Brent Eckhoff

Thom Swiss

CI 5472

3 May 2009

Stereotypes in the Media

Website Companion: http://eckhoffla.pbworks.com         MSWord version

As a junior high teacher in a rather diverse school, I try to get out in front of stereotypes, racism, and various forms of discrimination as soon as possible so that it’s clear that we all know what it is and that I don’t allow it in my classroom.  I’ve found that connecting these topics to the curriculum is the best way to make a positive impact on these behaviors in my students, so I’ve decided to plan an extension unit to go along with my “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” literary unit.  I’ve handled stereotypes, racism, etc. throughout my teaching year, but never have I used them as a unit of study.  My hope is that the following unit will both make my students aware of the subtle ways in which they disrespect each other and themselves, and illustrate the ways in which the media helps to make those behaviors “acceptable” in society.

“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” Unit Review

    I’ve had a lot of success with this story so far since it deals with racism and stereotyping directly and from the point of view of a nine year old.  Part of the appeal is that Cassie, the main character, is as sassy as my students wish they were.  As we read through the novel, we focus on things like vocabulary, plot, characterization, and cause and effect much as we would with any novel.  We also take things a step further and focus on Jim Crow laws, the inequities of black schools of the south in the 1930s, and present day inequities with regards to African-Americans.  In the past, I’ve used this idea of stereotypes and inequities to transition to our short story unit, which includes a story about a Hispanic basketball team that drives out to the white neighborhood for a scrimmage.  We then do a short essay in which we describe the different ways the characters in the story violate the Hopkins West Junior High Human Rights Policy and how we could help to deal with the conflicts if we were there.  It gets rather heavy at times, but I’m convinced we could do more.

Stereotypes in the Media

    Since we will be entering this unit from “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” (ROT), the materials I bring in will focus mostly on black stereotypes since it will be familiar content to my students.  This will aid in their understanding because in addition to the content, the students will be navigating a wiki to access a lot of the media.  Below is a summary to an activity we will have done during ROT that is meant to prime them for media analysis:

School Houses

    I collected three photographs of southern African-American school houses of the 1930s.  I show each one of them to the students and have them write their observations of them without consulting each other or telling them what the buildings were used for.  After each picture, I pull names from a jar and ask them to tell the class their best word or phrase and then ask for three guesses as to what the buildings are for.  My favorites are storage shed, chicken coop, and murder house (defined to me as a house where you might dispose of the body.  My students sometimes worry me).  Once we’ve looked at all of the pictures, I tell them what they are for and we then discuss the possible hazards in using such a facility for educating young people.  Safety issues always arise first followed by dignity, and then by truancy.  One student exclaimed, “I wouldn’t care about being stupid if I had to sit in that every day!  I mean seriously…I’d probably get tetanus or something!”

This sets the stage nicely for further discussions of inequities and primes them well for analyzing different pieces of media down the line.

    As we move out of ROT, I plan to then introduce the concept of the old southern minstrel shows in which white and black actors portrayed black people through the use of blackface, a concept I truly hope they find offensive.  As we watch various video reenactments, students will keep a record of their observations using a graphic organizer, which I will provide for them.  Upon completing the viewing, I will guide the students in a “Think/Pair/Share” activity in which they will discuss their observations with a partner and then share only what they heard with the rest of the class.  After the debriefing, students will go to the class wiki and comment on a simple post accompanied with the video: Why is this now illegal?  Since these types of shows come from so far back in the past, we will use the information gathered during the “Think/Pair/Share” and the wiki comments as the basis for the rest of the media we encounter.

    With the information of the minstrel shows in our heads, we can address the question: What types of black stereotypes do we see in the media today?  Students will bring in different examples whether they are links to videos, pictures, printed text, song lyrics, etc.  In small groups, the students will share their texts with each other focusing on the different elements that conform to common stereotypes.  Once we establish which stereotypes are present, the students will give a written response the question: Why?  I’m anticipating, and hoping, that this will be a hard question to answer.  I’ll be expecting things like slavery and racism; surface answers that they’re almost programmed to give.  We will spend the next few classes exploring some possible answers to this question.

Cartoons:

    I have to say, I thank the powers that be everyday for youtube and the fact that I now work in a district that doesn’t block it!  I was able to locate a variety of old cartoons, some I watched as a child, depicting black people as white, blackfaced actors.  I will show these to my students along with a graphic organizer so they can work on describing what they see and hear.  Not until the end will I tell them when the cartoons were made.  Once they know, I will have them react in 2-3 sentences beneath their graphic organizer on what they saw and how it affected them.  On the class wiki, they will offer up a paragraph about how they think those kinds of cartoons might have affected the small kids that watched them.

