Token Fairy.
Years ago, long before I met Toyin and long before Annika was a sparkle in my brain, I have this vague memory of being introduced to the idea that it’s important for people to be properly represented in the media.
This notion came by way of watching an interview with a Hispanic comedian who talked about his goal of finding ways to have more Latin faces on mainstream television, not just in their own shows, but in pop culture.
Initially, knowing me, I probably rolled my eyes. But it didn’t take long for the message to sink in when I began studying communications and found out just why representation is important in the media.
I could go into a long, boring explanation, but the gist is, media is part of our culture. Culture provides a reflection. And when you are not reflected in the media, there is a sense of loss. We are constantly looking for our reflections somewhere. In our parents, in our friends, in our daily lives. And that includes media. (It also probably explains a lot about why Facebook is so popular.)
There are people who will say that it doesn’t matter what’s on television, internet and magazines. That it only matters what’s inside. And I agree that it is important to have a solid sense of self. But what we see in our daily lives reflects back to us. Especially children, who are still building a solid sense of self. And since we cannot protect them from everything in the world, what they see in the media DOES matter. And it’s important that kids see positive things to reflect on.
That’s why this study on Gender, Race, and Media Representation bothers me so much.
While I’ve known that all this stuff is important, and that there are negatives reflected in the media, until the Trayvon Martin case and subsequent articles on the philosophy of our culture, I hadn’t done much research on what the media reflects back on black women.
According to this study, “Media, in short, are central to what ultimately comes to represent our social realities.” And, “… how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture.”
The study goes to say that the majority of the representation of black women is either hyper-sexualized -think music videos, bitches and hos- or the traditional “mammy.” This study, btw was done on media from the mid-to-late 90s up through the mid 2000s.
The biracial female is raised up in status, making her the most desirable with lighter skin and typically straight hair. But she is also a “tragic mulatto.”
The study goes on to say that men of color are often just as guilty of perpetuating these stereotypes, as they are typically working for industries run by white men.
The study moves on and discusses other races, Asian women are exotic, yet subservient and ready for sex. Hispanic women are also exotic, but often portrayed with as little culture as possible, acting “white” or they are in very traditional roles, like maids (think Jennifer Lopez).
And Native American women are recast into a Western context, ignoring their culture completely.
Overall, none of this is all that new to me. But it burns a fire anew inside me to do my best to ensure that Annika gets as many positive characters inside her media intake as possible. It’s going to be hard though. She has recently taken a huge interest in fairies. And guess what, yeah, there’s only ONE black one.
Categories: 
Tags: 
Martha, have you read about this new study? http://www.sciencecodex.com/study_finds_tv_can_decrease_selfesteem_in_children_except_white_boys-92354
Basically, it backs up the idea that what kids see matters – including how people of their gender/race are (or aren’t) portrayed. It’s what we suspected, but the confirmation just makes me all the more frustrated! I can’t wait to take Z. to see “Brave” but it is one more movie with NO black characters in key roles (or, from what I can see in the previews, in any roles at all!)
Knowledge of this by turns makes me extremely sad and extremely angry. There have been studies that show Young Adult fiction — the hottest market in book publishing right now — features young white women in over 90% of its covers and visual marketing material.
Try bringing up the lack of people of color — in particular women — on a science fiction and fantasy forum and watch the waves of hatred, venom, condescension and dismissal erupt. My favorite responses are: 1) It would take away my enjoyment as a white person to see more people of color because I can’t relate to them and 2) Go make your own! (Right, because Separate But Equal always works, guys.).
However, on the flip side, I would caution against labeling the few black characters that do occasionally show up in Disney or in YA or any sort of fictional narrative as “tokens” — that’s part of the reason there are so few in the first place. Most — though by no means all — of the white creators, distributors and marketers seem to be stuck in this mindset that unless the black character “acts black”, which they can’t write authentically being white and all, there’s no point in them being there.
And/or they feel like if they do put a black character in the work, they’ll get it from both sides: from the racists who say things like response #1 in my paragraph above and from “the PC police” who will attack them for not including a positive portrayal of black people. “We can’t please everybody, so why go through the hassle of including black people in our stuff? If black people vote with their wallets, it won’t affect us. If white people vote with their wallets, we’ll take a bath. So, no blacks it is then.”
I personally have no problem with a character who looks and sounds like the others except for the fact that she has brown skin. One of the loveliest sensations I have experienced in this life is being treated like “just another person” when I’ve gone overseas a few times. In the USA, I’m pretty much always reminded that I am different, even if the attention bestowed on me is positive.
Back to the main subject: A black friend of mine and I observed several years ago that when it comes to secondary characters in most narrative visual works (TV and movies), unless race is an important plot element, why on earth *wouldn’t* you cast black/asian/dark skinned hispanics in a more charitable proportion of those roles? How does it hurt things to do that? I’ve never seen a good response from Hollywood.
In fact, David Simon, one of the producers of The Wire, said that one thing he was amazed to discover while working on that series was that there are a very large number of very talented black actors in Hollywood. They just don’t get work because casting directors and producers don’t want them, or feel like blacks should only be cast in the roles explicitly written for blacks.
So, it bothers me that Freya will not see very many people who look like her, her paternal grandmother, aunts, and female cousins in the types of media we consume. And it saddens me that the response is almost always — with a few notable exceptions — contempt and disgust from non-black consumers and producers of said media. I wish I knew what could be done.
Great post!
I especially liked this part: “There are people who will say that it doesn’t matter what’s on television, internet and magazines. That it only matters what’s inside. And I agree that it is important to have a solid sense of self. But what we see in our daily lives reflects back to us. Especially children, who are still building a solid sense of self.”
Exactly! There is no sense of “self” without the culture surrounding us. We are as much product of our culture is our culture is a product of us. We cannot affix any labels to ourselves (woman, man, black, Hispanic, teacher, brother, mother, friend, etc.) unless we know what those labels mean in the context of our collective culture. And the place where we have the most exposure to that culture is through media. Think about all of the magazine ads, commercials, billboards, radio spots, songs, that most of us are exposed to on a DAILY basis. That’s usually way more exposure than we get from “real” interactions with actual people. To say that those things don’t matter is short-sighted at best.
I can see how it matters, because I use to look for that reflection back at me in the media when I was a kid, and never found it. It made me want to change my features to “fit in.” As I matured I realized the beauty in what God gave to me, but it took some time to get to that self-acceptance. Great post, well written!
Or they use a white person to play a person of color. So frustrating.
That is the WORST!