The Effect of Prime Time Television Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes on Latino and Black Americans: A Longitudinal National Level Study

Negative stereotypes are widely assumed to underpin the mistreatment that black Americans sometimes experience while engaging in everyday consumption activities like shopping or dining away from home. However, studies that directly observe the relationship between service providers’ endorsement of racial stereotypes and the nature of their interactions with black consumers are rare. In response, this study presents results from a factorial survey experiment designed to assess a theoretically grounded causal process leading service providers to racially profile consumers. In two independent samples of restaurant servers and bartenders we show that consumer racial discrimination in the context of full-service restaurants is a function of servers’ endorsement of racial stereotypes depicting blacks as undesirable customers who are dishonest, uncivil, demanding, and bad tippers. Furthermore, we show that servers’ endorsement of such stereotypes and their resultant tendencies to discriminate against black diners increases as a function of contemporary anti-black animus and employment in workplaces characterized by explicit expressions of anti-black biases.

Download Full-text

Expressions of Anti-Black Biases, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover Intentions in the Full-Service Restaurant Industry

Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research ◽

10.1177/10963480211020098 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 109634802110200

Author(s):

Zachary W. Brewster ◽

Allen V. Heffner

Keyword(s):

Job Satisfaction ◽

At Risk ◽

Exploratory Study ◽

Turnover Intentions ◽

Black Americans ◽

Restaurant Industry ◽

Racial Stereotypes ◽

Research Note ◽

Operational Costs ◽

Intentions To Quit

Verbal and behavioral manifestations of anti-Black biases have been shown to be quite common in many full-service restaurant establishments. Such explicit expressions of anti-Black biases have been linked with servers’ endorsement of racial stereotypes depicting Black Americans as undesirable customers and their self-reported proclivities to withhold effort from their Black clientele. However, there have been limited efforts to advance our understanding of the broader consequences associated with working in an environment wherein Black customers are observed to be stereotyped, denigrated, and mistreated. In response, this research note presents results from an exploratory study assessing the relationships between observing anti-Black expressions in the workplace, employees’ job satisfaction, and their turnover intentions. In two relatively large and demographically diverse samples of current restaurant workers, observing expressions of anti-Black bias in restaurant workplaces was found to be associated with diminished levels of job satisfaction and greater intentions to quit in the next 6 months. This study adds to the growing list of financial and operational costs that restaurant operators are at risk of incurring as a result of some of their employees expressed anti-Black attitudes and discriminatory actions.

Download Full-text

“Sounding Black”: Speech Stereotypicality Activates Racial Stereotypes and Expectations About Appearance

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.785283 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Courtney A. Kurinec ◽

Charles A. Weaver

Keyword(s):

Legal System ◽

Black Americans ◽

Racial Stereotypes ◽

Black American ◽

Audio Recordings ◽

Average Person ◽

Physical Traits ◽

Eyewitness Identifications ◽

Black Faces

Black Americans who are perceived as more racially phenotypical—that is, who possess more physical traits that are closely associated with their race—are more often associated with racial stereotypes. These stereotypes, including assumptions about criminality, can influence how Black Americans are treated by the legal system. However, it is unclear whether other forms of racial stereotypicality, such as a person’s way of speaking, also activate stereotypes about Black Americans. We investigated the links between speech stereotypicality and racial stereotypes (Experiment 1) and racial phenotype bias (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants listened to audio recordings of Black speakers and rated how stereotypical they found the speaker, the likely race and nationality of the speaker, and indicated which adjectives the average person would likely associate with this speaker. In Experiment 2, participants listened to recordings of weakly or strongly stereotypical Black American speakers and indicated which of two faces (either weakly or strongly phenotypical) was more likely to be the speaker’s. We found that speakers whose voices were rated as more highly stereotypical for Black Americans were more likely to be associated with stereotypes about Black Americans (Experiment 1) and with more stereotypically Black faces (Experiment 2). These findings indicate that speech stereotypicality activates racial stereotypes as well as expectations about the stereotypicality of an individual’s appearance. As a result, the activation of stereotypes based on speech may lead to bias in suspect descriptions or eyewitness identifications.

Download Full-text

Equal Employment, Voting Rights, and Public Policy at the National Level

John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights ◽

10.5810/kentucky/9780813178257.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 168-201

Author(s):

Brandon K. Winford

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Federal Government ◽

Civil Rights Movement ◽

National Level ◽

Black Americans ◽

Political Influence ◽

Voting Rights ◽

Discrimination In Employment ◽

High Level

Chapter 5 examines Wheeler’s impact on the civil rights movement as a broker on a wider scale during the early 1960s. It argues that during these years, he utilized his increasing political influence regionally and nationally to change policies related to discrimination in employment and voting rights for black Americans. Not only that, but Wheeler vigorously championed the inclusion of blacks in high-level positions within local, state, and federal governments and condemned agencies for their own failures in implementing new employment policies as mandated by the federal government.

