September 26 Blog Post<\/p>\n
Introduction \u2013 Torres<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n Torres analyzes the stereotypical representation of African Americans in television and how it has changed overtime.\u00a0 She discusses how the depiction of blackness in television is the very thing that restricts political change for them through this platform.\u00a0 These stereotypes are created and perpetuated by whiteness to maintain cultural power within the social structure of society, or to sustain white supremacy.\u00a0 There exists a \u201csplit image\u201d portrayal of African Americans in the media in which the \u201cpositive images\u201d created by black image makers are counteracted and overpowered by the \u201cnegative images\u201d created by white image makers.\u00a0 \u201cNegative image\u201d blackness is represented in media alongside categorizations of menaces and immoral beings.\u00a0 The news especially reports criminality, addiction, and irresponsibility associated with blackness.\u00a0 Negative depictions usually represent one individual, but they are emphasized and generalized to the African American community.\u00a0 The \u201cpositive images\u201d counteractively marginalize the black community because the positive image represents an anomaly of the typical \u201cnegative image\u201d perspective created by whiteness. This limits the television medium as a possibility for black political possibility because both images perpetuate white hegemony.\u00a0 The obvious stereotypes, which provide an unconcealed platform to counter the injustice of African American portrayal, act as a distraction to the audience from the subtle, deeper racial issues presented in television. Torres poses that this relationship between the media, blacks, and whites is more complex than it appears on the surface \u2013 as the Civil Rights Movement became more widespread, television coverage and profits increased.\u00a0 The politics around racial relations were recoded and organized around a central role reversal where whiteness initiated color blindness to be \u201cfair\u201d to African Americans, however it provided them the upper hand to argue against the issues argued for in the Civil Rights movement.\u00a0 Brutalized bodies were widely covered during the movement to augment urgency to the cause, but the repositioning of whiteness shifted this to seem like it was \u201cvicious self-interest\u201d amongst blackness to eradicate the movement\u2019s moral authority and ultimately sustain white power; whiteness reframed the protests as civil disobedience in order to victimize themselves.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Critical Questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Outside Media:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n https:\/\/www.hulu.com\/watch\/438172<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_k_jt30gUVg<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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