421695 JOUXXX10.1177/1464884911421695Tyree et al.

Journalism

Article

Journalism

Representations of (new) Black

13(4) 467­–482
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
masculinity:  A news-making co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1464884911421695
case study jou.sagepub.com

Tia CM Tyree
Howard University, USA

Carolyn M Byerly
Howard University, USA

Kerry-Ann Hamilton
Howard University, USA

Abstract
Representations of Black masculinity in popular culture remain a focal point of social
science and cultural studies research. Yet, research shows that Black men are negatively
portrayed in news stories. Therefore, when a series on Black men, conceived and
carried out primarily by a Black journalistic team, was published in a national agenda-
setting newspaper, The Washington Post, it was important to question if Black masculinity
was represented in this same light or represented in other, more positive ways. The
purpose of this research was to investigate whether the series succeeded in reshaping
the image of Black men and to what extent it exhibited Jackson and Dangerfield’s five
factors of Black masculine positionality. The study found that slightly more than 50
percent of the stories presented a counter-stereotype, showing complexity in Black
men’s lives. However, some stories left Black men ‘voiceless on the sidelines’. The study
illustrates the difficulties even a well-planned series can face when trying to break out
of conventional reporting tendencies.

Keywords
Black masculinity, Black men, news, newspaper, stereotypes, The Washington Post

Corresponding author:
Tia CM Tyree, Howard University, 525 Bryant Street, NW, Washington, DC 20059, USA
Email: ttyree@howard.edu
468 Journalism 13(4)

The social construction of Black masculinity

The representation of Black masculinity in popular culture has been the focal point of
much social science and cultural studies research over the years. Long before Barack
Obama’s historic presidential campaign put the first Black man into the White House in
2009, scholars sought to situate Black men’s identity, status, and experience within a
broader understanding of race and gender in American society. Historically, most US
news stories tended to negatively stereotype Black men as criminals, drug addicts, der-
elicts, and other kinds of losers (Stabile, 2006). When a series on Black men, conceived
and carried out primarily by an African American journalistic team emerged in a national
agenda-setting newspaper, we asked whether Black masculinity would be represented in
this same light, or whether the series would offer counter-stereotypes that present Black
men in more positive ways.
The series of 19 stories appeared in The Washington Post under the title ‘Being a
Black Man: At the Corner of Progress or Peril’, between 2 June and 31 December 2006
(Washington Post Staff, 2007). Conceptualized and carried out by a primarily African
American team of writers and editors, articles featured portraits of African American
men from a range of socioeconomic, occupational, and experiential backgrounds. All the
men lived in the Washington metropolitan area. In the planning for a full five years
before its publication, the series, according to its originators, ‘did not want to treat [Black
men] as a problem in need of a solution’, or ‘to simply tackle their “issues” once again,
and leave them voiceless, on the sidelines, a quotation here, a quotation there, their lives
filtered through the prisms of experts’ (Merida, 2007: viii). Rather, the series sought to
‘absorb the experiences of Black men and allow them to be seen and heard in uncommon
ways – their challenges explained, their complexities examined, their lives reflected
upon’ (Merida, 2007: viii). The series sought to use Black men’s narratives to tell their
own stories about life, love, hardships, and triumphs. In order to provide a factual frame-
work for the series, the Post collaborated with the Kaiser Family Foundation1 and
Harvard University to conduct a detailed scientific poll among the general public on the
subject of African American men in US society; results were reported in the first article
of the series. In all, 43 individuals – writers, researchers, photographers, editors –
contributed to the series’ production, which won numerous awards, including a Peabody.
The research presented here sought to learn whether the Post’s series succeeded in
reshaping the image of African American men in this high profile series of articles by
offering counter-stereotypes not usually seen in US news media. Analyzing media text is
important, because the United States has a specific history of African American and
White relations shaped by slavery, civil rights movements and other social and economic
challenges. America’s media system is primarily owned and controlled by Whites, and
media representations of African Americans, especially men, often come under criticism
for being stereotypical or uncharacteristic (Campbell, 2005). Race organizes the discur-
sive terms by which US moral, social and cultural boundaries are visualized and main-
tained, and with the saturation of media in US culture, race acts as a signifier and allows
those who transgress those boundaries to be ‘visible and representable’ (Gray, 1997: 86).
The Post’s series received not only critical acclaim but widespread visibility through
its multimedia online (and fully downloadable) postings and, by 2007, in a paperback
Tyree et al. 469

book, complete with all of the stories, explanatory material, and original photographs.
Our interest in examining the series focused specifically on Black masculinity, how it
was constructed, figured into story lines and possibly advanced counter-stereotypes not
usually seen in news coverage.