Download Full-text

ABC’s Quantico

Critical Studies in Television The International Journal of Television Studies ◽

10.1177/1749602017717167 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 273-288 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Audrey Pafford ◽

Jonathan Matusitz

Keyword(s):

Discourse Analysis ◽

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Racial Stereotypes ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Prime Time ◽

Violent Behaviour ◽

Important Conclusion ◽

The Past ◽

Racial Stereotyping

This article uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyse occurrences of female superiority and racial stereotypes in Quantico, ABC’s breakthrough show in fall 2015. This show features Alex Parrish, a strong female lead of Indian descent. Through the use of CDA, we looked closely at the behaviours and aggressive language of the show’s characters. After analysing season 1 of Quantico (roughly 405 minutes of material), an important conclusion of this study is that, unlike other prime-time television tendencies in the past, the results of this analysis showed significantly more occurrences of female superiority than racial stereotyping. Evidence of female superiority came in the measures that concerned aggressive/authoritative language, violent behaviour and the sexualising of characters on ABC’s Quantico.

Download Full-text

“A Conspiracy of the Nation”: Case Study of Stokely Carmichael’s and H. Rap Brown’s Arguments in Support of Black Power

Journal of Black Studies ◽

10.1177/0021934719892296 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 51 (1) ◽

pp. 83-102

Author(s):

Lauren F. E. Galloway

Keyword(s):

Rhetorical Analysis ◽

Black Americans ◽

Racial Stereotypes ◽

Rhetorical Strategies ◽

Racial Oppression ◽

Media Portrayals ◽

Nonviolent Resistance ◽

History Of ◽

The Times

This article features a rhetorical analysis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) transition from nonviolent resistance to a more militant ideology, evidenced through prominent works by the organization’s last two chairmen, Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. I argue the chairmen’s conspiracy rhetoric contended with widespread interpretations of the times that framed SNCC’s decision as purely irrational, as opposed to a choice arising out of a long history of racial oppression. Furthermore, contentious media portrayals of SNCC demonstrators as ungrateful, heretical, sectarians aligned closely with readily accepted racial stereotypes to justify nonsupport of the pursuit of equality for Black Americans, civil or otherwise. This contribution to the literature conjures up challenges and tactics of movements past to inform the rhetorical strategies of present-day activists.

Download Full-text

Black Generational Politics and the Black Lives Matter Movement

National Review of Black Politics ◽

10.1525/nrbp.2020.1.4.452 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (4) ◽

pp. 452-473

Author(s):

Marcus Board ◽

Amber Spry ◽

Shayla C. Nunnally ◽

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman

Keyword(s):

Civil Rights ◽

Civil Rights Movement ◽

Generational Differences ◽

National Level ◽

Black Americans ◽

Protest Movements ◽

Black Lives Matter ◽

Generational Politics ◽

Generational Effects ◽

The 1960S

Despite its advocacy for justice and accountability in the American political system, the Movement for Black Lives is still considered controversial among groups of Americans. The in-your-face and unapologetic tone of today’s movement stands in contrast to romanticized narratives of the peaceful, nonviolent activism of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. The movement’s titular organization, Black Lives Matter, openly rejects respectability politics—the notion that individuals and groups must conform to the expectations of white mainstream norms to protect themselves from the harms of white racism and discrimination. In this article, we examine whether generational politics affect Black attitudes toward protest movements, focusing especially on the Black Lives Matter organization. We expect that protest politics are affected by generations of Black Americans who have been socialized in different eras of social and political advocacy with differing views about the actions that are acceptable for Black politics. Consistent with prior literature, we anticipate that generational differences in attitudes toward contestation, varying awareness about the political and social goals of new movements, differences in access to political information, and overall generational socialization toward respectability politics will all affect the degree to which Black Americans support the Movement for Black Lives. Using national-level data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), we find that prior theories of generational politics do not fully explain support for Black Lives Matter. Unexpectedly, we find that older generations of Black Americans are more supportive of the movement than younger generations of Black Americans. We do not find strong evidence of generational effects interacting with awareness of the movement, political opportunity structures, or respectability politics, which suggests the diminishing effects of generational differences along with traditional factors that influence support. Our results underscore the need for research on generational effects to consider the context of political socialization, which varies across generations.

Download Full-text