"Black Male" Imagery and Media Containment of African American Men
Author(s): Helán E. Page
Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 99-111
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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AMHERST
OF MASSACHUSETTS
HEIAN E. PAGE / UNIVERSITY
"Blask
Male"
Imagery and
Melia
of fifrisan fimerisanMen
Containment
and technologiSINCE1980, THEREPRESENTATION
cal dissemination of "black male" imagery across diverse media formats has escalated. In the same period,
African American men have struggled to succeed in
mainstreamAmericanterms, but the success of African
American women and men in the specific domain of
science and technology has been stymied since the era
of agriculturalmechanizationby massive technological,
social, and political changes in the urban,regional, and
internationaleconomic terrain(Johnson 1993). Manuel
Castells (1989:172-228)describes the corporate forces
that are rapidlyreorganizingthe global economy today
so as to increase productivity and profits by means of
production methods that requirewell-trained workers
and fewer of them. Such forces, he argues, have relegated AfricanAmericansand other nonwhite inner-city
denizens to the bottom of a bimodal"informationalcity"
in which their increasing lack of access to high-level
technical skills inhibits their potential for any kind of
economic or status success in the informationage.
This increasinglydespairingsituationhas spawned
the familiarpublic image of a black underclass, as Brett
Williamsexplains, awithreproductivepossibilities"that
are "sensationalizedby television and printjournalism,
and probed by scholars' in such a way that "gendered
archetypes" seem to have "bolsteredtotalitarian proposals in the Reagan-Bushyears jail the men and force
the women to work" (1994:348). In the wake of such
changes, Jewelle Taylor Gibbs (1988) reports that today's young AfricanAmericanmen are more likely than
they were in 1960s to be unwed fathers, unemployed,
addicted to drugs, and involved in the criminaljustice
system and to die from homicide or suicide. Only a
fraction of African American men manage to succeed
under worsening conditions, and from a mainstream
of
E. PAGEis an associateprofessorin the Department
HELAN
Amherst,MA01003.
of Massachusetts,
University
Anthropology,
perspective, most seem incapable of participating except at the lowest levels of occupation in what Castells
calls "theinformationalmode of development"(1989:32).
In part, our assumptions about "blackmale"capability derive from the representation of AfricanAmerican men in local and national media.The Association of
Black Anthropologists (ABA) recently demonstrated
that representationsof racialized gender and other media-enhanced instruments of social stratification perform special social functions in the new world order.l
Contributors to that timely debate have argued that
media representationsmust become both the objects of
anthropologicalinquiryand tools of pedagogical practice for instructors of anthropology courses (Harrison
1992:35).If we can recognize that the media's production of black male imagery is one of the many white
cultural practices undergirdingthe formation of a new
world order, then we must, as Faye Harrison (1992)
explains, decolonize the production and dissemination
of media representationsby developing more appropriate modes of anthropologicalobservation (see also Lutz
and Collins 1993).
In contrast to Cornel West (1993:83), who once
argued that black sexuality is never taken up as a serious topic of public discourse, ArthurFlannigan SaintAubin contends that
if popularculturecanbe saidto speakat all, it talksincessantlyaboutblacksexualityand blackmale sexualityin
particular.Onehas onlyto considercertainformsof contemporarymusic,video, film, and sports as well as the
professionalandpopulardiscoursesonthemto understand
that blackmale sexualityis implicitlyif not explicitlyof
centralconcern.[1994:1057]
anthropologyhas an obligation to
Twenty-Elrst-century
examine the naturalizationof black sexuality, but not
without also observingour nationalobsession with consuming mainstreamrepresentations of it (Jones 1993).
In addition to our need for a new generation of ethno-
Association.
AmericanAnthropologist99(1) :99-11 1. CopyrightO 1997, AmericanAnthropological
100
* VOL. 99, NO. 1 * MARCH1997
AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
graphic studies on black community life in all the
Americas, we must also methodically observe the media's strategic deployment of black male imagery (and
all mass-produced nonwhite imagery). We must be
theoretically equipped to show how it encourages the
viewing public to believe that only a few exceptionally
embraceableAfiican Americanmen are capable of succeeding, while the rest should be contained (literally
and figuratively) because they are innately incapable
and tend to fail even when offered a chance. Portrayed
as incompetents of a violent nature, unembraceable
black males are featured in media images that seem to
threatenthe body politic, includingthe visible and often
invisible bureaucraticand corporate arenas of cultural
manipulationwhich I call white public space.2 Recalibrated to query corporate cultural production, anthropology can demonstrate how black male imagery
exposes the warlike racial operations conducted in
white public space throughmedia imagery(Tate 1995).3
We learn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1977)
the simple but powerful idea that the cultural agents
who participate in any established social order can be
expected to naturalize their own arbitrary codes of
ordinaryand specialized behavior. The black male imagery thematically extracted from mainstream media
products for examination in this essay can be seen as
naturalizingarbitrary"blackmale"evaluations of African Americanmen. Anthropologistshave alreadymade
this naturalization process an object of analysis
(Yanagisako1995), but we need to theorize black male
imagery as informationthat is professionally designed
and manipulated in a cultural struggle in which the
dominantracial groupseeks to contain the subjectivity
of a competitive nonwhite other through the practice
of racialized cultural politics (see Barth 1989:130;
S. Moore 1987:730).
Black Male Imagery in the Nation's Seeing Eye
The assumed absence of gendered whiteness is
used as a basis for presuming the inherent wrongness
or obvious guilt of the AfricanAmericanman.His whiteness or impugnedlack thereof is not assessed with the
naked eye, but through the evaluative gaze of our national seeing ueye/I."4 In "ThePublic I/Eye,"Brackette
Williams (1995) invites us to witness how classed and
racialized homed citizens encounter and judge the
whiteness that unembraceablehomeless beggars of any
racial background apparently seem to lack (see also
Page 1995). In diverse moments of public confrontation
with unkempt, bedraggled, and less-white homeless
others, the shared subjective public I/eye of homed
citizen-commutersmust assess, either on the street or
on public conveyances, a spectrumof homeless beggars
who have nothing left to sell us but signs of the "work
ethic" that homed citizens revere and expect. Diverse
homed citizens, who are by definition adequatelywhitened, ask themselves, "ShallI give?""AmI safe?"or "Do
I really want to be bothered?"And here we must ask if
the media's participation in the organization of our
national seeing I/eye (comprised of numerous public
I/eyes) serves to construct for each citizen a "nototherX
sense of whiteness for each homed citizen, a sharedbut
personally discriminatingbasis on which to assess each
homeless beggar's worthiness.
