Related articles See this story as it appeared online in the Oread faculty/staff newsletter Oread online. Roger Martin column: Are you on TV? Subscribe now to receive KU News by email

Contact: Susie Fagan, University Relations, (785) 864-8860.

Racial identity may frame view of media

LAWRENCE -- Do you see what I see?

That's the question Shannon Campbell had for African-American college students after they viewed two television programs containing racist imagery.

Campbell, a KU assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Communication Studies and the School of Journalism, recently conducted a research study that involved students from KU and Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black college.

The study has been submitted to the Howard Journal of Communication.

Campbell selected students from a historically black college and a mainstream university to see how they identified themselves according to the multidimensional model of racial identity (MMRI) scale. She then studied how those levels of racial identity corresponded with students' ability to recognize racist portrayals in the media.

Although all six participants at Xavier University identified themselves as African Americans on the MMRI scale, only two out of seven KU students identified themselves that way. The other five described themselves as blacks.

Campbell said that a higher level of African-American identity indicates a nationalistic view, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the African-American experience from other groups. Identifying as a black indicates integrationist and conformist views.

Campbell's research showed that self-esteem of African-American adults was negatively affected by extensive television viewing, and that "a strong identification with being African-American serves as a protective shield against racism (and racist imagery)."

"African-Americans with high levels of racial identity are better able to separate their own self-identity from the identity of other African-Americans portrayed on television," she said.

To see how the students were able to identify racist imagery on television, they viewed one episode of "Moesha" and one episode of "The Parkers," and then discussed the shows.

The Xavier students "exhibited a greater sense of awareness with regard to inferential racist imagery," Campbell said.

One example occurred in the episode of "Moesha" when the only white character on the show was a police officer.

"He was the only one in a position of power over another character," Campbell said.

The officer arrested Moesha's 12-year-old brother, who was able to escape from a pair of handcuffs and hand them back to the officer. Despite his young age and middle-class background, he was portrayed as being adept at outwitting law enforcement.

The episode of "The Parkers" contained overt racism in the form of obvious stereotypes. The main characters -- a mother and a daughter who attend community college together -- went on a spring break trip to Mexico. The show's depictions of Latinos included people with thick accents using broken English, a priest, a soccer team and a "bandito" character who terrorized others.

Campbell said the Xavier students were very perceptive of racist content and recognized stereotypes of other groups, such as Latinos, while the KU students did not. The focus group moderator at KU often would have to suggest that something was askew before the students picked up on racist messages, she said.

"The KU group really saw racism in black-and-white terms," Campbell said.

Campbell was surprised at the extent to which results between the two groups varied.

"I thought we would see less of a difference than we did," she said. "I suspect this may have something to do with the type of young person who might choose to attend a historically black college or university over a mainstream college or university."

Most importantly, Campbell said, the study revealed that both groups allowed comedy to act as a cloak for racist imagery.

"They didn't realize that their own sense of complacency was an action that helps perpetuate the racist agenda that exists oftentimes in network broadcasting," she said.

Campbell said that racist images in television programming often resulted from the homogeneity of people who produce shows.

"The fact that there is little or no diversity in the writing, direction or production of network broadcasting lends itself to being riddled with racism," she said.