by Elle McKenzie
Since the advent of television, the key issue associated with the medium has been representation. In a #RepresentationMatters study, as reported this past September by USA Today, 86% of Black Americans still yearn to see our culture told on both the silver and small screens. Let us rewind to the 1950s — the “Golden Age of Television” as they call it — when Black people were portrayed with large, red lips, wide noses, overly-exaggerated coarse hair, and more often than not, confined to subservient positions. This deliberate degradation at the hands of white folks forced our Black ancestors to struggle with telling our own stories, beliefs, opinions and identities. But make no mistake, though a ploy to cement the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow era, television also proved to be a strategic tactic for Black people to reclaim the power that we innately possess. The timely birth of Hip-Hop, conceived stylistically through the poetic-sultry sounds of bebop jazz and rhythm & blues, presented the visual awakening for artists to convey our stories in a positive (and televised) light.
The political radicals saw overwhelming whiteness in institutions of power and fought for multiculturalism and diversity. I mean, damn, the 2016-17 tv season was oversaturated with white showrunners — and a great majority of these gatekeepers were white, cis men. I think we can speculate what the percentage was at the onslaught televisions began to enter the American home. Similarly, the cultural radicals saw an ocean of negative images and tried to reverse the tide with their own visions. When Dr. Martin Luther King led thousands of protestors to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, they knew they would be met with force. And television would capture it all, instilling the notion of an antiquated, injustice time that can no longer be restrained. It’s not far off to imagine the generation of Chuck D and Public Enemy emphatically portraying their rightful, passed-down frustration in the visuals of “Fight The Power.” For the Hip-Hop generation, popular culture became the new frontline of our struggle.
In the 1970s, we began to see The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Soul Train grace Zenith’s televisions (imagine, first wireless remote controls!). Outside of “dy-no-mite” humor and Soul Train lines, we, as a Black culture, were also introduced to the essential, spiritually elevating teachings of Tony Brown’s Black Journal and Petey Greene’s trailblazing, ingenuity for the future of Hip-Hop in Petey’s Greene Washington. Positive illumination was jolting! And from these programs, each episode absorbed, ignited Black people’s will to shed the layers of false, oppressive societal norms ingrained in our psyche. The Black experience was undergoing a new renaissance, and this time, was televised for the world to consume.
While the victories of the civil rights and Black Power movements had expanded the consciousness of Black people, we had not yet entered the proverbial promised land. Historical representations of Black people in the media, specifically in prime-time television, as poignantly expressed by author and social activist bell hooks, still imposed “stereotypical depictions that reinforce negative perceptions of Black men and women and too often serve as justification for racist behaviors, attitudes, and social practices.” It is important to gauge accurately the level and nature of prejudice and stereotyping of Black people in contemporary society if one is to intervene effectively in these areas. The overall objective, curated by Black artists, was to offer and influence actual self-perceptions among Black people. Black people for self-preservation, Black people for self-expression, Black people for self-affirmation are all, ultimately, the leading battle cries that hone the vanguard for the generating Hip-Hop movement we witness and indulge today.
During the Ronald Regan era, when crack cocaine was irreverently pushed into our communities, MTV burst onto the scene by championing rock and new wave — all by excluding Black artists. Only after Columbia Records reportedly threatened to boycott the young network, in 1983, did MTV begin airing Michael Jackson music videos. Winning and achieving the objective to influence our self-perceptions meant desegregating radio and television. The seismic 1986 arrival of Run DMC kicking down the industry’s doors in unlaced, low top Adidas and bucket hats to their own rendition of “Walk This Way” could not have been more metaphorical. A true cultural reset, to be honest.
While the new political radicals were out in the streets and on the campuses fighting apartheid and racism, Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions (BDP) provided the soundtrack and repped the new cultural radical forefront. In preparation to emerge from the darkness, Hip-Hop pioneers alike demanded to be heard (and seen) as the expression of a new generation’s definition of Blackness. “Coming to you live!” was more than an introduction we regularly heard from Fab 5 Freddy on Yo! MTV Raps. Rather, transported through the air waves, the visuals of Hip-Hop — bleeding-edge music conceiving the discussion of social implication — offered a much more radical, much more successful voluntary desegregation plan to turn our culture into a weapon of resistance. Through the machines of television, Hip-Hop was our guerilla strike to not only take our message to the media, but also, take over the media with our message.
The rallying “FTP” chant of today’s protests, once eloquently spit through the words of five Niggaz Wit Attitude, resounds the fervor to publicize our political and social message to secure our civil rights and liberation embedded in the Constitution. It’d be wise for white folks to abandon their incessant need to appropriate our culture and revisit the socially-conscious report of Grandmaster Flash before we reach our brink and finally do go over the edge.
Representation in the media is a result of experiential contexts that help people to understand racial identity. These direct experiences, that we live through everyday, demonstrate that racial identity is (and always will) be influential to self. Black people, let us forever remind ourselves that racial socialization involves a transfer of messages about how to adapt to living in a racist society without internalizing how others perceive you. It lays the foundation for the development of identity frames. Personally, when I absorb the visuals of Queen Latifah injecting social change practices of unity or Kendrick Lamar calming my anxiety that we’re gonna be alright, I find myself in tune with the reciprocal deliverance of self- and communal love our political ancestors fought so hard to achieve. By suspending our disbelief and seeing our stories told through the artistry of Black individuals rather than through the lies of preconceived stereotypes, we can continue this change on an unapologetically Black, collective level.