But how do we come to see homeless beggars as
more or less worthy? Whatif the media agents' images
of homeless people (and of homelessness) actually
serve to blind each homed citizen's public I/eye to the
innate worthiness of a whole class of homeless beggars
whose begging mode of production is not deemed embraceably white? What if the homeless beggars are
thereby made to seem entirely undeserving of public
policy to eradicate homelessness while, at the same
time, the homed citizen is encouragedto take responsibility by interpersonally judging whether each homeless beggar'ssales pitch is either deservingor undeserving of fleeting charity?
Mass-producedblack male imagery is a strongly
gendered racial parallel to this media displacement of
the need for public action on homelessness onto individuals. Pem Buck (1992) shows how the avoidance of
public obligation is directly linked to nsing black male
incarcerationand the profitable proliferationof privatized prisons (see Lichtenstein and Kroll 1990). Similarly, we must examine a racialized distribution of resources that can pretend to enhance embraceableblack
male status while accentuating unembraceable black
male behavior. Unfortunately, since unembraceable
black maleness is depicted as the norm, few resources
are invested in the cultivation of embraceable or positive black maleness. The public perception that more
costly prisons are needed, instead of homes for the
homeless, is justified by media constructions of the
utterly unembraceableviolent black male criminal.Hazel Carbydescribes the situation this way:
Although it costs approximately $20,000 a year to attend
Yale and approximately $50,000 a year to reside in a New
Yorkjail, black males are being incarcerated at unprecedented rates. The press and the culture industry, having
discovered" the black woman writer for the first time in
the seventies, are now finding it increasinglyprofitable to
market narratives of the lives of successful black men.
Articles about black males who have zmade itn are no
longer found only in entertainment or sports sections of
national newspapers: musicians and basketball stars have
been joined by film directors and academics in the pages of
our Sundaymagazines. [1992:187]
BLACKMALE IMAGERY/
Thus only a few African American men of note
enjoy high-status media placement, in contrast to a
growing mass of AfricanAmericanmen who only erUoy
higherrates of imprisonmentthat are increasinglyprofitable to others. At the same time, mainstreammedia
agents methodically project both embraceableand unembraceable black male evaluations onto African
American men. The latter evaluation played a central
role in the case of Susan Smith, whose story attracted
the national press to Union, South Carolina. She
claimed that on October 25, 1994, a black man in his
twenties jumped into the passenger seat of her car and
hi,acked it. When she begged him to let her small sons
out of the car, he is said to have shouted, "Idon't have
time"and drove off. Eventually,when they could not be
found, Smithwent on nationaltelevision to plead for the
return of her children.
Smith's story began to crumble even before she failed the
first of two lie-detector tests. Police continued to give her
the benefit of the doubt, at least in public.... Sweet Susan
Smith the [white] mother Americahad come to Eow . . .
[as she cried] for the return of her stolen children on the
Today show, play[ed] with them at a videotaped birthday
party, [and begged] . . . that the kidnapperfeed them and
care for them had confessed to killing them.... This
whole incident with her labelinga blackmanas the criminal
sends a message of the black male as savage and barbarian," said McElroy Hughes, a retired minister and local
president of the NationalAssociation for the Advancement
of Colored People. [N. Gibbs 1994]
Smith's initial story did not merely project an unembraceable black male image, as Hughes notes, but it
reflected, more importantly,the racial knowledge that
Smith herself had internalized as a member of the
American mainstream. No one reminded the viewing
public how Smith, as a white female member of the
mainstream audience, had been socialized by the media's production of black male images. Drawingon her
stock of plausible assumption about black men, she
easily got the sympathetic cooperation of police officers and media agents who were themselves primed to
believe, for a time, in a callous black male assailant.
National judgments of black embraceability and
unembraceabilitycontinuously subject African American men to the emphatic whiteness filteringthe gaze of
our national seeing I/eye. Those men suffer most when
the laudableblack male image they often seek to project
draws public attention to unsavory aspects of their
private or public behavior. Whitemen such as Richard
Nixon and Ollie North,who may exhibit similardefects,
do so with relative impunity.5The constant judgment
and containmentof black men shields raciallydominant
European American men from the competition of racially subordinate maleness mainly in the political and
economic realm, but also in other competitive arenas.
HELANE. PAGE
101
During the 1980s, most mediated black male imagery fell into the unembraceable category. Such imagery included serial televised network news reports of
the "AtlantaChild Murders,"a series of incidents in
which more than 30 African American youths were
killed and a single adult African American man was
found guilty.6A second media event, "AIDS:A National
Inquiry,"documented an African American man infected with HIV.He was demonized by the white public
Veye of a narratorwho complained, in the interest of
public health, about a black man who was continuingto
have sex without informingsex partnersof his terminal
and highlycontagiouscondition. ChakaZulu, a five-day
television miniseries depicted another type of crazed
black male. Instead of praising the historic Zulu chief
Chakafor his brilliantanticolonial militaryinnovations,
the series treated his actions as the metaphysical shenanigans of a bloodthirsty madman. It also suggested
that black male destructiveness is a diasporic (if not a
genetic) male behavioral trait that originates from Africa's darkness.
Unembraceableblack male imagery was deployed
in the popular 1982featurefilm 17weColorPurple,based
on a novel by the feminist African American author
Alice Walker (Bobo 1993; Diawara 1993:212, 214,
217-219). In that film, which drew both feminist and
antifeminist viewers, unembraceable black male imagery was highlightedwhen the black female protagonist, Celie, was rapedby her stepfather and battered by
her verbally abusive common-law husband. This imagery was supplemented by an array of black male
characters who appeared either inept or irresponsible
when they were not behaving in a violent manner.