Literature review
Stereotypes of the Black man historically
Race-related scholarship is replete with both theoretical and empirical work on the ste-
reotypes of African American people. Stereotypes are, according to Gandy, ‘the short-
hand rules we use for categorizing people’ (1998: 53). After we have categorized people,
we shape our beliefs about how they behave based on those categories and what they
mean to us (1998: 53). Bogle’s (2004) work has been foundational in identifying and
naming some of the more common early stereotypical figures in US history, many dating
from slavery days. Bogle’s five main stereotypes (as quoted in Hall, 1997: 251) include
the Toms (good Negroes, loyal to their White masters), Coons (the no-account Negroes,
lazy, subhuman), Tragic Mulatto (mixed-race person, a divided racial inheritance),
Mammy (prototype house servant, nurturing, loyal to the masters), and the Buck (strong,
raging, hypersexual male). These figures have been seen in stories, films, artwork, and
other media for nearly two centuries – instances of what Hall calls ‘signifying practices’
that are central to the representation of racial difference (1997: 257).
Bogle noted that these basic stereotypes have been seen most often in film through the
decades:

During the 1920s, audiences saw their toms and coons dressed in the guise of plantation jesters.
In the 1930s, all the types were dressed in servants’ uniforms. In the early 1940s, they sported
entertainers’ costumes. In the late 1940s, and the 1950s, they donned the gear of troubled
problem people. In the 1960s, they appeared as angry militants … But at the heart beneath the
various guises, there lurked the familiar types. (2004: 288)

Contemporary stereotypes of Black men

The problem with stereotyping, in Hall’s analysis, is that it essentializes difference, rein-
forces power imbalances, and helps to maintain both the social and symbolic order
(1997: 258). While racial stereotypes pervade all popular culture (represented particu-
larly by mass media), the news is a genre that has contributed to the reinforcement of
stereotypes in specific ways. Historically, the US news has overemphasized criminality
and failure by Black men and underemphasized their struggle and social contributions
(Hunt, 2005; Kerner, 1988; Stabile, 2006). Such stereotypical reporting leads to what
might be understood as a contemporary stereotype of the Black man as criminal, pimp,
drug dealer, irresponsible father, and loser. Some of these tendencies result from a jour-
nalistic workforce that has remained largely White through the decades, despite affirma-
tive action policies that US newsrooms adopted from the early 1970s. In its 2008 survey – 40
years after Kerner – the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), which
470 Journalism 13(4)

monitors employment in the print industry, found that only 13.5 percent of the 52,600
full-time journalists were racial minorities – barely any change over the previous decade.
But research also suggests that even reporting by non-White reporters cannot be assumed
to contain a minority perspective. Reporters of all racial backgrounds are socialized by
the dominant news culture, so those at majority-owned (i.e. White) news companies may
also conform to the values of those companies through a process of socialization
(Campbell, 2005: 140).
Hall (1997) noted that the construct of Black masculinity as historically (and, we
would add, currently) stereotyped actually embodies two concepts, one racial and the
other sexual. Therefore, in reading across the various kinds of texts – advertising, news
accounts, photographs, film, and others – there emerges a certain inter-textuality, a
regime of meaning with one image summoning up the echoes associated with previous
images (1997: 232). Hall’s exploration of this regime is a historic one, tracing the
moments in which the West encounters the African – an encounter of ‘civilization’ and
‘savagery’ in which the discourse that would arise for centuries would be binary and
oppositional. In fact, the ‘otherness’ of Black masculinity, expressed in degrading stereo-
types of the Savage, Coon, the Uncle, the Grandfather, the Mulatto as examined and
named by Bogle (2001) and others, has enlarged the academic vocabulary and theory of
African American studies.

