Curriculum Unit: Stereotypical Images of African Americans in Television and Movies

Curriculum Unit: Stereotypical Images of African Americans in Television and Movies

* Narrative

* Lesson Plan

* Lesson Plan

* Lesson Plan

* Notes

* Films

* Television Shows

* Children’s Reading List

* Teachers Bibliography

Abstract: This curriculum unit will provide elementary school teachers with a framework to begin to help their students understand and define a stereotype. Recognize common stereotypes and stereotypical themes in film and television and illustrate some damaging effects perpetuating stereotypes through behavior. Finally, how to constructively deal with others stereotyping them.

To Guide Entry

The practice of racial stereotyping through the use of media has been used throughout contemporary history by various factions in American society to attain various goals. The practice is used most by the dominant culture in this society as a way of suppressing its minority population. The Republican parties use of the Willie Horton image in the 1988 Presidential campaign, is a small example of how majority groups have used racial stereotyping in the media as a justifiable means to an end. The book Unthinking Eurocentrism by Stam and Shohat supports this notion when they write “the functionality of stereotyping used in film demonstrates that they (stereotypes) are not an error in perception but rather a form of social control intended as Alice Walker calls “prisons of image.”(1)

The modern usage of the word stereotype was first introduced in 1922 by American journalist Walter Lippman in his book Public Opinion. The major thesis of this book is that in a modern democracy political leaders and ordinary citizens are required to make decisions about a variety of complicated matters that they do not understand. “People believe that their conceptions of German soldiers, Belgian priests, or American Klu Klux Klansman for example are accurate representations of the real members of those classes . . . the conception in most cases is actually a stereotype acquired by the individual from some other source other than his direct experience.”(2)

Historically the “other source” people developed racial stereotypes were from literature and then radio. In 1933 Sterling Brown the great black poet and critic, divided the full range of black characters in American literature into seven categories; the contented slave; the wretched freemen: t...

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...A-Team

Good Times

Little Rascals

That’s My Mamma

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Children’s Reading List

Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. New York: Continum, 1989.

Braley, Daniel; and Daniel, Katz “Racial Stereotypes of One Hundred College Students.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 1933.

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Teachers Bibliography

Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. New York: Continuum, 1989

This books reveals and gives a historical perspective on the various incarnations of black stereotypes in American cinema.

Cripps, Thomas. Black Film as Genre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

This book attempts to explain “what is a black film” and critiques six examples of the genre.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “TV’s Black World Turns—But Stays Unreal”, New York Times (November 12, 1989): 66-67.

In this article Dr. Gates reveals how despite the success of television shows such as “The Cosby Show” stereotyping of blacks on T.V. is still prevalent.

Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African-American Image in Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.

The book chronicles blacks misrepresentation in American films.