In the 1986 CBS Reports television documentary
"TheVanishingBlack Family:Crisis in Black America,"
young AfricanAmericanmen with no visible means of
support were represented (see Maxwell 1992). According to narrator/directorBill Moyers, they were simply
unreliable and uncaring fathers. When this program
aired initially, it evoked heated criticism from humiliated mainstream African Americans and acclamation
from European Americans. Following a repeat broadcast, the national audience heard Moyersargue, on the
late-night ABC talk show Nightline, that any African
Americanmen who fit the black male icon delineated in
his documentaryshould be conscripted into the Army
and have their paychecks mailed not to themselves but
directly to the mothers of their otherwise fatherless
children. In what Nightltne anchor Ted Koppelcalled a
'4communityforum,"mainstreamAfricanAmericansresponded on the air with outrage,shame, and frustration
at Moyers'schoice to accentuate unembraceableblack
male imagery with very little attention to contributing
social factors.
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AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
The mainstream black audience, which is especially angeredby images that impute demented destructiveness to AfricanAmericanmen, had reacted similarly
to The Color Purple. In the Ntghtline studio, some
members of the all-blackaudience denounced Moyers's
documentary,questioned his intent, and complained of
constantly being bombardedwith negattre black male
imagery. They wanted more positive black male imagery in the mainstreammedia, but they did not seem
to recognize that the media's racial discourse does not
always treatpositive black male imageryand embraceable black male imageryas synonymous. Nor did most
seem to realize that embraceable and unembraceable
black imagery both have precisely the same use-value
in America's discourse of racial containment, and that
no unembraceable black male imagery is likely to be
nationally regardedas positive, even if seen as positive
from a black perspective.7
From this decade of visual shame arose mainstream African Americans' need to locate their own
heroic black male image on the screen. The stage was
thus set for the groundbreakingadvent of Spike Lee's
Malcolm X in 1992. The black male representations in
that film revealed Lee's negotiated African American
interpretationof Malcolm'stransition from negative to
positive black male behavioreYet viewers saw nothing,
either in Malcolm'searly life or in his maturerole as an
outspoken African American leader, that the white
mainstream audience would deem embraceable until
after his later transformationin Mecca. Even Malcolm's
newfound positive black male image had its cost. Lee's
Ellmsuccessfully penetrates white public space by constructing Malcolm's post-Mecca subjectivity as embraceable, as one that compelled Malcolmto revise his
prior oppositional position on race relations and adopt
a more positive and sophisticated universalism,including a thorough critique of racial essentialism.8 At the
same time, Lee's imagery encouraged his mainstream
audience to intexpret the murder of an embraceable
Malcolm X as the result of a tragic betrayal by fellow
members of the unembraceable Nation of Islam. Lee's
portrayalof federal agents following MalcolmX during
his pilgrimageto Mecca is consistent with the popular
complicity in
black belief that there had to be CL^JFBI
his murder,but the embraceableLee lends no credence
to the historic pan-Africanistview that Malcolm'sunembraceable black male killers were only the paid puppets
of the better-paid white males who actually orchestrated a state-sponsored assassination.9
Exemplaryblack male imagery like that embodied
in the once-pristine embraceabilityof a Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, or MichaelJordanarticulates criteriaof
inclusion that tend to be comical, musical, or athletic in
content and character. But the same imagery that
makes AfricanAmericanmen seem so safe from a main-
stream point of view may be deemed negative by many
African Americans, who bemoan the fact that starring
black male roles have curtailed the display of full cultural competence that normallygoes with a really serious starring role. Consider the early 1990s television
series Walker,TexasRanger, advertisedas if it featured
two stars, white male and black male Texas Rangers.
Commercialsfor this series enticed the black national
audience with the promise that the embraceableblack
male character would not be a mere sidekick. In relation to Walker,the white male Texas Ranger,he would
be allowed to participate more than usual, the commercial promised, but in fact his participationturnedout to
be chronicallyinept. For instance, when Walkerleft the
white female district attorney under the black male's
protection, she was kidnappedin broad daylightby an
adversarywhom she had once sent to prison. Her safe
returnwas spearheaded not by a daringinterracialduo
but by a lone white male Texas Ranger,a pattern repeated regularlythroughoutthe series. Althougha few
critical African Americans rejected this show, others
embraced its supposedly positive portrayalof a black
male characterwho was, after all, a professionallypaid
Texas Ranger. Media agents bank on mainstreamAfrican Americans' acceptance of this ldnd of black male
imageryas an adequatecorrective to scores of negative
portrayalsof AfricanAmericanmen.
Mainstreammedia access won by African American strugglesmovedblack actors into performanceroles
that instill black pride and enable a few black television
or film technicians to make a living, but the same roles
frequentlydo violence to our collective self-image.Much
of what we hate about ourselves and little that we
love in reality, fiction, or myth is daily splashed
across the mediascape for all to find shocking, curious,
informative,or entertaining.Moreover,the boundaries
of mainstreaminclusion and exclusion are well marked
by varieties of black male imagery that delineate the
parametersof embraceableand unembraceableAfrican
Americanmale subjectivity.This is often accomplished
by manipulatingAfrican America'shunger for positive
black male imagery, but it may also be achieved by
regulating embraceable black male imageryin accordance with the currentpreferences or tastes of the white
mainstreamaudience (Diawara 1993:215).
Unembraceable Positive Black Male Imagery
Out of the wave of 1980s black male inlagery
erupted the new racial discourse of the 1990s, which
selectively aimed to constrain the ascendancy of certain African American men. Being inadequately complicit or humble, such men became special targets of
media surveillance. Here I will enumerate a few cases
of prominentAfricanAmericanmen whose unembrace-
BLACKMALE IMAGERY/
able black male subjectivitywas debatedand contained
through the media's control of images.
When Ben Chavis tackled racism by opening up
NAACP(National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People) membership to people of color other
than AfricanAmericans, he was alreadymakingwaves
and treading on dangerous groundin the view of many
mainstream Americans, white and black.l? When he
held highlypublicized meetings with black gang leaders
duringhis 16-monthtenure and conferredwith Minister
Louis Farrakhanof the Nation of Islam, he produced a
national uproar from the old guard of the NAACPand
the white media, as well as some civil rights groups
concerned about Farrakhan'salleged anti-Semitism.In
the end he was dismissed as NAACPexecutive director,
partly because he embarrassed mainstream African
Americans by running up a deficit and paying hushmoney to a woman who charged him with sexual harassment. ManyAfrican Americanobservers suspected
that such charges would never have been treated seriously if his political programhad been more whitened
or embraceable. His political actions were seen as too
black": that is, as fermenting the intent or hope of
escalated antiracist activism amongthe AfricanAmerican masses and other people of color.
