Black Women's Portrayals on Reality Television: The New Sapphire

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Description

This book critically analyzes the portrayals of Black women in current reality television. Audiences are presented with a multitude of images of Black women fighting, arguing, and cursing at one another in this manufactured world of reality television. This perpetuation of negative, insidious racial and gender stereotypes influences how the U.S. views Black women. This stereotyping disrupts the process in which people are able to appreciate cultural and gender difference. Instead of celebrating the diverse symbols and meaning making that accompanies Black women's discourse and identities, reality television scripts an artificial or plastic image of Black women that reinforces extant stereotypes. This collection's contributors seek to uncover examples in reality television shows where instantiations of Black women's gendered, racial, and cultural difference is signified and made sinister.

Reviews

Black Womens Portrayals on Reality Television: The New Sapphire presents a collection of scholarship that convincingly asserts that we are not yet done with questions of representation and stereotype as it pertains to the imagistic treatment of Black women. Reading across the often complex and controversial terrain of reality television, the authors display interpretive prowess as they take on issues such as resurrection of traditional stereotypes, potency of 'ratchetness,' and respectability policing dilemmas. The representational plight of Black women is ably balanced here with attention to themes of transformation, agency, and possibility. -- Robin R. Means Coleman, University of Michigan
This book is an engaging discussion of reality television. It is a pleasure to observe how young communication scholars have come together to critically analyze Black women's various roles in reality television. What is especially appealing is the variety of topics covered and the direction it hasgiven us: future research in this area must move toward examining viewers' responses to the identified portrayals of Black women. This impressive collectionis likely to revive interest in researching the impact of portrayals of Blacks and Blackwomen in the media. Interdisciplinary in nature, the analysis is sure to become a resource for scholars, researchers, and graduate students inmedia studies, communications,sociology, andwomen's studies. I look forward to assigning Black Womens Portrayals on Reality Television as required reading in my African American Issues in Communication course. -- Carolyn Stroman, Howard University

Author Bio

Donnetrice C. Allison is associate professor of communication studies and Africana studies at Stockton University.