Developing a More Postive Image of Ourselves

Developing a More Positive Image of Ourselves

When I was growing up in Mississippi, there was a radio and subsequently, a television program called Amos ‘n’ Andy. The Amos ‘n’ Andy program began in the 1920s and ran rather successfully until the late 1950s and into the1960s. The radio and television programs were immensely popular with both black and white Americans.
However, while the program might have been popular with the black American community, and it was popular in my home as well, it was not very flattering to people of the black American community. In fact, it was downright demeaning to people of the black American community, but apparently because it offered black people the opportunity to hear themselves on the radio and see themselves on television, it was deemed acceptable.

The program encountered its first protest when a minister W.J. Walls, an AME bishop, wrote a letter to the Pittsburg Courier complaining of how the program was demeaning to members of the black American community. The Pittsburg Courier continued to run protests against the program and in 1954 the radio program was cancelled. Subsequently, members of the black American community serving in the U.S. military also took up the protest regarding the images of black people that were being conveyed to foreign nations. And in the 1960s the even television program also was cancelled. I have cited the historical account of the Amos ‘n’ Andy program above because I believe that there is a real danger that members of the black American community are currently falling into a similar mindset of accepting the same genre of misguided and biased television and other media portrayals of members of the black American community. These current portrayals may appear humorous and even harmless, but so did the Amos ‘n’ Andy program generations ago.

When writing my book Generations; A Commentary of the African Immigrants and their American Descendants, several years ago, I wrote a specific chapter on the concept of “Affirming Myths.” In that chapter I characterized an affirming myth as one having the potential to serve as motivation for an assortment of movements and events. In fact, affirming myths have long been recognized for the influence they have and their potential to motivate a people to move forward.
In another chapter of the book of Generations, I wrote that contrary to the notion, held by some, that it is okay for members of the black American community to use racial slurs against each other, so long as they are only used in the presence of other members of the black American community.
My response to such an errant assertion is that it is absolutely untrue. The use of racial slurs within the black American community is perhaps ten times more damaging than its use by persons outside of the black American community. The harmful effect of our use of such negative stereotypes is that they undermine the motivation of our children. Use of such stereotypes can be further argued that their frequent use has had the net effect of building a self-defeating barrier to the aspirations of black Americans. Also, there is reason to believe that the socioeconomic mobility of the black American community has been directly and adversely affected by the undermining properties of such negativism.

In much the same manner as the use of street language during a job interview can prevent one from getting the job, the use such negative stereotypes can prevent one from moving to a higher sense of self-esteem. The sociological paradigm of negativism works on the same principal as the adage that “misery loves company.” In the same manner that those in misery will seek to surround themselves with persons of similar circumstances, so do the discouraged and down-trodden love company. The seeds of such discontent and discouragement are sown daily into the hearts and minds of young black Americans by our denigration of each other. Over the last generation alone, the parent-to-children conversations of too many black American families have had an injurious effect upon the way black Americans youths view themselves. If we are to succeed at attaining socioeconomic parity by the twenty-second generation, the black American community must work ceaselessly to disengage itself from practices that cause injury, and develop appropriate remedies to assuage the damage already done.