Chavis had proposed moving the NAACPtoward
programmaticself-help solutions that aimed to address
AfricanAmerica's urbanviolence and economic crisis.
He also hoped to move its membersaway from age-old
policies mainly designed to help middle-class African
Americans succeed in mainstreaminstitutions through
affirmative action and other interventionist means of
securing gradual racial concessions. He wanted more
direct interventionin the lives of working-classAfrican
Americans.Chaviswould have been more embraceable
had he used the influence of his status to reinforce and
promote a gradualistapproachto achieving racial harmony in the nation. Instead, he got busy strategizing
activist coalitions that might push white and whitened
America uncomfortably closer to the economic equity
implied in racial justice. Consequently,his leadership
was promptlydeauthorizedby mediaagents who shared
views with old-guard African Americans and some
EuropeanAmericans linked to the NAACP.
National press media agents initially relished the
thought of laying the NAACPmantle on a more embraceable black male leader like HughB. Price, recent
head of the National Urban League.Duringhis inaugural address, Price surprisedthem by advocatingfor the
NAACPthe same self-help strategy for the urban crisis
that Chavishad proposed. But his overallplan for bringing change was regardedas more safely conventional:
The nation's leading editorialists and columnists gave him
a standing [ovation]. . . for his inauguraladdress,layingout
HELANE. PAGE
103
his vision for shepherding the civil-rights movement into
the modern era. Commentatorsused his speech in which
Price eloquently blasted Farrakhan's anti-Semitism as
evidence that Price offered an [embraceable]alteInativeto
Chavis' [unembraceable] embattled approach. [Bass
1994:6]
The press approved Price's condemnation of Farrakhan's anti-Semitism, but it chose not to quote an
unembraceablerevelation that Price made in the same
speech. He chided those whom he believed had disempowered Chavisfor ideological reasons and supported
the strategy of coalition-buildingwhen he announced
that "serious-mindedAfricanAmericansmust be free to
discuss the acute pain afflicting our communities."Accordingto Bass (1994), Price waited until laterto openly
support Chavis's effort to break mainstream African
America's middle-class isolation from the workingclass gangs of its youth and from the Nation of Islam.
As the formerhead of another civil rights organization,
Price knew that an African American man is not supposed to take unembraceablestands. Should he do so,
as Chavis had done, then media agents would soon
deauthorizehis black male image. Like MichaelJordan
and Craig Hodges, whose cases are discussed below,
Chavis began with a positive black male image, but his
leadership was quickly negated once he was subjected
to public reprimand and disdained as eminently replaceable.
Michael Jordan, long before his gambling debts
surfaced and his father was killed, had established himself as a black male basketball superstar who refused
to lend his fame and legitimacy to the presidency of
George Bush. After years of incredible service to the
Chicago Bulls basketball team, which won three NBA
(National Basketball Association) titles, Jordan went
on vacation andplayed golf instead of showing up when
the Bulls were honored at the WhiteHouse. His unembraceable decision not to show was construed as unpatriotic. Mediaagents blasted him in early October 1991
for havinginsultedthe president. Underthe headline uIll
Windin WashingtonLeaves Hot Airin Chicago,"author
Michael Wilson (1991) assessed public reaction to Jordan's ufailure"to attend. Chicago Trtbune columnist
Sam Smith (1991d) felt adequately empowered to selfrighteously rebuke Jordan for his action.
Only a few media agents supported Jordan'sright
to choose, but even that support was muted. For example, Bernie Miklasz(1991) criticized fans for expecting
Jordan to be superhuman.An African American newspaper in Chicago reported that OperationPUSH (People United to Save Humanity)president HenryWilliamson had announced, with Jesse Jackson, support of
Jordan's decision to decline the president's invitation
and that he questioned the media's judgmental treatment of the incident (Strausberg 1991b). The day after
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AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
Miklasz's reminder that Jordan was not superhuman,
David Aldridgeencouraged fans to believe that Jordan
was one Bull who could concentrate so well when he
escaped to the basketball court that he could block out
the pain of distressing events for example, the announcement of MagicJohnson'spositive HIVtest or the
press abuse that followed the 1992 publication of 17we
Jordan Rules by Chtcago Trtbunecolumnist Sam Smith
(Aldridge 1991). In addition to the media barrage it
caused Smith's book further tarnished Jordan's embraceable image. The book was billed as an inside story
of a turbulentseason, leading some media agents to ask
if Jordan had been getting more public accolades than
he deserved (Bonkowski1991).Tom Weir(1991)defended Jordan as a target of undue criticism, claiming that
the superstarhad earned any special treatment he got.
If Smith'sbook portrayedJordan as a greedy, selfish, egotistical person who had punched out a teammate, then the Chicago Bulls seemed unaffected as
controversy raged on through the end of December
1991 (Hutchinson 1991). Terence Moore (1991) wondered why media agents got into such an uproar over
the book's claim that Jordan did not get along with
certain teammates,since that is such a typical observation for anyone who follows professional sports. A 1994
Chicago Tr?buneeditorial suggested that Smith'sbook
should be celebrated for exposing a side of this superstar that could bring a haughtyJordan "downto earthX
by pointing out personality flaws that made it hard for
him to be a team player. After Jordan had been chided
for having made an anti-Semitic remark and denied it
publicly, Smith insisted that Jordan, indeed, had made
the remarkbut also admitted that other media agents
had taken the remark out of context (Hodges 1991).
Accordingto Smith(1991b), Jordanhad been appropriately expressing anger and frustrationon learningthat
his application for membership into a predominantly
Jewish golf club in Highland Park, Illinois, had been
denied.
Long before this series of local and national print
media events, Jordan had been saying publicly that he
was subject to imperfectionlike any other man but also
that he knew media agents had much to gain by putting
him on a pedestal and then knocking him off again. He
knew that havingto endureinsensitive racializedmedia
judgments came with the territory.The suggestion that
nothing could hurt him when he "escaped to the court"
reflected an animalisticblack male stereotype. It looks
like a compliment from the perspective of the fans'
national seeing I/eye, but such statements only encouraged those who would sting Jordanwith reprimands.It
is no surprise, then, that Jordan started to complain
about how he was being represented in the media and
to question whether he was being paid enough to endure frequentmedia abuse (Denberg 1991).
