Estrategias de aprovisionamiento

One  approach  to  the  study  of  African  American  women  in  television  examines  how  characters   played  by  black  women  on  TV  shows  reflect  the  hegemonic  representations  discussed  previously,  as  well   as  variations  of  those  images  and  new  images  of  black  female  characters.  Most  studies  trace  these  ste-­‐ reotypical  portrayals  of  television  programs  historically,  looking  roughly  at  each  decade  of  the  twentieth   century,  starting  with  the  advent  of  commercial  broadcast  television  in  the  1950s.  

In  the  1950s,  television  programming  adopted  the  racist  and  sexist  stereotypes  of  blacks  from   earlier  iterations  of  popular  entertainment  like  radio  and  vaudeville  (Johnson,  2008,  p.  169-­‐170).  These   characters,  typically  maids  or  cooks,  were  based  on  the  mammy  image,  (Gray,  2000,  p.  286).  “Mama,”  a   character  in  the  TV  show  Amos  ‘n’  Andy,  was  written  as  a  mammy  character  and  The  Beulah  Show  fea-­‐ tured  a  black  woman  paying  a  maid  who  solved  the  problems  of  her  white  family/employer  (Smith-­‐ Shomade,  2002,  p.  11).  In  general,  television  programs  that  aired  in  the  50s  involved  stories  about  “hap-­‐ py  people  with  happy  problems”  and  did  not  attempt  to  address  societal  concerns  (Smith-­‐Shomade,   2002,  p.  11).  Black  women  portrayed  as  mammies  on  TV  were  capable  of  running  white  households  and   raising  white  children,  “but  they  could  not  be  trusted  with  the  social  and  civic  responsibilities  of  full  citi-­‐ zenship  as  equals  with  whites”  (Gray,  2000,  p.  286).  Black  mammy  characters  on  TV  in  the  50s  also   “functioned  to  defuse  any  sense  that  black  Americans  had  either  legitimate  complaints  about  their  op-­‐

pression  within  America,  or  that,  given  equal  standing  and  opportunity,  they  would  be  able  to  capitalize   on  it”  (Johnson,  2008,  p.  171).  

In  the  1960s  and  early  70s,  television  programs  treated  racism  and  other  social  ills  as  individual   problems  (Nelson,  2008,  p.  196),  and  the  stereotypical  representations  of  women  of  color  were  more   innocuous  than  those  in  the  1950s  (Gray,  2000,  p.  287).  During  this  era,  race  was  downplayed  and  black   female  actors  played  roles  that  were  written  around  the  features,  experiences  and  concerns  of  white   women  (p.  287).  Overt  stereotypes  of  black  women  were  essentially  written  out  of  the  characters  that   black  female  actors  played  (Johnson,  2008,  p.  174).  

In  the  context  of  the  employment  and  economic  gains  made  by  blacks  as  a  result  of  the  civil   rights  movement  and  changes  in  the  rules  for  broadcast  television  industry,  the  1970s  saw  television   shows  that  were  more  diverse  in  terms  of  race,  ethnicity,  and  class  (Johnson,  2008,  p.  175).  In  the  70s,   white  TV  producers  created  programs  that  they  thought  were  credible  stories  of  poor,  urban,  black  life   (Gray,  2000,  p.  288).  Black  characters  were  represented  as  “good-­‐humored  and  united  in  racial  solidarity   regardless  of  their  condition,”  and  the  programs  “reaffirmed  the  commonsense  belief  that  such  ideals   and  the  values  they  promoted  are  the  rewards  of  individual  sacrifice  and  hard  work”  (p.  288).  Many  of   the  TV  shows  of  this  era  limited  black  female  characters  “to  the  primary  role  of  mammy  or  sapphire,”   characters  who  were  bossy  and  cruel  (Smith-­‐Shomade,  2002,  p.  15).  The  strong  black  woman,  portrayed   by  black  women  whose  characters  were  written  to  be  tough,  smart,  strong,  sexy  and  attractive,  also   made  an  appearance  on  some  TV  shows  during  this  time  (p.  15).    

  In  the  late  1970s  and  early  1980s,  TV  programs  about  black  life  shifted  focus  to  “black  upward   mobility  and  middle-­‐class  affluence”  (Gray,  2000,  p.  289).  Instead  of  representing  earlier  stereotypes,   black  characters  embodied  values  and  ideals  that  were  grounded  in  white  privilege:  the  valorization  of   heterosexual  family  structure,  individual  effort  as  the  means  to  success,  and  a  general  preference  to-­‐ wards  white  middle-­‐class  sensibilities  (p.  290).  Black  female  television  characters  were  “materially-­‐

driven  individualists  who  possess  the  education,  ability,  and  means  to  achieve  goals,  all  through  their   own  efforts”  (Smith-­‐Shomade,  2002,  p.  22).  The  sapphire  was  commonly  depicted  on  sitcoms  and  in-­‐ cluded  Marla  Gibbs’s  character  Mary  Jenkins  on  227  and  Jaleesa  Vinson-­‐Taylor,  played  by  Dawnn  Lewis   on  A  Different  World  (Nelson,  2008,  p.  200).    

