In Black America; Images of Blackness with Dr. Michael Parenti

I am this Toom You Bro!! From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. I would like to welcome you to this one of the plethora of events at the new improved human sweat civil rights symposium.

And this symposium was created by a very democratic committee in which people defended their ideas and by and large got their ideas implemented. And the reason for which the symposium is a week instead of two days is that we had so many people with so many ideas. And since we were talking about representations, we wanted to get everybody in who had something of significance to say about the issue of representing Blackness, past, present, and future. And as a result, one of the people on the committee said, somebody we have to have is Michael Perenti. And others of us said, well, all right, justify that because everybody had to justify why we had to have everybody we had to have. And some people aren't here. And some people are here. We had all what we wanted to do would have taken a good month. But we didn't have a month. We figured that we could stretch two days into a week, but it would be really difficult to stretch two days into an entire month. Dr. Sheila S. Walker, director, UT Austin Center for African and African American Studies. This past spring, the University of Texas at Austin held its eighth annual human sweat

symposium on civil rights. The symposium originally focused on civil rights in this country, but now addresses the broad issues of the African American struggle for freedom and equality around the world. This year's symposium was entitled Images of Blackness, Past, Present, and Future. The symposium explored the negative images of African Americans from the past as well as though that persisted into the present and threatened the future. Also, the week long series of speakers, films, and panels focused on what can be considered one of the most basic civil and human rights. The right of a people to construct and promote their own self-images. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, the eighth annual human sweat symposium on civil rights. Black images and white media with Dr. Michael Parenti in Black America. The major studios in Hollywood are beholden to the top New York banks.

As early as 1930, Hollywood was under the financial control of the Morgan's and the Rockefellers. The major networks are not close to corporate America, they're not friendly to corporate America. They are, I mean CBS is a multinational corporation owned outright by capital cities. NBC is owned by General Electric, and GE is probably one of the most conservative corporations in the world. I mean, actively politically conservative, they brought Ronald Reagan out from his faltering career, made him host of General Electric Theater, and then boosted him for Governor of California and launched him on his way to the White House. Fox Network is owned by a right-wing Australian named Rupert Murder, who when asked if he was a conservative said no, he's a radical conservative, meaning really extreme. The boards of directors of the networks and the majors in Hollywood are inhabited by corporate

representatives from ITT, General Motors, PepsiCo, Ford, JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, etc. So they resemble all other corporations in their interlocking corporate interlocking directorates. In 1949, a little-known poster work of name, him and him sweat, applied for a mission to the law school at the University of Texas at Austin, but was denied on the basis of race. A team of NAACP lawyers, led by the late Thurgood Marshall, represented Mr. Sweat in a lawsuit that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. As a result of the decision in favor of Mr. Sweat, he was admitted to the University of Texas Law School in 1950. Since the 1910s, East Generation of African-Americans has been challenged to compete for control of the black image in our media. In this struggle, African-Americans face a powerful industry with a demonstrated ability to rewrite this country's history. At this year's symposium, Images of Blackness, Past, Present, and Future, the issue of how our group will be represented and who will control the representation has become more

important to African-Americans as it has become clear that the ability to control perception of identity is real power. Dr. Michael Parenthe was one of this year's speakers. Dr. Parenthe holds a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of university around the world and in this country and is the author of nine books. Dr. Parenthe spoke on the portrayal of blacks in mainstream entertainment, news, and other media. These aren't people who are exactly at the cutting edge of the problems of the black masses. I mean, as far as having any sense or sensitivity to that. Another power in the major media are the advertisers in television. The single biggest advertiser is Procter and Gamble. Procter and Gamble has a fascinating code which I recommend all of you to read it someday. What they will allow or not allow in the shows that they sponsor and have a lot of things.

No, nothing disrespectful toward the military. The business community can never be portrayed as heartless or cold or lacking in human feelings. No American values or institutions can be attacked unless they're completely rebutted in the same program. No American values or institutions can be attacked. Well, how do you deal with racism with this kind of stricture? Look at admirers, they've admitted we pre-sensor all our shows and we rule out anything excessively controversial. Well, how do you deal with the issues of racism if you rule out at things that are controversial? Turning to black images in the white media, as you can see today with the history about a crime control bill, one of the most frequent black images in the media relates to crime. Even Americans, Latinos and other minorities are more likely to be publicized as criminals than the corporate leaders whose crimes are frequently more serious and of wider scope