Conceptual and theoretical framework

The present research draws on phenomenology associated with the social construction of
reality and from critical race theory associated with the mediated representation of race
and gender. Gandy (1998) applied critical race theory to examinations of news (and other
media) to discern how imagery and messaging play a role in reinforcing unequal race
relations, suggesting that racial minorities can benefit from gaining greater control over
news (and other media) processes. With respect to the present study, the Gandy hypoth-
esis is particularly relevant since the series was conceived and carried out primarily by
journalists of African American identity. Since their efforts occurred within a prominent
White-owned news organization, were they able to exert authority over the direction and
perspective of the series? Critical race theory offers the analytical means to examine and
weigh the evidence, as found in the content of the stories.
More recent work by critical race scholars Jackson and Dangerfield (2004) cites the
need for greater attention to absences in Black male representations. They note the lack
of attention to certain types of representations of Black males in academic literature,
namely those of ‘married, middle-class, educated, spiritual Black men, who are goal-
driven, employed, competent and non criminal’. These, the authors assert, could offset
the common representation of Black men as ‘violent/criminal, sexual and incompetent/
uneducated individuals’ (2004: 197). Regardless of the existing social and media repre-
sentations, the scholars observe that Black men do define their own masculinity within
their cultural contexts, something that varies in relation to an individual’s positionality,
maturity, and other factors.
Representation is critical to understanding how and why images of African Americans
appear in US news coverage. In Entman’s study of television news coverage of African
Tyree et al. 471

Americans, he explains why representation is central to understanding the phenomenon.

He notes:

Representation is problematic in a race conscious culture. However implicitly, news messages

over time construct comparisons of whites and blacks. So, when covering stories about black
individuals, journalists may not merely be ‘representing’ a single newsworthy event in which a
black happens to be involved. Journalists may also be selecting exemplars that will represent
the category of ‘black Americans’ and be compared to whites’ images of themselves. Reality is
problematic not only because news stories inevitably select only some aspects of reality and
leave out others. More importantly, over time, the specific realities depicted in single stories
may accumulate to form a summary message that distorts social reality. Each in a series of news
stories may be accurate, yet the combination may yield false cognitions within audiences.
(Entman, 1994: 509)

In the present study, we sought to determine the relevance of Jackson and Dangerfield’s
five factors they believe determine Black masculine positionality, which are struggle,
recognition, independence, achievement, and community (2004: 204). In this configura-
tion, masculinity is conceived as a behavioral manifestation, with the five factors serving
to explain how varied masculinities are enacted. Jackson and Dangerfield denote and
operationalize these five factors as follows:

• Struggle is the collection of actions taken to fulfill self-observed conscious desires

and needs.
• Masculinity is based on how others recognize and validate a Black male’s behav-
ior, which is he will either continue or discontinue based on the responses of
‘others’.
• Independence is the path Black men take to find ‘self-authorization, autonomy
and freedom of self-expression’.
• Achievement is centered on personal and collective goals (i.e. the ones a Black
man sets for himself andthose set to enhance the community).
• Community relates to the fact that Black men are linked to others, not only through
their local neighborhoods, but also through the diasporic ‘family’. These relation-
ships validate how Black men’s masculinities are constructed, validated, and posi-
tioned (Jackson and Dangerfield, 2004: 205–7).

Jackson also refined the concept of self-authorization or assertion of one’s self in

a process of becoming independent. He noted that scholars tend to marry Black mas-
culinities and independence in their discourses when ‘they evoke notions of resist-
ance to dependence, control of situations, and ultimately deviation’ (2006: 138). The
manifestations of a male’s struggle for independence show themselves in a number of
ways such as ‘an unwillingness to commit himself to a relational partner, while a
man’s masculine assertion of independence may be related to self-development’
(2006: 138).
Jackson and Dangerfield recognize that those who have been historically marginal-
ized share an insider perspective with respect to the intersections of gender, race and
other characteristics. They recognize this as a fundamental tenet of standpoint theory,
472 Journalism 13(4)

and offer that knowledge gained from one’s standpoint is valuable to reshaping represen-
tation (2004: 221).
Neal’s (2006) more recent work tracks along this same logic by offering a construct
for a ‘new Black man’, as someone who is shaped by the crises and challenges of
today’s society as he experiences these. The new Black man, Neal argues, will arise to
become the man of his time. Neal’s construct has the new Black man rejecting Black
patriarchy, homophobia, and the gangster life and even working more closely with
Black feminists to find their voices and strength. Neal says the new Black man is also
the:

Strong Black Man … the flagship product of nearly 400 years of lived experiences by Black
men in North America, Black men who in the process of resisting enslavement, economic
exploitation, random and calculated violence, and a host of other afflictions that usually befall
those with a foot on their neck, created a functional myth on which the Black nation could be
built. (2006: 21)

