University Times

Social work Dean Larry Davis

“One of the most important things any group of people can do is to control the image of themselves,” said School of Social Work Dean Larry Davis in a discussion about the damaging psychological effects that negative media images have on African-American males.

His talk was part of a daylong conference at the University Club that examined the impact of news media depictions of African-American males. The Nov. 1 event, “Evolving the Image of the African American Male in American Media,” was hosted by Pitt’s Office of Public Affairs and supported by a grant from the Heinz Endowments.

“Overwhelmingly, white Americans learn about African Americans not through personal relationships, but through images shown by media. Unfortunately, blacks too consume these same images,” Davis said.

“Black males are facing increasing difficulties obtaining positive life outcomes and avoiding negative ones,” Davis said in estimating the importance of the conference. “We must change the way black males are perceived and perceive themselves.”

Davis praised the conference, at which an audit of local media coverage commissioned by the Heinz Endowments’ African American Men and Boys Task Force was released, as an opportunity to begin creating the infrastructure to stand up to negative media images of black males.

The report, “Portrayal and Perception: Two Audits of News Media Reporting on African American Men and Boys,” found low overall coverage of African American males, with most of that coverage focused negatively on crime.

The report is available at www.heinz.org/UserFiles/Library/AAMB-MediaReport.pdf.

Stereotypical negative portrayals can be internalized, Davis said, noting that the high proportion of media coverage that depicts black males as lazy, dumb and violent can have an effect on their life trajectory.

Citing some comparisons from TV news, he said that, compared to whites, a black defendant’s mug shot is four times more likely to appear in a local TV news report and the accused’s name is twice as likely to be shown on screen. In addition, the black accused is twice as likely to be shown physically restrained.

“The black community has recognized these negative images in the media have been going on for decades. More than four in five blacks say that representation of blacks in television and movies has a negative impact on society’s views of African Americans,” Davis said.

Given that those 13-26  years of age spend an average of 17 hours a week on the Internet, 14 hours watching TV and 12 hours listening to the radio, the images portrayed have an effect.

“People’s perceptions of themselves are shaped by others’ perceptions of them. There is a very strong psychological component that goes along with the images people are shown themselves,” he said.

The projection of negative images, which are seen by both whites and blacks, creates a cycle of negativity. “This affects the way whites see blacks, the way blacks believe whites see them and the way blacks see themselves,” he said.

Davis described two conceptual frameworks from which to understand the negative portrayals’ effects.

The looking-glass self

Davis labeled the “looking-glass self,” a concept developed by early 20th-century sociologist Charles Cooley, “the most useful conceptual tool to understand the relationship between the media and its effects on black males.”

Cooley postulated three processes by which a person’s self-identity arose from the perceptions of others:

• We imagine how we appear to others.

• We imagine their judgment of that appearance.

• We develop our self through the judgment of others.

As evidence, Davis cited the famed 1940s “doll studies” by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, in which black children viewed white dolls favorably and viewed dolls that looked like them unfavorably. “Powerful evidence that black children had internalized negative racial images of themselves,” Davis said.

He showed a replication of the studies, done by MSNBC in 2008 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG7U1QsUd1g), that had similar results. Black youngsters perceived white dolls as “pretty” and “nice” and black dolls as “ugly” and “bad.”

Noting that today’s children continue to internalize these negative images, Davis said, “As you can see, the stakes are high. There is no doubt that this is a very disturbing video to watch. It is a vivid and heartbreaking illustration of just how much we stand to lose if we do not address the pervasive nature of negative media stereotypes.”

Stereotype threat

Another concept is “stereotype threat.” Developed in the 1990s by psychologist Claude Steele, it is based on the premise that a person’s social identity has significance in specific situations.

Stigmatized groups are aware of their negative stereotypes, resulting in the fear of being viewed or treated in a way consistent with the stereotype or fear of confirming the stereotype, Davis explained. “The stereotype threat arises when a person realizes that the negative stereotype can explain their current behavior or attributes.”

In the case of race, Davis said stereotype threat affects black students’ educational achievement, with studies confirming that black students are aware that they often are judged as intellectually inferior to whites, he said.

Steele asserted that when capable black college students failed to perform as well as their white counterparts, the explanation often had less to do with their preparation or ability than with the threat of stereotypes of their capacity to succeed, Davis said.

Steele showed in several experiments that black college freshmen and sophomores performed more poorly on standardized tests than white students when their race was emphasized, but when race was not emphasized, black students performed better than or equal to white students, he said.

Black students also scored better on IQ tests if the test was presented as test of eye-hand coordination rather than one of IQ, Davis noted.

He cited an example from his own experience of working with teenagers as a VISTA volunteer in New York City in the 1970s. While waiting on a train, a black teen in the group lunged in a bullying way at a white man, making him jump back.

Asked why he did that, Davis said he replied, “Well, that’s what he thinks about me anyways.”

Davis said, “There’s this connection between the image that’s portrayed of you and also what you become. Sometimes you resist it, and sometimes you live up to it.”

No group of people in history has been controlled so completely as have African Americans, Davis said. Under slavery, blacks were “not just corralled, but the image shown of you was not a positive one,” he said, adding, “No group of people in the world have ever been subjected to the kinds of perceptions of the other” as deeply.

“It is imperative that both black and white media become even more cognizant of their impact on not only how whites see blacks, but also of how blacks see themselves and how these perceptions influence both the psychological and the behavioral outcomes of African- American males,” he said.

—Kimberly K. Barlow