Say It Loud!: African American Audiences, Media and Identity

by Coleman,Robin R. Means

• ISBN13: 9780815337621
• ISBN10: 0815337620
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2002-01-02
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In a collection of essays based on direct interview research, Say it Loud! amplifies the voice of ordinary African-Americans as they respond to media presentations of Black society. Each chapter investigates ways in which African-American identity is constructed, maintained, and represented in mass media and how these portrayals are interpreted within the African-American community. Together the essays cover a vast array of media messages in television, film, music, print and cyberspace. From the Boondocks comic strip, The Cosby Show, and The Color Purple to the music of rap artist DMX and original testimony from a Menace II Society copycat killer, the material included in this volume is examined as context for the African-American struggle to achieve definition, meaning, and power. Say it Loud! offers rare insight into how this struggle is both helped and hindered by the representation of race in our media culture.

Table of Contents

Foreward	vii
Herman Gray
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(26)
Robin R. Means Coleman
``Keepin' It Real'' and/or ``Sellin' Out to the Man'': African-American Responses to Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks	27	(18)
Nancy C. Cornwell
Mark P. Orbe
Black Audiences, Past and Present: Commonsense Media Critics and Activists	45	(32)
Catherine Squires
Media Messages, Self-Identity, and Race Relations: Reader Evaluations of Newsmagazine coverage of the Million Man March	77	(18)
Debbie A. Owens
House Negro versus Field Negro: The Inscribed Image of Race in Television News Representations of African-American Identity	95	(20)
Jennifer F. Wood
DMX, Cosby, and Two Sides of the American Dream	115	(32)
Chyng F. Sun
Leda Cooks
Corey Rinehart
Stacy A. S. Williams
``It's Just Like Teaching People `Do the Right Things''': Using TV to Become a Good and Powerful Man	147	(40)
JoEllen Fisherkeller
The Cosby Show: The View from the Black Middle Class	187	(18)
Leslie B. Inniss
Joe R. Feagin
The Color Purple: Black Women as Cultural Readers	205	(24)
Jacqueline Bobo
``America's Worst Nightmare'': Reading the Ghetto in a Culturally Diverse Context	229	(20)
Celeste A. Fisher
The Menance II Society Copycat Murder Case and Thug Life: A Reception Study with a Convicted Criminal	249	(36)
Robin R. Means Coleman
Contributors	285	(4)
Index	289