GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION

1 297In our consumption-oriented, mediated society, much of what comesto pass as important is based often on the stories produced and dis-seminated by MEDIA institutions. Much of what audiences know andcare about is based on the images, symbols, and narratives in radio, tele-vision, film, music, and other MEDIA . How individuals construct theirsocial identities, how they come to understand what it means to bemale, female, black, white, Asian, Latino, Native American even ruralor urban is shaped by commodified texts produced by MEDIA for audi-ences that are increasingly segmented by the social constructions of raceand gender.

2 MEDIA , in short, are central to what ultimately come to rep-resent our social sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to under-stand and perform gender is based on view culture as aprocess through which people circulate and struggle over the meanings ofour social experiences, social relations, and therefore, our selves (Byers& Dell, 1992, p. 191). Just as gender is a social construct through whicha society defines what it means to be masculine or feminine, race also is asocial construction. Race can no longer be seen as a biological category,and it has little basis in science or genetics.

3 Identifiers such as hair and skincolor serve as imperfect indicators of race. The racial categories we use todifferentiate human difference have been created and changed to meet thedynamic social, political, and economic needs of our society. The premise16 GENDER, RACE, ANDMEDIA REPRESENTATION Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. H 6/11/2006 1:42 PM Page 297298 Gender and Communication in Mediated Contextsthat race and gender are social constructionsunderscores their centrality to the processesof human reality. Working from it compelsus to understand the complex roles playedby social institutions such as the mediain shaping our increasingly gendered andracialized MEDIA culture.

4 This chapterexplores some of the ways mediated com-munication in the United States representsthe social constructions of race and genderand ultimately contributes to our under-standing of both, especially research on race, gender, andmedia traditionally has focused on under-represented, subordinate groups such aswomen and minorities, this chapter dis-cusses scholarship on MEDIA representationsof both genders and various racial , we examine MEDIA constructionsof masculinity, femininity, so-called peopleof color, and even white theother hand, given the limitations of thischapter and the fact that MEDIA research onrace has focused on African Americans, wedevote greater attention to blacks but notat the exclusion of the emerging saliencyof whiteness studies , which acknowledgewhiteness as a social category and seek toexpose and explain white theoretical and conceptual orienta-tion encompasses research that is com-monly referred to as critical/culturalstudies.

5 Numerous theoretical approacheshave been used to examine issues of RACE, gender, and MEDIA , but we contend thatcritical/cultural studies represent the mostsalient contemporary thinking on mediaand culture. More important, unlike mostsocial and behavioral scientific research,most critical and cultural approaches tomedia studies work from the premise thatWestern industrialized societies are strati-fied by hierarchies of race, gender, andclass that structure our social , cultural studies utilizes inter-disciplinary approaches necessary forunderstanding both the MEDIA s role in theproduction and reproduction of inequityand for the development of more equitableand democratic societies.

6 Cultural studiesscholars have devoted considerable atten-tion to studies of MEDIA audiences, institu-tions, technologies, and texts. This chapterprivileges textual analyses of MEDIA thatexplicate power relationships and the con-struction of meaning about gender andrace and their intersections (Byers & Dell,1992). In addition, we draw considerablyfrom research employing various feministframeworks. Generally, our critical reviewof literature from the past two decadesdemonstrates the disruption of essentialistconstructions of gender, race, and sexualidentities.

7 Black Feminist Perspectivesand MEDIA Representationsof Black WomenA feminist critique is rooted in the struggleto end sexist oppression. We employ femi-nism as a multidisciplinary approach tosocial analysis that emphasizes gender as amajor structuring component of powerrelations in society. We believe MEDIA arecrucial in the construction and dissemina-tion of gender ideologies and, thus, in gendersocialization. We acknowledge feminismand feminist MEDIA studies tendency toprivilege gender and white women, in par-ticular, over other social categories of expe-rience, such as race and class (hooks, 1990;Dines, 1995; Dines & Humez, 2003).

8 Blackfeminist scholars have acknowledged theneglect which women of color, specificallyblack women, have experienced throughtheir selective inclusion in the writingsof feminist cultural analysis (hooks, 1990;Bobo & Seiter, 1991; Valdivia, 1995).Black feminism positions itself as criticalsocial theory (Hill Collins, 2004) and is nota set of abstract principles but of ideas thatcome directly from the historical and con-temporary experience of black women. Itis from this perspective that we begin 6/11/2006 1:42 PM Page 298 Gender, Race, and MEDIA REPRESENTATION 299discussion of black female REPRESENTATION inthe contemporary academic writinghas criticized mainstream MEDIA for theirnegative depictions of African Americanwomen (Bobo, 1995; Hill Collins, 2000,2004; hooks, 1992; Lubiano, 1992;Manatu,2003; McPhail, 1996; Perry,2003).

9 Challenging MEDIA portrayals ofblack women as mammies, matriarchs,jezebels, welfare mothers, and tragic mulat-toes is a core theme in black feminist bell hooks (1992) contends thatblack female REPRESENTATION in the MEDIA determines how blackness and people areseen and how other groups will respond tous based on their relation to these con-structed images (p. 5). Hudson (1998) andHill Collins (2000, 2004) both advance thenotion that MEDIA images of black womenresult from dominant racial, gender, andclass ideologies.

10 Furthering hooks s discus-sion of REPRESENTATION , Hudson (1998)argues that these stereotypes simultane-ously reflect and distort both the ways inwhich black women view themselves (indi-vidually and collectively) and the ways inwhich they are viewed by others (p. 249).The study of black female REPRESENTATION isinformed by whiteness studies and, accord-ing to Dyer (1997), the only way to seethe structures, tropes, and perceptual habitsof whiteness, is when nonwhite (and aboveall, black) people are also represented (p. 13).