African American Stereotypes Essay

African Americans have many distinct characteristics about them that stems from the culture they are a part of. From their sense of fashion, language, foods, and actions African Americans are taught form birth of how to “be black” by parents who don’t want their culture to disappear. Although the preservation may be the case, there is a very thin line between cultural practices and stereotypes of a race.

A stereotype is a widely fixed and preconceived image or idea of a particular type of person or thing, in this case the behaviors of African Americans. Some of the earliest stereotypes about African Americans date all the way back to the 18th and 19th centuries, African slaves (the ancestors of today’s African Americans) were commonly viewed

Also, the African American family seemed to be in conflict with each other seventeen percent of the time oppose to white families being in conflict on eleven percent of the time. A second study in 1980 done by Baptista-Fernandez and Greenberg showed that African Americans were largely segregated on comedy shows and were portrayed as coon-like caricatures that also needed to dress in a flashy manner and had a difficult time holding a steady job down. Lastly, in 1977 Lemon conducted a study to observe and see who had the more dominant portrayals in situation comedies. He found that African Americans made up close to thirty-six percent of the interactions in situational comedies and only seven percent in crime dramas. African Americans also were not portrayed as the lead role or have high status in crime dramas. They were portrayed as uneducated criminals or

Shows such as “Love & Hip Hop”, “Basketball Wives”, and “Scandal” also known as ratchet television have an effect on stereotypes that surround African American women. Some stereotypes commonly associated with African American women are they have bad attitudes or short tempers, they are loud, and that they act ghetto. This is also known as the Mammy Stereotype. The shows named are popularized for all those stereotypical reasons. The constant drama that occurs because of the short tempered, loud, and poor grammar using African American women on these shows provide top notch ratings. The problem occurs with this because again these women are very influential to young African American women watching the shows so the behaviors began to manifest and the same cycle as with the young African American men is repeated in the