By January 1992, Michael Jordan denied the NBA
and the Olympicsany right to use his likeness on clothing sold to fans, having more profitablycommitted his
influential image to Nike a month earlier (Los Angeles
Sentinel 1992). By early February,some media agents
were demandingan explanationof Jordan'sunembraceabledecision,whileTeny FosterdenouncedJordan'sgreed
(Foster 1992;Isaacson 1992).By earlyMarch,even media
agents who write for a black audience scrambled to
report that the embraceable Isaiah Thomas and Magic
Johnson had critized Jordan'sunembraceabledecision
to deny the NBA image rights (Jet Magazine1992b). By
earlyAugust,when Jordanwas selected to play with the
Olympic Dream Team, his decision became more of a
controversy as he refused to wear the Reebok uniform
scheduled to be worn by other Dream Team members
in honor of that company's official Olympic sponsorship. He insisted instead on hononng his prior obligation to wear only Nike's uniform (Levin 1992). Meanwhile, in the shadow of Michael Jordan's media
tribulations,one of his AfricanAmericanteammatesconfrontedhis own unembraceability.Inthe same monththat
MichaelJordanwent before the press to defend his right
to control the commercial value of his own likeness,
Craig Hodges, formerly of the Bulls, was thinking of
becoming an overseas basketball star (S. Smith 1992b).
Hodges became a starter for the Bulls in March
1989. He had not imagined himself as a major player
when, in college, he studied to teach history and coach
high school basketball;since no one expected much of
him, his professional basketball abilities were initially
underestimated (S. Smith 1989b). Soon after he joined
the Bulls, a headline reading "3-PointTitle Just Eludes
Bulls' Hodges Again"appearedover an article announcing Hodges's second-prize win of $10,000 in the 1989
Long Distance Shootout three-point competition. According to the author, Hodges had failed to use his head
like Dale Ellis, who won the $20,000first prize (S. Smith
1989c). Curiously,after Hodges beat LarryBirdfor first
prize during the 1990 competition, no one suggested
that Bird had failed to use his head. One headline proclaimed "Hodges New Three-PointKing"(Shaunnessy
1990), and another, resorting to the usual black male
imagery, simply read "Hodges Hustles Bird" (Voisin
1990).
In April 1989, Bulls coach Doug Collins noted
Hodges's importance when he said in an interview,
"WithoutHodges . . . we lose the [shooting]range"(Kendall 1989). By June 1990, when the Bulls faced the
Detroit Pistons in game six of the Eastern Conference
final, headlines reported Hodges Finds MagicTouch,"
indicatingthat he had broken a shooting slump, scoring
19 points for his winning team (Isaacson 1990). The
beginning of the end for Hodges came in his seventh
season when he was forced, by an inJury,to sit out a
BLACKMALE IMAGERY/
month of games in the 1989-90season, but there is no
print media evidence to suggest that the inJurypermanently underminedhis performance. Nowhere could I
find the usual swan song markingan irUury'spermanent
disruption of a promising athletic career.
During his tenure with the Bulls, Hodges had become one of their "drivingforces" (his embraceable
black male role), but he also turned out to be a moral
force who insisted on racialjustice (an unembraceable
role).ll In this light, his dismissal from the Bulls in 1992
should not be attributed solely to his inJury.If he was
fit enough, after his inJury,to be offered a position on
an overseas basketball team, then his unembraceable
political advocacy would seem to have been implicated
in his dismissal as well.
The construction of Hodges as an unembraceable
black male began in December 1989, when Michael
Jordanwas described as a star who "deliversin real life,
too" (Verdi 1989). In that interview Jordan denounced
human greed and said that the world almost seemed to
have turnedbackwardin the wake of his success, since
he now had so much while so many still had so little.
This highly embraceable display of black male empathy
for the poor posed no threat to white privilege in the
nation. Neitherdid it requirehim to give away any of his
money (Verdi1989).As if following his caring example,
the Bulls donated a million dollars a few weeks later to
repair 100of the 130worn or damagedbasketballcourts
in poor Chicago neighborhoods.
There was no reason to anticipate any competition
for attention between Hodges and Jordanon the court,
but it did seem that Hodges had started to demand
superstar accountability off the court. In December
1990,he was heraldedin the ChtcagoTribuneas a black
male star who worked relentlessly in the AfricanAmerican communityto help provide opportunitiesfor innercity students (S. Smith 1990). In equally good form,
Jordan was lauded in June 1991 as the most valuable
image-makerin Chicago (Madigan1991).A female African American reporter described Jordan as peerless
and perfect, proclaimingthat "hebelongs to us [African
Americans]"(P. Smith 1991). She reported that European Americans frequently make middle-class African
Americans like herself "defendJesse Jackson"at professional social gatherings,but as she wrote, "noblack
person has ever been asked to defendMichaelJordan."12
Then quite suddenly, the peerless Michael Jordan
had no defense.l3AfricanAmericanBulls memberHorace Grantfollowed Hodges's example, giving time and
money to poor children in Chicago (Downey 1991). By
mid-June,media agents featuredHodges once againfor
his work speaking to inner-city youth on gangs and
drugs (Sullivan 1991). At the end of that month, he and
AfricanAmericanactor CliftonDavis positively but unembraceably challenged successful African American
HELAN E PAGE
105
celebrities like Jordan to "returnto their roots" and
contribute money to African American organizations
such as PUSH if they really wished to be viable role
models (Strausberg1991a).WithPUSHpresidentHenry
Williamson, Hodges had drawn up plans to launch a
programthat would demonstrate how effectively African American celebrity investments could get African
Americanyouth off the "cracktrack"and onto the right
track (Strausberg 1991c). In a noble effort to remind
AfricanAmericancelebrities of their fiscal obligations
to black communities, Hodges challenged the mainstream Americanbelief in personal rewardsfor individual success. In effect, he was threatening to use his
positive black male image in order to divert millions of
dollars of discretionaryblack male athletic income into
the development of AfricanAmericanyouth.
