What a day… After a short break we hit the ground running again. Mia Long, a 3rd year doctoral student at the University, came in and spoke with us about African American family portrayals in reality television. She began by asking, “What does family mean to you?” We came up with many answers varying from a primary support system and unconditional love to the place where our morals and values are formed. Yet, no one said it better than Arnesha with the statement, “You can’t choose them,” and in watching today’s T.V. clips and hearing personal stories there has never been a truer statement made. We were then challenged to think about what the important aspects of the Black family might be. Some people looked at positive stereotypes of bonding over food or dysfunctional yet supportive. Discussion took a turn with Amber’s thought that you “can’t forget where you come from.” We all have family history and tradition that make up a part of who we are, and the African American society is definitely in no shortage of history and tradition. Ms. Long continued by giving us a brief history of the Black family and why ‘family’ is so important. Slavery began with African American families being taken from their homes and forced to travel to a new land where they could not speak the language and were forced to work with no pay. I cannot imagine what that must have been like, and to make it even worse the families were auctioned off upon arrival, so there was no guarantee that a mother or father would be able to stay with their children. The runaway slave’s main goal was to be with their family again, and most would stop at nothing to make sure it happened.
There are three things that Ms. Long explained hold the African American family together: connectivity (not only through culture and family, but other African Americans), education (very important to all) and church. To help us better understand she talked about old television shows such as Rhoda, Good Times, That’s My Momma, and The Cosby Show. The first few named we see that the family is broken and the mother has to step in and fill the roles of both parents. But, with The Cosby Show it is different. Here we see an African American family that is doing very well, but as a family they are not dealing with many of the realities that many African American families were and are having to deal with. Another scary topic that we hit on was that many children today are learning about race through the shows that they see on television, and since reality television is the cheapest to make that is the majority of what they are seeing. Ms. Long then told us that there were three types of realities that we open ourselves up to when we turn on the television. First is ‘your own reality’, which comes from the “sum of your own actions.” Second is the sitcom reality. Here you take what you see and in some ways adjust your life accordingly, because some may never have had those things. Last is reality television, outside of the game show realm.
We ended class by watching several different clips that portrayed different types of family situations and related them back to the readings that we were given for class. We looked at the Keisha Cole Show and how she and her family deal with not only separation but dual mother figures. One thing that a lot of us caught was the stereotyping of the birth mother as a “Strong Black Woman”. In this show I don’t know if I would agree or not, but she sure did want everyone to know she was. We then watched Brandi’s Special Delivery. This was a good example of reality television in the beginning. Everything was choppy and it seemed very unscripted and not edited very well, but just like in so many other shows she was the stronger of the two characters and was constantly telling her ‘husband’ what he should be doing. Deon and Pilar: Prime Time Love was the next clip that we looked at. This to me was the show that showed a real family. Yes, they have money and fame but by looking at the children you can tell that they keep it real in the family and do not let things go to their heads. Last was The Real Housewives of Atlanta. This reality television to me is more like a real soap opera. Ever person on there is trying to out do the other and the characters are not what I would consider to be real. (Especially after the season ended and all their lies came out.) But throughout all the shows you could see the theme that the women were left alone a lot of the time to take care of the children, but I think that the article was proven true that the more successful the women the less marrying material she has at her disposal because they do not want someone that is ‘under’ them. So like other class mates I will leave you with a few question
1) What is family to you? Do you agree with our discussion outcomes?
2) Do you think that just because you are successful you can be choosy of whom you marry? Does money give you status or can you create it yourself?
3) How do you think the African American families are truly depicted in today’s “Reality” T.V.?
By: Traci Rush
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Family means unconditional love regardless of societal standards of success. In the blog, it pointed out that I said that you can't choose your family. Well, you can't and usually in my family you don't get to choose your play cousins or aunts either. They are very much a part of my family as if born in by blood. Family is the only thing you can count on when you are at your lowest point. To answer the question of whether money gives you staus or do you create it, I think it is a combination of the two. Money does not make one have class just as one does not have class because they have money. Flavor Flav seems to come to mind for an example. I think that money helps to facilitate a particular taste that one wants to achieve but that does not make them classy. Class is something that is instilled from an early age from parental figures and soes not depend on social class.Last but not least, I think African American families are still portrayed in the negative stereotypes of the past, re-gifted as comical satire and reality television. Since reality television has steadily evolved, networks have learned that history repeats itself, and as long as you have people willing to overexaggerate their characters, it has potential to be a success. Traci tells us that reality television was inexpensive to create,I think that it(reality tv) is more willing to take a chance on foolishness because it is all profit for them anyway. The casting directors know what gets ratings and continue to perpetuate the stereotypes at our expense.
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