I came across a great article on the Huffington Post website by Rhonesha Byng called “The Images Of Black Women In Media Still 'Only Scratch The Surface,' Essence Study Finds” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/the-images-of-black-women-in-media_n_4102322.html). The article focuses on how there has been improvement of African American images in the media, but there is still a lot (a lot) of room to expand and grow. The article focuses on a study that “surveyed 1,200 women about the images of black women in media and found that respondents felt the images were "overwhelmingly negative," falling typically into categories including: “Gold Diggers, Modern Jezebels, Baby Mamas, Uneducated Sisters, Ratchet Women, Angry Black Women, Mean Black Girls, Unhealthy Black Women, and Black Barbies” (Byng, 2013). The article describes that African American women ages 18-29 reported seeing more negative images, “89 percent of respondents saying they regularly see baby mamas in media and 87 percent reported seeing gold digger images, while just 41 percent reported seeing images of "real beauties" (Byng, 2013). Like the article mentions, although there have been groundbreaking characters that have broken out into the scene in the past couple years, such as Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope, on the hit TV show Scandal there are still a majority of people who see African American women in the media in a negative light. Even Washington’s role is contradicting, her character Olivia Pope is in a male dominated relationship, with the president, who is white. She has such a powerful, feminist character, yet Pope will drop anything for the President if he asks her too. You can see that white authority that has been there for all of history in this show that is supposed to be about African American female empowerment. The idea that 89% of African American women see “baby mamas” in the media is staggering. This adds to the social issue of the over sexualization of African American women. It once again shows that there are more young mothers who are African American because they are stereotyped as “sexually available”. The article goes on to say that these articles have a major affect on women heavily. These images allow women to think that maybe these stereotypes of African American women are true when clearly they are not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/the-images-of-black-women-in-media_n_4102322.html