To assess the unembraceabilityof Hodges's threat,
we must returnto the precise moment when the Bulls
team was contemplating its White House visit. Jordan
was not the only Bull who had wondered why he should
go and be photographedwith the president. Sam Smith
of the Chicago Tribune (1991a, 1991c, 1991d)reported
that several team members had balked at the prospect
of visiting President Bush. Horace Grant another African American Bulls team member, embraceably asserted that the Bulls' owners were allowing a divisive
double standardto exist when most players had to go
while Jordan was allowed not to (Wulf 1991). When
Jordanalone chose not to attend, it was at a time when
Hodges was very busy coordinating a local self-help
program called Operation Unite-Save the Youth.
George Bush may have felt insulted by Jordan'sfailure
to make an appearance at the White House in October
1991, but Hodges, who did appear, committed a much
more unembraceableblack male act He publicly presented the president with a confrontational two-page
letter, urging him to show more concern for African
Americans.For the president, that meant absorbingtwo
insults from two black Bulls. Perhaps to help the president save face, most of the media agents who reprimandedJordanhushed up this incident.l4
In the long run,Hodges could not escape the public
humiliation that is always waiting to ambush dangerously unembraceableAfrican American men. In a December 1991 article, the Chicago Tribune's John Lucadamo reported that Hodges's suddenly estranged
wife, Clarita, was being released on bond, allegedly
havingtossed a jar of gasoline at him, along with two lit
matches. In February1992,when Hodges won the longdistance shooting contest for a thirdtime, the Tribunes
Sam Smith warned that Hodges might be in his final
season with the Bulls, giving no reason for the alleged
decision (1992a, 1992b).In April 1992,Hodges was publicly humiliatedagain when media agents reportedthat
he was being protected by a judge who had refused to
106
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AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
lift the restrainingorder that banned his estrangedwife
from their home (Lucadamo1992).
By mid-July,the Chicago Defender's Ken Green
(1992) reported that Hodges was leaving basketball
behind him and considering a civic or coaching role, in
addition to his volunteer work with OperationUniteSave the Youth. ManyAfrican American sportscasters
believe that Hodges's dismissal could have been predicted, given his embarassmentof the president and his
public demand of accountability on the part of black
celebrities. In committingsuch acts, Hodges was trying
to counter the controlled black male athlete image of
himself that whites consider embraceable. African
American sportscasters could see that his days were
numberedbecause, as one of them noted, "Hodgeshad
gone too far for white America."15 They came to believe
adamantlythat Bulls managers and mainstreammedia
agents quietly deemed Hodges unembraceable and removed him fromthe Bulls payrollby shaminghim in the
spotlight.
In comparisonto Hodges,Jordan'sirritatingefforts
to manage his own image ultimately proved less reprehensible froma mainstreampoint of view. WhileJordan
a certain degree of immunitybecause he was a
enXioyed
superstar,Hodges, a replaceable supporting actor, had
less. Unlike Jordan,Hodges proposed to channel black
celebrity wealth into poor black communities instead
of into the bankaccounts of those who rule white public
space. Further,Hodges's public challenge and Jordan's
failure to respond immediately made Jordan and other
black Bulls look bad. From the point of view of the
Bulls' owners, it must have seemed convenient that
Hodges had a troublesome inkury that could be blamed
for his sudden disappearancefrom the roster.
Synthesis and Conclusions
In the cases examined above, African American
men whose acts were declared positive by other blacks
were deemed negative and unembraceablefroma mainstream perspective. Wherever the public I/eye or national imagination resides in white public space, its
mainstreammediaagents learnto disregardthe identity
imperatives of marginalothers and resort to universal
claims as to what uwe Americans"or "we fans" will
tolerate and will not, what we" want to see and do not
want to see, what "we"are willing to embrace and what
"we" reject as unembraceable. When queried in the
lobbies of movie theaters, black moviegoers-who refer to this mainstream "we"in terms of what "they"
think, say, and do-recognize and critique the mainstream viewpoint of this dominant "we." "They"are
media agents, white people who run information-organizing institutions, and whitened minorities who sometimes get to work in them.l6African American media
consumers reserve their own self-referent 6'we"for a
subordinate and often unsuccessful black perspective
on the nation that is not regarded as essentialist or
monolithic but that is meant to be oppositional. They
can see that dominant media agents get to inform the
national audience as to how it might best interpretthe
irrepressible subjectivity of AfricanAmericanmen (D.
Smith 1990a, 1990b). White public space is the mobile
and nebulous location where mass mystiElcationcan be
reproducedby means of these instructions.l7
Following Brackette Williams,I have tried to demonstrate that the racialized and gendered information
inscribed in contemporary black male imagery is racially filtered through the whiteness of our national
seeing I/eye. Once filtered, it trains the national audience to suspiciously regardand viscerally react to African American men's physical features and patterns of
interaction. The racialized information in thematic
black male representations continues to pollute our
national communications environment.
African Americans are locked out of the media
production process to such an extent that their own
self-representational aesthetic is only just starting to
reemerge from its last repression after the groundbreaking work of black artists during the 1920s and
1930s.l8Technological barrierswork to continue white
male media dominance. Robert C. Johnson (1993:463464) suggests that AfricanAmericans are so adversely
affected by negative black male andblack female media
images that we often lose faith in our own capacity to
learn and competively excel in technical fields. In firm
agreement with bell hooks (1994:59-75), Johnson regrets the prevalent anti-intellectual stance of African
Americans,which he believes is largely a consequence
of the technological disruptionsand intrusions we have
experienced. Both argue that this stance can only impede our much-needed acquisition of theoretical tools
and technical skill. Carbyattributesour stance and our
susceptibility to media containmentto a lack of educational access and notes that "ifthe black student population continues to decline at the undergraduateand
graduatelevels, the currentblack intellectual presence
in academia, small as it is, will not be reproduced"
(1992:189).In this view, no cadre of black students is,
at present, skilled enough to usurp media control and
position themselves as technically competent black
critics of coxporate production.