Laws:

    As part of the ROT unit, we discuss the idea of Jim Crow laws.  Under the old unit, I would bring them up around chapter 5, but I think I will start saving them for this new extension unit.  After showing the cartoons, I will have a class period in which small groups look at the Jim Crow laws posted on the wiki and discuss them. In order to really make sense of these laws, we will first use a brace map to break down the Bill of Rights into different categories.  Upon completion, we will place each Jim Crow law next to the amendment it violates.  As a culminating project for this activity, we will do a gallery walk to vote on the best brace map and use that one as a secondary basis (paired with the information from the minstrel show videos) for our studies.

Television

    With some historical theatre and legal jargon under our belts, we’ll be ready to tackle a bit of television.  I’ve chosen three clips to show my students: a cutting from an episode of “Good Times”, the video to Coolio’s “Fantastic Voyage”, and a clip I happened to come across from the BET network.  As we view the clips (twice each) I will have my students keep track of the different things each character does, and then what each character looks like.  We will then break them down into positive and negative behaviors before deciding if they fit any of the stereotypes we came up with early on in the unit.  In small groups, I’ll have them vote on which character was the most negative stereotype and which was the most positive.  After reporting the result of the vote, we will either debate on which ones really are the most negative/positive or reaffirm our collective choice.  Either way, we ought to have a lot of fun with it on an academic level.  At this point in the unit, it may be appropriate to revisit our guiding question: Do racial stereotypes in the media affect what we find “acceptable”?  We will then take our first stab at the question: How?

Newspapers

    I have a series of articles from the Star Tribune I’ve collected over the years from my own searches and things my colleagues gave me around the discrimination of minorities in society.  After seeing some of the television clips and readdressing our guiding question, I will give my students a dose of modern reality by showing them articles in which evidence points to racial favoritism in mortgage lending, prison sentences, relationships, and put an end to the myth that black people are “cheap and poor”.  Before reading the articles, I will have the students work through an anticipation guide in which I ask questions like, “When do you think every state in the U.S. finally allowed interracial marriages?” 2000 and “What do you think the ratio of incarcerated whites to blacks is? 10 to 1(how many blacks to whites; ex: 2 to 1)  In which state would you guess the ratio to be the most discrepant?” Minnesota  It has been my experience that students have a completely skewed perception about the truths behind these two questions.  As we read, students will mark things they find positive and disturbing while collecting the correct answers to the questions on the anticipation guide.  Once we complete these articles, we will discuss possible relationships between the ongoing stereotyping of black people in the media with what we learn about society’s treatment of black people by use of a multi-flow map.  We will then file this away for further discussion and use in the final project of the unit.

Youtube Compilation Video

    To prepare for this, we will first refer back to our information gathered about the minstrel shows and the television clips we watched.  Based on the information on those two forms, we will construct a double bubble to compare/contrast what we saw (a second viewing may be crucial to this process).  Before showing the video, which juxtaposes old minstrel show images with modern versions of them personified by Flava Flave; Lil John; and a variety of people trying to look like them, I will have the students share their double bubble maps with at least three other students in the room.  As a class, we will focus, mostly, on the similarities they saw.  As they watch the video, I’ll have them put marks next to the items on their double bubbles that they see repeated.  In addition, they’ll have to include commentary on the music chosen for the background of the video and what that says about the black stereotypes portrayed (administrator approved due to foul language).

    Once we have viewed the video, I will start the class on small group discussions assigning the following questions to different groups based on ability level:

-    What were the biggest similarities between the stereotypes in the past and the present?

-    Why do you think black performers started, and continue, to fit into the stereotypes that white performers invented?

-    Many young black people act and dress like Flava Flav and Lil John citing culture as a reason.  Why do they conform to a culture that ultimately stereotypes them, often times, in negative ways?

-    What were the biggest differences between the stereotypes in the past and present?

Once they have written their responses, I’ll assemble groups of four so that each question has a representative.  In small groups, the students will discuss what they wrote and encourage others to weigh in on each topic.  To wrap up the day, we will discuss the issues as a whole class and then speculate on how much the media continues to influence what we find “acceptable”.

Final Project

    As a final project for this unit, students will go forth and find media examples of stereotypes not yet discussed in class (Hispanic, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.).  I will have them collect at least four artifacts from newspapers, television, movies, advertisements, and books.  In addition to a written component (paper or blogpost), students will develop a visual presentation through a blog, power point, or a poster board, showing and explaining their artifacts citing both positive and negative stereotypes while giving anecdotal evidence of times that they have seen their chosen stereotypes in real life.  My hope is that they will look more critically at the media they see and how much it actually affects our behavior.  Once the presentations are done, we’ll address our guiding question one last time with the addition of both “how?” and “why?”  I’m hoping for some introspection from my students in answering “why?”.  I just hope that nobody starts to think less of themselves if they realize how many stereotypes some of them often fall into.