Neal looks to 19th-century leaders like Martin Delaney (the father of Black national-
ism), Frederick Douglass (writer and abolitionist), W.E.B. DuBois (Harvard intellec-
tual), and Marcus Garvey who ‘spoke truth to power about racism and Black
disenfranchisement’ (2006: 21) for a prototype of today’s new Black man. These men
were gifted leaders who opened doors for others, who articulated agendas for change,
and who embraced the Black family.
Taylor (1992) coined the term the politics of recognition and maintains ‘others’ must
recognize and identify the authentic ‘I’ and give permission for it to move forward with
a given behavior (as cited in Jackson, 2006). By extension, the ‘other’ works to recognize
and validate what is authentic (Bordo, 1989; Fanon, 1967; Grosz, 1994; hooks, 2003).
Males tend to alter their behavior if they might suffer a social penalty for it, which is
sometimes viewed as worse than some other types of punitive repercussions (Jackson,
2006). In the present study, recognition was viewed as an important component of a
counter-stereotype.
Informed by the conceptual and theoretical work outlined above, the present study
also considered Gandy’s (1998) assertion that African Americans who are in greater con-
trol of the message-making apparatus can move beyond the staid stereotypes that have
characterized Black men in the news upto now. This assertion forms the study’s primary
research question.

Method
Research goals
The study sought to answer whether the Post’s series, which was conceived and pro-
duced by a predominately African American team of journalists,2 advanced a more posi-
tive counter-stereotype to the traditional stereotypes (e.g. Coon, Uncle Tom, and Tragic
Mulatto) that have endured in US popular culture (including the news), and even the
more contemporary stereotypes (e.g. criminal, pimp, drug dealer, irresponsible father,
and loser) that have permeated today’s popular culture, particularly hip hop.
Tyree et al. 473

Operationalizing key terms

A positive counter-stereotype would be one that portrays the Black male with some com-
plexity; for example, with his life connected to a broader community, and his personal
struggles and triumphs associated with the longer journey of Black history. A counter-
stereotype of Black masculinity would reconstitute and rehabilitate the image of the
Black man that has dominated news and other media. Traditional stereotypes, as studied
and defined by Bogle (2004), may be traced to days of slavery, but are still present in
today’s popular culture. For example, the comical character of the Coon smiles and jokes
in the face of his adversity, the Uncle Tom aligns himself with Whites in authority, and
the Tragic Mulatto is the hapless, powerless mixed-race individual. All of these carica-
tures are essentially powerless to stand up for themselves in the face of a White system
that has oppressed them over time. The more contemporary stereotypes of the criminal,
pimp, drug dealer, and loser emerge in modern times both through mainstream popular
culture and in hip hop culture. Collins (2004) postulates that the recording, film, and
television industries that formulated and perpetuate these figures are huge profit-driven
industries run mainly by White men.

Procedures
The study examined all 19 stories included in the ‘Being a Black Man’ series, focusing
analysis on the texts of stories, while excluding analysis of accompanying photographs.
The rationale for not examining photographs was that the number and choice of these
graphics differed within the various media formats in which the series was published,
which might actually change how the text was read and interpreted by the Post’s news-
paper readership – the original and genuine audience of the stories. Analyzing the photo-
graphs within the book would not be consistent with the original content of the series,
and therefore, they were not included in the study to ensure our analysis focused on the
information offered to the public at the actual time of publication.
This study only focused on the written (i.e. textual) content that was uniformly avail-
able for public consumption. Stories were examined using textual analysis (a systematic
qualitative approach to interpret the meaning that texts such as news stories represent), as
well as a process of close critical readings to discover relationships between themes and
story lines. Textual analysis, according to Fairclough (2003), seeks to determine the mean-
ing in language – individual words, idiomatic expressions, and other phrases. In the pre-
sent study, we utilized a thematic chart to allow passages within the texts to be analyzed
around traditional, contemporary, and counter-stereotype concepts as these occurred in
the stories. Data were entered into and processed using an Excel spreadsheet in order to
obtain frequencies where possible and to thematically organize data thematically.
We also noted the occupational and personal roles of the Black men, central issue (or
problem) in the story, whether the central figure had stated links to the Black community,
whether the central figure exhibited ‘self-authorization’, whether the central figure
received recognition from others, whether the central figure (or others quoted) resembled
an established Black man stereotype, and whether the main character exhibited independ-
ence or was in a struggle as identified by Jackson and Dangerfield. Other journalistic
474 Journalism 13(4)

