had made to remove it from the children’s book section of the store. However harmless or normal those images were perceived to be 40 and 50 years ago- in contemporary times , many modern readers will see them as offensive and racist.
How we see and how others both domestically and internationally, see us, cannot be separated from the way the media depict and represent us and others- whether dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina or crises in Burma or Darfur. This is legitimate work that needs to come to the attention of teachers, students, administrators, school boards and communities so they understand the need, the purpose and the process.
While sitting in a doctor’s office recently I watched an elederly man thumbing thru a state newspaper. He made a disparaging noise and showed a section of the paper to his wife. “ There they go ahead”, he complained, “digging up the past, never content to leave well enough alone”.
The article that irritated him was an account of the 50th anniversary of the forced desegregation of Little Rock Central school in, Arkansas.
Yet the past remains with us and history and social studies teachers are well aware of how the past shapes the present and our need to understand where we have come from in order to recognize both where we are and where we are heading. In a period when court rulings about race have turned back long held assumptions and challenged affirmative action, knowing what others fought for, when and why, is crucial to our national identity- our sense of self- the whole meaning of the phrase “one nation”. The reality whether we like it or not is that we inhabit one landmass but experience it in profoundly different ways . When minority jurors acquitted O.J. Simpson- most of white America didn’t get it, could not perceive it through the eyes and ears of the jury {of his peers} who lived in Los Angeles. Similarly, polling revealed enormous discrepancies about the way white Americans and minorities perceived Katrina and the federal fiasco that came in its wake. While whites believed it was poorly handled, the majority of African Americans saw race as a factor in how victims and their city were treated.
Not everything about race and multicultural education however needs to be focused on conflict and confrontation. A 2005 issue of The Middle School Journal for example reported a 3 year study funded by The National Science Foundation with the aim of “examining the media messages about information technology and careers that middle school students receive from television, popular magazines, books, videotapes, movies and websites”
Key to the study was the desire of the researchers to find out if in fact children and teens become what they behold; if indeed their media landscape shapes their identity and their future. As the report put it, they wanted to find out “whether the content of the media reinforces or hinders the development of gender and racial diversity” in the information and technology workplace.
Whether the researchers, students and teachers involved in this project knew it or not, this was a media literacy study- an examination of media representations, values, audiences and effects. Similar studies could be designed and implemented across the curriculum.
A 2007 report for example concluded that most U.S. students knew almost nothing about Constitution Day. Here’s an opportunity to investigate what role the media play in shaping the way young people think about not just race, but democracy, government, the political process, the courts and citizenship. Does the media engage them or enrage them? Does it position them to see themselves as future voters who want to make a difference and a contribution at the local, state and national level, or does it leave them feeling cynical and powerless?
Fortunately there are now numerous resources available to help students and teachers understand case studies about media representations , the reasons for them and their potential consequences.
It is important to note that these case studies have been conducted by both conservative and liberal groups.
Focus on the Family for example has a useful documentary called Hollywood Versus Religion, which examines the way the film industry depicts people of faith and the church as an institution. The Media Education Foundation, has an extensive catalog of resources including the timely documentary, Reel Bad Arabs. The Celluloid Closet explores representations of gay and lesbians in the media, while The Slanted Screen addresses the history of Asian men in Hollywood. Books include Small Town America in Film, The Cinema of Isolation which examines physical disability in the movies, Addicted, and Carole Gerster’s, Teaching Ethnic Diversity with Film.
Gerster planned and directed 3 National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes called: Picturing America: Cinematic Representations of America’s Ethnic Diversity. Addressing the importance of the topic she said that:
“examining films about and by America’s ethnic minorities is not only a means to explore how films create history for the majority of Americans but also what constitutes American history at any given time, whose perspectives prevail, and what additional perspectives come from those who do not share the dominant Euro-American culture”.
In my own country, the Racial Discrimination Act gives redress to individuals who have been discriminated against. The Australian Communication and Media Authority had also warned that the media must display caution “when engaging in public debates that may lead to racial hatred and community disharmony”. They also concluded that on air comments by a Radio 2GB commentator breached broadcast codes and may have contributed to the Cronulla riots early in the new century.
In the U.S., the national Social Studies standards include an examination of key strands such as individuals, institutions & identity, and production, distribution and consumption. As such, they lend themselves well to case studies of media representations whether dealing with news organizations or motion pictures. One can imagine students for example, comparing and contrasting the way the movies have depicted the Civil War [ Gone With the Wind, The Red Badge of Courage, Cold Mountain ] or a social issue like the death penalty [ I Want to Live, The Executioner’s Song, Dead Man Walking ]. As someone who was at the prison in Melbourne, Australia for the last execution in that country some 40 years ago, the death penalty is an issue deeply ingrained in my value system.
The benefit of engaging students in these media research projects is that they are consistent with the traditional goals of American education, further our understanding of media literacy and make it easier for us when we do want to explore the potentially more sensitive and controversial issues of race, class and gender , whether addressing the firing of shock jock Don Imus, media coverage of the Duke rape case, or the role of the press in the case of the so-called Jenna 6.
In September 2007, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, devoted a broadcast to considering why the Jena 6 story had been ignored for so long by the mainstream media. There had been some exceptions. AP had covered the story as had The Chicago Tribune, but most of the media turned their attention to the incident and its repercussions only when thousands of people from across the nation converged on the town to protest what they regarded as unequal treatment of black and white teenagers by the legal system. Writing in The Seattle Times, Jerry Large saw Jena as symptomatic of a bigger problem. “Criminal justice, education, banking, you name the institution and you’ll find inequality built in. Jena is about people trying to be heard”.
In Don’t Believe the Hype, Farai Chideya contextualizes this wider problem, addressing why so many “non Black American hold stereotypic views about African Americans” and the role the media including the news media play in this process. Her book is aptly sub-titled, Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans.
As NPR pointed out in their report about the Jena 6, this was not the matter of missing one story, rather it was symptomatic of the way mainstream media cover race. The enormous demonstrations against proposed immigration legislation, that had filled the streets of the nation’ s biggest cities, in 2006 caught much of the media by surprise.
Years earlier, when former Republican Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott made a remark that seemed to support America’s segregationist past, the mainstream media, though present , ignored the story. The story that ultimately forced Lott to resign was driven by the blogs and new media.
In the 2006 congressional election. Virginia’s, George Allen who was expected to win-relection and become a 2008 presidential candidate , lost his campaign after a racial slur was widely reported by both the blogosphere and the mainstream media.
Like it or not, race and racism are part of the American story and the media has a professional and moral obligation to cover it fairly and accurately. It should also be pointed out that America does not now , nor ever has had a monopoly on racism. European nations have experienced anti-semitism . Incidents , including violent incidents against Mulsims have increased in Europe and my homeland of Australia- which itself has a shameful track record in its dealings with our indigenous people . The scandal of the “stolen generation” , evidenced in Rabbit Proof Fence, cannot soon be put to rest. Court rulings including Mabo v Queensland , belatedly invalidated government claims to abolish land title rights claimed by indigenous peoples.
Sad to say attacks upon minorities are not confined to history. In September, 2007 in my home city of Melbourne, a 19 year old refugee from war- ravaged Sudan was beaten to death and left on a suburban street. Liep Gony’s distraught uncle said: “we came to Australia to find a better life and a better opportunity for our younger generation-we would never expect this”.
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