and repercussion than the street criminals. I mean that, by the way. In terms of actual money that costs the public, corporate crime costs more than street crime. In terms of actual number of lives taken, corporate crime with the toxic waste dumps, the deformed births, the death disease, the violations of occupational safety, the unsafe products, and a host of other kinds of things that they've done which lead to incredible numbers of deaths are worse criminals than the street criminal. The trouble is most Americans don't know that. That doesn't get represented in the media, they don't see that on TV, you don't see the crime in the sweets, you see repeated representations of crime in the streets. Drug crimes, whether it's marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, or even crack, I was astonished to find, drug use is significantly higher among young white males than among young African-American

males in the real society. According to a 1992 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, however, a survey of the media itself, let me get back a bit, the U.S.A. today, the survey shows 15% of drug users are African-Americans, African-Americans are estimates vary from 12 to 14% of the population depending on how much you want to trust the census count. But the Black Entertainment Network reports a content analysis, they did that 50% of network news stories on drugs focus on African-Americans. So the black drug problem is in part a white media black drug problem. The news media do not have much to say about the struggles of African-Americans, Latinos, and other ethnic groups for jobs, decent housing, safe neighborhoods.

So those struggles usually are not portrayed. Likewise the struggles of people of color to gain recognition in art, literature, entertainment, music, education, sports, religion, labor, et cetera have earned relatively scant notice in the news media. The African-American candidate who attracts millions of votes in presidential primaries while taking a progressive stance on issues is likely to win very unsympathetic treatment as the Jesse Jackson in 1984 and again in 1988. Jackson was designated the black candidate as if his only appeal was to black voters, even though he did very well in predominantly white states like Vermont and Oregon. Although Jackson's financial status is far more modest than most of the other presidential candidates, almost all of whom are millionaires. In fact, all of them were millionaires in 1992 and in 1988.

He also made less than one tenth or one-twentieth of what the average TV anchor person makes. Nevertheless, there wasn't issue, the press raised questions about his large salary. Despite his constant attention to issues, he was said to be on a self-serving ego trip. One thing about Jesse Jackson, I found he was about the only candidate who wasn't on ego trip that is at what the average political candidate does is use the issues to boost himself and what Jesse kept doing was using himself to push the issues. If you go back and read Aristotle's rhetoric, you'll talk about the really effective speaker is the one who does not make the issue an instrument for him but makes himself an instrument of the issue. That's what Jesse did so brilliantly, which is why we could believe him and listen to him and be inspired by him, yet they would talk about his ego trip. Also because he argued that U.S. interventions abroad did not serve the interests of the people of the third world, nor the interests of the American people, he was labeled a third

world radical that was a term used again and again for him. That's an example of how a black candidate is treated in the news media. Another candidate, the erstwhile mayor of Gary Indiana, Richard Harris, Hatcher, sorry. Richard Hatcher was probably, not probably, he was the most honest, the most progressive mayor that Gary Indiana ever had and he administered the city for 20 years. Hatcher commented on the hostile and distorted coverage accorded him by the press in his city. By the way, it wasn't only because he was an African-American, it was also because he was that other really dangerous component. There's certain African-Americans they'll bring along. Hatcher, quote, I was the first black mayor of this city and they've never forgiven me for that. After he was reelected for a fifth term with 90% of the vote, I mean, what mayor gets elected with 90% of the vote.

The Gary post-tribune owned by a rich conservative still saw a fit to remark that, quote, there is no consensus among the voters in support of Hatcher. When a university of Chicago study rated Gary Indiana the first among 62 cities in regard to fiscal policy and administration, the local media and Gary never even reported the fact. As media commentators, African-Americans remain drastically underrepresented. You'll see a lot of African-Americans as local news announcers, local shows, almost every evening news, but I'm talking about commentators, those who actually make give opinions and do editorials and the like. Mayor Hatcher, again, quote, about the only time you really see blacks giving their opinions or giving any serious space is when it relates to minorities or civil rights. That seems to be the only time the media feel we are competent enough to express opinions.

By the way, even in that area, blacks who express ideas on race will run, that run counted to the predominant ideological mode are likely to be subject to attack. Reputable African-American scholars and educators have tried to move away from a Eurocentric approach, for instance, in history and social sciences, and to treat often neglected a suppressed African and African-American histories and themes, and these efforts have been vehemently denounced in the white media as, quote, bad history and, quote, ethnic cheerleading. Let me turn to entertainment in an average TV series of the 60 or 70 major performers in every new season, relatively fewer African-Americans. It took the television industry over 40 years before it could get around to featuring African-American talk show hosts, such as Oprah Winfrey, Arsenio Hall, and the like. On the production side, not more than 3 percent of the people working behind the cameras