Johnson attributes this state of affairs to the fact
that AfricanAmerica's exclusion from many academic
and technical fields cannot be remedied unless our
youth are encouraged to excel and are exposed at an
early age to adult African Americans in the arts, sciences, and technical fields. But how are adult African
Americans to provide those role models for our children? In effect, we are asking our children to guard
BLACKMALE IMAGERY/
against unembraceableblack imageryby competing for
highly technical jobs in the culture industry when the
white male media agents whose representationalpractices they must resist and counter tend to dominate
media bureaucracies that are largely owned by nonmedia corporate businesses with close ties to government
(Corea 1995:348-350;Herman1995:84,88, 92).
We must assume that governmentdoes not care to
develop this untappedblack potential since it has other
priorities, and we must admit, more ironically, that the
market success of black male imagery in the 1980s
indirectly implies the professional success of the white
male media agents who now organizesimilar programming in the 199Os.They had no problem getting the
advertising dollars needed to support the production
costs of their programs, in contrast to the studios of
Soul Beat television (Channel 37) in Oakland,California, where blacks are 43 percent of the population.l9
Advertiserson local and nationaltelevision wield powers of programmaticcontent control they could have
exercised against the proliferationof imagery contributing to black male containment.As Hermanpoints out,
corporations such as Phillip Morris,Procter and Gamble, General Motors, Sears, and RJRNabisco exercise
control by rarely sponsoring aprogramsthat seriously
criticize public policy, police practices, or more widely
sensitive corporate activities such as ecological degradation, the working of the military-industrialcomplex,
or corporate support of and benefits from ThirdWorld
tyrannies"(1995:85).
WhileAfricanAmericanmen must constantly contend with the frustration,humiliation,and anger generated by humiliating black male imagery, their outcry
and reasoned complaints against it do not necessarily
imply their complete resistance to mainstreamcontainment efforts. Opposing all authorized black male imagery could mean forgoing access to resources and
status privileges that media authorizationcan promise
a successful African American man. To avoid loss of
opportunity, resistance must be selective and compliance must be possible. Choosingto conformto behavior
prescribed by positive black male imagery could mean
aspiringto profit from embraceability,as ArthurSpears
(1992) explains, or it could mean trying to compensate
for the adverse effects of negative imagery.
In either or both casesS the attention of African
American men is effectively distracted and sometimes
consumed by their spectatorship in the constant and
regulated flow of black male imagery. Successful men
like Jordan or Hodges must frequently wonder how
their images are being charged in that electronic flow.
Under these conditions such men can be mesmerized
by the privileges and pleasures of their own embraceability and forget that it always comes with a cost: their
subjection to media surveillance. Under the threat of
HELAN E. PAGE
107
rigorous surveillance, successful African American
men may try to moderate or clarify their own behavior
in an attempt to make the public feel safe with their
particular black male image. Men like Emmett Till,
MedgarEvers, Malcolm X, MartinLutherKingJr., and
Fred Hampton were identified as unembraceable and
eradicatedfrom white public space because what they
said and did never made the white public feel safe
enough. Giventhe deceptive and illusionaryadvantages
of white public space, it matters when mainstreammedia agents makethem seern embraceable at a later date.
In an effort to protect their families or themselves,
successful AfricanAmerican men who play it safe will
not press too hard;but there are always a few who press
harderthan most against the barrierthat seeks to contain them. How such men might wish to invest the
material rewards of their success or how they might
wish to deploy their own image in white public space
can instantly turn their lucrative embraceability into
utterlydegradedunembraceability.A financialdecision
or a decision to adopt an image deemed atoo black"can
rapidlylead to public denouncement. Learningto negotiate the straits of media surveillance in an effort to
avoid containmentis a subtle mode of resistance among
successful African American men, but their navigational efforts sometimes fall apart.
For most media consumers, the media agents routine defense of white privilege is masked. Yet hope lies
in the fact that not all members of the mass audience
are duped. Some do closely examine black male imagery and see how it protects white privilege, diverting
public attention from the racial violence implicit in
routine white cultural practices, inhibiting black male
ascendancy by questioning the worthiness of African
Americanmen, andportrayingthose tnen as if they were
quite obvious objects of national blame. In hopeful
private conversations occuuing in kitchens, in barber
shops, at bookstores, or in the sharing of music and
food at black communityfestivals, some AfricanAmericans communicate among themselves a shared belief
that the personal mistakes or dissident stances of
prominent African American men should be as tolerated nationally as those of white male leaders and
heros. The absence of this national equalityof tolerance
is proof, they say, that an AfricanAmericanmanis never
relieved, no matter the extent of his success, from the
constant possibility and incessant fear that he might
one day become the focus of surveillance and rigorously portrayed as unembraceable regarded, in the
end, as some kind of good-for-nothingnigger.
Notes
Acknowledgments. Those who encouragedand challenged
this thought-workinclude Johnnetta B. Cole, Saidiya Hart-
108
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ANTHROPOLOGIST
AMERICAN
mann,ArleneVoiskiAvakian,John Bracey,Joy James,Arthur
Spears, Paul Mullins,Kamelaand Kole Rotimi-Heyward,Victoria Robertson, Azhar al Uqdah, and Usha Banerjee.As always, Brackette Williamshas been an importanttheoretical
influence. The article was strengthened by the indispensible
and caring critique of Arner7canAnthropologist reviewers
KarenSacks, Faye Harrison,and MargeryWolff,and benefits
from the influence of the Association of Black Anthropologists, known for its cutting-edge scholarship and debate. I
deeply appreciate the insights and assistance of Eric Clemin Boston, MA,and I dedimons of CBS affiliate WHDH-IvV,
cate the article to all the Page men, ancestral or embodied,
and to the memory of Paul Quincy Blair, James Humphrey,
Jack ChristopherToney, and KathurimaMwaria.
1. For papers on the media presented at the 1991 Annual
Meeting of the AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation in an
ABAsession called aTeachingas Praxis:Decolonizing Media
Representations of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the New
WorldOrder,"see the special issue TransformingAnthropology 3:1 (Maxwell and Buck 1992).
2. White public space exists where controlled access to
materialand immaterialresources is managedby those who
attempt to govern mass perception and the social construction of reality (Bergerand Luckmann1966;Postman 1985).It
is a highly politicized and shifting symbolic and material
dimensionin which the dominantracialgrouproutinelybenefits from the governmentalor corporate control that it exercises over information (Schiller 1989). It entails an array of
managed symbolic and material spaces that may be conquered, acquired, deployed, extended, or retained, partly
through coercion and partly through deception and seduction, but it more often endures through the routine bureaucratic productionand dissemination of mass-producedinformation (Page n.d.; Page and Thomas 1994). In white public
space, things of racialsignificance are made to seem fair,just,
legitimate, and simplistically obvious when the embodied
experiences of racial targets scream that they clearlyare not.
