African American Studies Commons^™

Inside The American Stratification System: Imageries From The Black Writers, Clinton M. Jean

Trotter Review

The following paper was given at a seminar, "Teaching African-American Literature," at the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies of Harvard University in April 1991. The paper addresses several questions. If social science, as a matter of scientific principle, must choose to avoid ethical conclusions, do black novelists, poets, and essayists help fill the ethical void? But then, are they objective enough?

Commentary: Trotter Review, Vol. 1, Issue 2, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

This issue of the Trotter Institute Review is devoted to the portrayal of blacks in the media. The mass media can be a positive or negative force in the struggle for racial progress. Unfortunately, the black community faces media that provide many negative influences. Consequently, there is a continuing need to address this issue.

The mass media is a major instrument of socialization in the American society. As such, it helps to determine how an individual sees the world. The prevailing definitions of social reality and social problems, as well as the characterization of groups of individuals, are learned through …

Reel Blacks: Everything Is Not Satisfactual, Patricia A. Turner

Trotter Review

An unaccompanied black adult female at a matinee performance of Song of the South is about as out of place as Big Bird at a cockfight. However, having encouraged the students in my course on black media images to see the film during its fortieth anniversary run, I felt obligated to reexamine it myself. So there I sat, surrounded by exuberant white pre-schoolers and their parents, watching as animation and live action seamlessly interchanged on the screen in Walt Disney’s adaptation for Joel Chandler Harris’ classic collection of Afro-American folktales.