elements were identified during the analysis, such as whether the lead characterized the
remainder of the story, and whether the story leaned toward ‘progress’ or ‘peril’ – the
series’ subtitle.
The analysis of the stories was a collaborative process among all three researchers.
While textual analysis is an interpretive (qualitative) method and does not make use of a
statistical measurement for reliability in the way that content analysis (a quantitative
method) does, the researchers (two Black, one White) wanted to obtain close agreement
on their assessment of story content, particularly with respect to racial references and
meanings. After this systematic analysis was completed, the authors considered findings
within the contexts of individual stories in the series. This was achieved through close
readings of the texts to determine how dominant themes manifested themselves within
specific story lines.

Findings
Story themes
The analysis determined that most stories incorporated familiar themes associated with
the enduring stereotypes of Black men; for example, Black men in the penal system, lack
of access to wealth, absentee fatherhood, health disparities among Black men, unem-
ployment, the scarcity of Black men for Black women, and wrongful arrests. Three of the
19 stories had Black male main characters within stereotypical roles, which were Oreo,
baby daddy, and gangsta.
Five stories had the main Black characters in stereotypical situations, including one
being mistaken for a criminal and another being released after being falsely accused of a
crime. ‘In and Out of the Game’, was a story about a Black man who is a criminal, drug
addict, and an absentee father. He was said to be a part of the ‘scorned yet emulated
class’. His life was labeled as one in ‘peril’. The same story chronicled accounts of other
Black men who were criminals, unemployed, drug dealers, and addicts.
Six stories had Black male characters in the stereotypical roles of unemployed
worker, deadbeat father, baby daddy, and gangsta. For example, in ‘The Meaning of
Work’, a 25-year-old Black man who is chronically unemployed in Washington, DC, is
said to be ‘living for the moment in his girlfriend’s apartment, surrounded by nothing of
his own’. The story follows his failed attempts to find a job. In the story ‘Dad Redefined’,
the baby daddy and deadbeat father stereotypes emerge. The 27-year-old Black male
central to the story is said to have impregnated a 19-year-old woman, whom he ‘didn’t
consider marrying’ after he discovered she was pregnant. The journalist’s voice is heard
in an admonishment that this young man will learn that ‘fatherhood isn’t a job with a
time clock where you punch in, punch out’. And, again, in a foreshadowing that:

This is going to be hard, because Wagoner [the Black man] has struggled with stability and
achievement. Started high school, dropped out. Worked Job Corps. Worked at Target. Worked
at a storage company. Worked as a driver for the handicapped. Worked construction. The
longest job he has held was six months, maybe seven. He has a record after beating up a guy,
and now it’s even harder to find work.
Tyree et al. 475

In the same story, the writer also tells the story of Jerome Lee, a 38-year-old school
counselor, who was not present for a lot of his son’s life because of being in prison for
armed robbery. In this story, the writer locates familiar stereotypes of the absentee father
and criminal in a single life.
Eleven of the 19 stories in the series met the Post’s goal of representing Black men
in ‘uncommon ways’; that is, in ways that align with the study’s conceptualization of a
new Black masculinity central to a positive counter-stereotype. These stories cast Black
men in positive personal roles: as devoted fathers, as leaders in intellectual, business,
and spiritual contexts; and as contributing members with strong ties to their Black
communities.
In the ‘Special Agent’, the main character represents an atypical role for a Black man
in the mass media. He was an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In
‘The Wrong Man’ story, the central character avows that ‘I’m a hairdresser … I’m a
veteran. I have a mortgage, a business, a Web site, a clean record, a sound reputation.’
While positive counter-stereotypes dominate both stories, these might have been missed
because of story leads that introduce the Black men first as criminals but then provide
other information in the story bodies that advances their characters and offers details of
their true identities, lives, careers, and families. For example, the story lead for ‘Special
Agent’ tells of the main character buying a ‘kilo of cocaine’ in a parking lot. The police
interrupt the purchase. He is pulled from the car, put on the ground and handcuffed. He
is said to have surveyed the crowd of White onlookers and imagined them thinking ‘Just
another lowlife black guy dealing drugs. