Photo by murat esibatir
Black representation in the media has substantially increased in film and television, but that doesn’t mean the harmful stereotype stopped.
More often, black people are depicted as thugs and maidservants. They are still assigned these kinds of roles even if black actors have already won numerous Academy awards in acting, screenwriting, music writing and other creative categories in the industry. The struggle for equality even in getting decent roles continues. You can learn more about how being black in America is a huge blunder through the book ‘American’t: The Corporate Plantation’ by King Bell.
Here are a few examples of the harmful stereotypes that the media perpetrates about black people:
‘The Black Best Friend’
They appear a lot as a side character in film and television which shows that they are the ones guiding the White main character to get through rough patches in the storyline. The ‘Black Best Friend’ or ‘BBF’ trope is usually played by a woman and her role is to provide moral support to the main heroine, paired with a sassy attitude while knocking some sense into the white friend. Black Best Friends do not have much to show since they do not have a lot going on in their lives. Here are some examples of the Black Best Friend trope found in films and TV series:
- ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ starring Anne Hathaway with actress Tracie Thoms as her ‘BBF’
- ‘The Ghost Whisperer’ starring Jennifer Love Hewitt with Aisha Tyler playing as her friend
- ‘Ally McBeal’ starring Calista Flockhart with Nicole Carson still playing as her ‘BBF’
‘The tradition of overusing the Black Best Friend trope has been going on around Hollywood for ages’, says TV executive Rose Catherine Pinkney. There is this dangerous notion about people of color taking care of and nurturing the white lead characters in the media. Unfortunately, change will not be handed over that easily, since American studios are not willing to bend over and reverse that role entirely.
‘The Thug’
Hollywood will never run out of series and films portraying black men as drug dealers, gangsters, pimps, and other kinds of criminals which negatively encouraged racial profiling in real life. Countless black men have been a victim of police brutality and systemic racism due to the influence of media and its harmful stereotyping of black men as being criminals or a menace to society. Examples of films that show this trope is ‘The Wire’ and ‘Training Day’’. There is a disproportionate amount of black men being associated with illicit labels that society has conditioned privileged people to believe.
These films and television series do not show enough support and empathy as to why many black people end up in the criminal justice system. Hollywood is also fueling the stereotype that black men are dangerous and capable of hurting people. Society often neglects the fact that racial and economic inequality are the main reasons as to why black men have a hard time evading a prison sentence. They have the highest number of stop-and-frisk encounters with the police, often paired with racial profiling. An average black man walking in a suburban neighborhood is unfortunately perceived as a threat and is prone to be stopped by a white police officer. Black people are constantly targeted by the authorities, hence their collective disdain towards the men in uniform.
Hopefully, productions start questioning their moral compass and their tendency to think that black men are more likely to turn into felons than any other person in America, or if society itself is the reason that this turnaround was created in the first place.
‘The Angry Black Woman’
Perhaps this is one of the most overused tropes in Hollywood. The Black woman is often seen on film and television as ‘sassy neck rollers’ with a huge attitude problem. Reality television and sitcoms rising into popularity are adding fuel to the fire. For example, the show ‘Basketball Wives’ strives to maintain relevance by adding more drama; and that is to feature the loudest, aggressive and most obnoxious black women to show that there’s screaming and fighting.
Black women have been facing a dilemma in their daily lives, especially in the dating scene because of this harmful stereotype. ‘The Angry Black Woman’ became a collective label on them as human beings, especially Black mothers and Black career women. The harsh consequences often affect their place in society like workplace discrimination. Sadly, there are shows who won’t budge even when several black women have called for fairness in how they are depicted in TV and films. And the road is long for those who are striving to change the narrative that Black women can be who they want to be without Hollywood dictating otherwise.
‘The Domestic’
Due to the centuries-long history of African American slavery in the United States, it’s not that surprising how the earliest depiction of black people in American film and television are either house help, gardeners or a nanny (also called ‘mammy’). Because they are perceived as plain domestic workers, shows have capitalized on that trope, with ‘Beulah’ and ‘’Gone With The Wind’ as examples. A 2011 film entitled ‘The Help’ was subjected to harsh criticism for how it portrayed black people as support characters to elevate the white main lead’s life, while they remain the way they are. Black domestics seen in films and TV, similar to the Black Best Friend role, mainly focus on nurturing and guiding the white lead characters through most of the stages in their lives.