are African-American. As of 1990, there were no major black executives or agents in the movie or television industries. In 1988, Hollywood's two top-ranking African-American executives lost their jobs. The same under-representation prevails in the news sector. One survey by the American Society of Newspaper editors found that people of color, composed less than 6 percent of the journalists employed, and a good number of whom would work for African-American publications. When you look at movies, I'd like to give you a little historical overview of movies, because I kind of was raised on these movies. And you think that white males of my age, not of my class, though, but of my age were fed these kind of images, and maybe haven't taken the time to critically re-examine them. The first years of the movie industry, where we'll call the silent film era, were openly

racist. The movies had titles like, in 1904, silent film called, The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon. That was the title of the movie right up there on the marquee. In 2011, no, 1914, Coontown suffragettes, 1915, The Nigger. No, there wasn't any ambiguity here. So whether he was called Sambo Orastus, whether it played by blacks or black-faced whites, the cinematic African-American male was usually a simple-minded, buffoon, lazy, shiftless, heart-rhythmic, the black female was what was called in those days, a handkerchief head, Andrew Mima in the kitchen, cook, a good-natured, hardy. There was one black actor named Lincoln Perry, who so encapsulated the shuffling, childish slouch that the character he played actually became his Hollywood name, Step in Fetchit.

And when he played in movies, he was not on the credits. He was not listed as Lincoln Perry, he was listed as Step in Fetchit. And he was a stock character. I remember when I was a kid, if I lounged around as I liked to do, as I used to like to do and all that, and was slow on the step, remember my mother saying, hey, Step in Fetchit, come on, when you move, come on, let's go, Step in Fetchit. And I wondered who this Step in Fetchit was. It turns out Lincoln Perry, by the way, himself, was a very intelligent, cultivated man. He played this character. That was the only kind of job a black actor could get in the 1920s. In the 1930s, you had a very interesting development. African-Americans started producing their own movie industry. There was a whole African-American movie industry with scripts and films made up totally of African-American actors in a total African-American world. And these played in theaters in black communities and such. But they really failed to draw the great majority of African-American moviegoers away from

the mainstream Hollywood stuff with its slicker glitter and its higher price produced shows. Most of them just wouldn't take a fantasy of black power that many found implausible given the society they were living in in those days. Also these films were small, underfinanced, poorly distributed, and so they didn't survive. In the 1940s, a lot of campaigns, by the way, all through these years, there were Negro organizations, as they were called, that fought against this racism and the stereotype. By the 1940s, organizations like the NAACP, the African-American press, and certain show business groups, really made concerted efforts against the racist stereotypes that were in the movies. By the mid-40s, they got the federal government on their side because we were then in what was called World War II, if you, I remember it as a kid, I remember you used to see those big posters up, black and white together, where all Americans fighting Hitler, you know,

kill the dirty japs, you know, I didn't have this right, I had the Oriental racist thing, Protestant Catholic Jew, where all Americans, this whole propaganda started coming, the emphasis was on unity of the American people to fight this war and win World War II. But the only positive spin off from World War II, that and the destruction of Nazism, but the temporary destruction of Nazism. So there was a propagation of a lot of racial and religious equality, these ideas, and the sambal roles were eliminated, step and fetched, went out of style. The trouble was there weren't any new roles to take their place, and any black Americans had, were out of jobs. When they did appear in movies, it was stock characters, porters, singers, dancers and domestics.

And as I remember an interview of an African-American performer, I forget his name, but it was in one of the moral and rigs, great documentaries where he said, it's okay to have us portrayed as singers and dancers, we're great singers and dancers, but the trouble was not to only have only those roles and be confined to those roles. In the late fifties, it was a great African-American performer, I know a lot of young people didn't ever saw him, but I hope you remember and know his name, Nat King Cole. And he was the first to get a television show, as the host of a major television show on NBC. And it didn't last because they couldn't get advertisers for it. The corporate advertisers would not risk sponsoring a show hosted by a black person. The 1950s also gave us, this is, 1950s when television came in as a mass consumption commodity, late 1940s, early 50s, that's when TV took over the world.

To those of you who thought TV has been here since George Washington's days, it's not true. In the fifties, there was life before TV. We used to do a lot of things like talk to each other and go out once in a while. The fifties also brought a television series called Amos and Andy, which had been on the radio already for 20 years, originally created by two white men, and now with an all-black cast, and again, with the same stereotypes, every character was, as the black doctors appeared as quacks, the black lawyers as slippery shysters and the like. The African American women were usually shown as bossy shrews who had to hector their irresponsible evasive men. And so it went all through the fifties, Buehler, the Jack Benny's show, the Charlie Chan movies, which you can still see on TV, actually the Charlie Chan movies started in the forties.