  In  the  1990s,  black  women’s  experiences  are  still  peripheral  in  the  main  storyline  of  television   programs  (Smith-­‐Shomade,  2002,  p.  39).  Black  female  characters  continued  to  be  represented  “in  sup-­‐ porting,  mammified,  and  one-­‐dimensional  capacities”  (p.  68).  These  shows  portrayed  black  female  char-­‐ acters  playing  narratively  white  women  who  just  happened  to  be  black  (p.  68).  And  the  Fox  Network  was   “consistently  under  fire  for  repackaging  old  minstrel  stereotypes”  (Nelson,  2008,  p.  177).  

  A  slightly  different  approach  to  understanding  racism  on  television  programs  is  to  look  at  how   societal  issues  are  or  are  not  addressed  in  the  show’s  storyline.  Herman  Gray  (2000)  argues  that  there   are  three  discourses  that  television  programs  present  with  regard  to  how  societal  problems  are  ad-­‐ dressed  and  negotiated  by  characters  in  the  show’s  narrative:  assimilationist,  pluralist,  and  multicultural   (p.  294).  According  to  Gray,  these  discursive  practices  “construct,  frame,  and  narrate”  issues  of  race  in   the  context  of  current  social  and  political  discourses  about  race  and  racism  (p.  294).    

  Assimilationist  constructions  of  black  issues  and  black  life  on  television  shows  treat  “social  and   political  issues  as  individual  problems”  and  they  depict  the  causes  of  and  solutions  to  racism  to  be  indi-­‐ vidual  attitudes  (Gray,  2000,  pp.  294-­‐295).  According  to  Gray,  “when  they  exist,  race,  class,  and  gender   inequalities  seem  quite  extraordinary  and  they  always  seem  to  operate  at  the  level  of  individual  experi-­‐ ence”  (p.  295).  Assimilationist  television  programs  ignore  historical  bases  for  racism  and  the  racial  dis-­‐ courses  that  constitution  the  society  in  which  the  television  programs  circulate,  and  they  do  not  portray   African  Americans  as  having  distinctive  or  unique  perspectives  or  experiences  on  societal  issues  (p.  295).   On  assimilationist  television  programs,  race  is  invisible  and  people  (and  society)  are  colorblind  (p.  295).  

In  other  words,  assimilationist  television  is  characterized  by  a  denial  of  race  and  racism  on  its  shows  and   in  society.  

  Pluralist  discourses  on  TV  portray  African  Americans  as  separate  from  but  equal  to  whites  (Gray,   2000,  p.  296).  According  to  Gray  (2000),  on  pluralist  television  programs,  “African  Americans  face  the   same  experiences,  situations,  and  conflicts  as  whites  except  for  the  fact  they  are  separate  but  equal”  (p.   296).  On  these  kinds  of  television  programs,  “blacks  and  whites  are  just  alike  save  for  minor  differences   of  habit  and  perspective  developed  from  African  American  experiences  in  a  homogenous  and  monolithic   black  world”  (Gray,  2000,  p.  296).  These  shows  explicitly  recognize  race  “as  the  basis  of  cultural  differ-­‐ ence  (expressed  as  separation)  as  a  feature  of  U.S.  society,”  but  “the  social  and  historical  contexts  in   which  these  acknowledged  difference  are  expressed,  sustained,  and  meaningful  are  absent”  (p.  296).   Blacks  are  separate  from  whites  on  pluralist  television  shows  based  on  flattened,  superficial  cultural  dif-­‐ ferences,  but  they  are  equal  to  whites  in  that  they  are  included  in  the  normative  middle  class  order,   within  which  they  are  supposedly  treated  as  equal  individuals  while  “the  impact  (and  responses  to  it)  of   structured  social  inequality  and  the  social  hierarchies  that  are  structured  into  it”  are  ignored  (p.  298).       Where  pluralist  discourses  on  television  are  shallow  efforts  to  portray  cultural  difference  while   representing  social  equality  oblivious  to  the  real  racism  existing  in  U.S.  society,  multiculturalist  television   programs  “explicitly  engaged  the  cultural  politics  of  diversity  and  multiculturalism  within  African  Ameri-­‐ can  life  (Gray,  2000,  p.  299).  African  American  life  was  represented  on  these  shows  as  complex  and  con-­‐ tradictory  rather  than  monolithic  (p.  299).  Multiculturalist  television  programs  portrayed  “black  experi-­‐ ences  from  multiple  subject  positions”  (p.  299).  These  kinds  of  programs  acknowledged  and  critiqued   social  inequality  and  treated  social  problems,  including  the  problems  inherent  in  inclusion  of  blacks  into   normatively  white  U.S.  social  order,  “from  multiple  and  complex  perspectives  within  blackness”  (p.  300).   Middle  class  perspectives  were  still  the  norm  on  multiculturalist  television  programs,  but  black  middle   class  viewpoints  were  foregrounded  and  hegemonic  class  whiteness  was  less  of  a  factor  (p.  299).