3. Carby anticipates my concept of white public space
when she advises us to reflect on the invention of whiteness
and blackness while tryingto make visible what is rendered
invisiblewhen viewed as the normativestate of existence: the
(white) point of space from which we tend to identify difference" (1992:193).
4. For important discussions of the oppositional gaze of
AfricanAmericanwomen see Bobo 1993,hooks 1993,Wallace
1993, and Wilson 1992. In another importantessay, Manthia
Diawara(1993) theorizes how the national gaze can be reconfiguredby blacks resisting spectatorship.
5. AfricanAmericanswould not regardNixon'sresignation
as a punishment commensurate with what would have been
imposed on a black man in Nixon's place. No such unembraceable black man would have been allowed to achieve
postresignation fame of any national or internationalscope,
as did Nixon. That is why Nixon's resignation is as much a
tactic of whiteness as Ollie North's acquittal. It cleansed a
soiled presidency but did not render him unembraceable.It
allowed him to sidestep impeachmentand preservean enduring heroic image of himself.
6. According to James Baldwin (1985), this exemplifies
how elite power can organize the suppression of scandal in
efforts to protect its investments in the marketplace.
7. Howard E. Rollins Jr. was nominated for an Oscar as
Best SupportingActor for his superior performanceas Coalhouse Walker in the acclaimed film Ragtime. Directed by
Milos Formanand released in 1981,this film, set in the early
1920s, portrayed an intelligent and musically gifted African
American man who pursued unto death the defense of his
indefensible rights. On viewing that film, AfricanAmericans
(raised as members of the working class) in my home community of St. Louis predicted that mainstreammedia agents
might nominate Rollins but would never give him the Oscar
he deserved. Weviewed him as heroic, but we also knew that
more conservative mainstream African Americans, like
Booker T. Washington in the film (as portrayed by Moses
Gunn), would construe him as one of those "crazyniggers"
white folks loved to kill.
8. The film's portrayal of Malcolm's foreign travel was
constrained mainly to his 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca. The
unembraceablefeatures of Malcolm'stwo journeys to Africa
in April-May1964 and in July-November 1964were not visually depicted. He visited Egypt,LebanonnSaudiArabia,Nigeria, Ghana,Morocco,andAlgeria,speaking to the state assemblies of numerousAfricannations.In Egypthe unembraceably
called for the Organizationfor African Unity to rally against
the United States before the World Court because of its
inhumane treatment of African Americans (Cone 1991:205209).
9. The black nationalisms of previous eras appear to have
been less shallow than the contemporaxystyle, which seems
to lack the activism and analytical concreteness of previous
articulations(see Davis 1992:320-323and Gilroy1992:305f.).
10. Manyof the ideas in this section and all of its quotations
are either paraphrasedor extracted from Paul Bass (1994),
who is not responsible for any interpretationnot his own.
11. According to Sam Smith 1989a, the New York Knicks
shouldfear Hodgesfor his incrediblethree-pointfield shooting.
12. The reporter's claim that she and the other black professionals she knew are often asked to defend Jesse Jackson
should not strike us as strange. European Americans frequently have asked me to defend him as well, especially
duringboth his presidentialcampaigns.This motivatedme to
investigate his representation in the media (Page 1991), and
it was through that study that I first became aware of the
media's black male containmentpractices.
13. Michael Jordan was well on the way to developing a
defense against being called on the carpet"by the likes of
Hodges in November 1992, when he and Nike embraceably
posed as rescuing the athletic and extracurricularprograms
in local schools planning to cut them (Jet Magazine1992a).
Jordan and Nike both presented checks for $100,000to Chicago schools at a press conference.
14. S. Smith 1991a.I could only find one majornews report
on this topic.
15. Eric Clemmons, sports reporter, CBS affiliate WHDHTV,Boston, MA,personal communication,March12, 1994.
16. Loewen 1971;Menchada1993;Sacks 1994.
17. Things can be made to seem as they are not in white
public space. For instance, tourists can be exposed to Carib-
BLACKMALE IMAGERY
/ HELANE. PAGE 109
bean countries throughleisure tours runby Americantourist
agencies, but they may be scheduled to visit only the most
racially sanitized Jamaicanlocations, shielding tourists from
unembraceable Jamaican blackness (Bolles 1992; Alan
Swedlund, personal communication, April 2, 1994; Thomas
and Pi-Sunyern.d.).
18. Cripps 1993;Gaines 1993;Green 1993;Klotman1993.
19. Chris Thompson and Saul Bromberger(1996) discuss
Soul Beat in an Oaklandnews article portrayingthe Africans
United for Self-Help(AUSH)and one of its organizers,Chuck
Johnson, as unembraceable. Thompson strives to intexpret
the group'spolitical agenda for a white mainstreamaudience
and contain its growingpolitical influence. He acknowledges
that Soul Beat was recently saved from bankruptcy when
local blacks gave more than $40,000"in an emergencystation
drive-by donation campaign. Folks from all walks of life
responded because the station's evening talk show gives a
voice to black people who are astarvingto discuss community
problems."But Thompsonreveals his white public I/eye when
he cynically describes AUSHas a group of paramilitarylobbyists whose members represent the black underclassnand
who won't be stockpiling shotguns or caucusing with Chairman MaoXbecause they arejust "toobusy lobbyingthe school
board."Writingat a time when the MercuryNews (San Jose)
and U.S. Representative Maxine Watershave recently documented the persistent black claim that federal agencies were
involved in supplying crack cocaine to black communities
across the United States, Thompsonadmits that Sout Beat is
the first media outlet since the decline of a prominentblack
newspaper to allow Oakland's black community to talk to
itself, but he argues that since the station's talk show Ulacks
a call screener," its topics occasionally stray onto bizarre
white genocide conspiracies."The MercuryNews stories and
a treasure trove of supportingdocuments are available withoutchangeontheWorldWideWebatwww.sjmercury.com/drugs.
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