The faithful sidekick in Casablanca, remember Sam played against Sam? Everybody called Humphrey Bogart Rick, but Sam called him Mr. Richard, who had no life, no needs, no longing of his own, but just was a faithful adjunct to his boss. The Ganga did in the Tonto character, which is so common. Black people had no identity except as adjuncts to the white principal's white leads. The African American actress and writer, Ellen Holly, noted, quote, I grew up bombarded with movies that depicted black women almost exclusively as maids or sluts of limited intelligence. Now if you want to play devil's advocate, you could argue, well, you know, being a domestic was the major occupational opportunity for black women. So many maids were black, so maybe the movies were really just offering a faithful representation of an unfortunate reality.

But Holly's complaint is really something else. She's saying that African American women are not portrayed as human beings. Maybe they maids or prostitutes their real stories are never told as she goes on to say, quote, the irony, of course, is that Hollywood has yet to make a movie that actually deals with a black maid. I have come to recognize the female black domestic as perhaps the great heroine of the black race because that lady was willing to get down on her knees and scrub another woman's floor, clean another woman's house, and bring up another woman's children, a whole race survive. But the trauma and the paradox of having to leave your own children in the morning and go out and care for someone else's in order to bring back bread for their table in the evening has yet to be examined on film. By the 1950s and the 1960s, African Americans were militantly mobilizing against impressive conditions in the south and in the north.

It was the age of the freedom writers demonstrating in the streets, organized sit-ins, boycotts. I remember getting training myself. Was it the Congress on actual equality? Yes. We used to go to workshops. We used to sit non-violent workshops and someone hit you on the side of the head with rolled up newspapers and you weren't supposed to lose your temper. It was quite a training for me. I'm an Italian American kid from East Harlem and I'd sit there and they'd know. And we'd have to sit there and we'd do all this stuff and so we can go on sit-ins. And I remember when we walked on the picket lines in New York, this was against the House of Detention and trying to fight racism, most women in the House of Attention were black. We got a bunch of kids, little kids with pea shooters who, and they didn't train me in the non-violent lab about pea shooters. So it was really quite a, it was the most accruciating demonstration I've ever been on. I've been beaten up by police, with club and all that. And these little kids kept coming in and hitting us with these peas and I just could feel

my rockets almost going off and walking, walking and just wanting to ring their little necks. But I didn't. But this was a great awakening for a lot of people, African-American, white Latino, also to people. And the catalyst being the black struggle. It was a period of heroic struggle. I wasn't one of the heroes. I'm talking about the people who went down to this in the south then, the freedom riot is not. It was a period of sacrifice which, looking back now, we still could read about it with wonderment or hear about it. I mean, I know people who were on the freedom riot, students of mine went, they met, they faced violence and murder by racist, they faced the complicity of the FBI agents of the police, with a courage that was stupendous. I mean, there was a thousand dramas that were created in those days. Millions of people were affected.

And there were, and there were scores and scores of tragedies, of murders and beatings and whatever else. And at that time, Hollywood and television managed to overlook the entire thing. I mean, here's the whole thing is going on in the country. And there was not one hint of it in Hollywood or television. A proud and dramatic page of history was considered not worth dramatic, not having any dramatic merit to it. What Hollywood did get around to in those days was to finally present black lead actors. It was generally an actor who was a saint, clean cut, infinitely patient, embodied one particular actor who played that role with Sidney Poitier. He was it. I mean, Sidney Poitier was saint Sidney and in movie after movie, he's up there blessed with limitless supplies of patience, integrity, self-control, never stooping to the level of his adversaries, which is to his credit.

It's still, you know, every so often you wonder, he's like, Sidney, bust them one. A clean cut, middle-class African-American saint who would not threaten white audiences with any expression of black anger. That was the whole role. He wasn't supposed to have any anger of his own that would be a threat to the white audience. Eventually by the 1970s, we got to the black superheroes who really, unfortunately, were replicas of the white macho idiocy, sweet, sweet, back, shafts, shafts, big score, super fly. These were the titles of movies. You can get an idea of black males now could be aggressive, violent, ruthless, powerful, and able to outsmart, outtalk, outfight, outfornicate their white adversaries. Dr. Michael Parente speaking at the eighth annual human sweat symposium on Civil Rights. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked of future in black American programs, write us.

Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John El Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us this week and join us again next time. For set copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes, longhorn radio network, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712, that's in black America cassettes, longhorn radio network, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John El Hansen, Jr. join me this week on in black America.

And the capitalism they'll sell you the computer to write your book and they'll sell you the cameras and the film and all that, but the question then is how do you get it distributed? Where do you get the money in the back end to distribute it? The eighth annual human-sweat symposium on Civil Rights, black images and white media with Dr. Michael Perente this week on in black America.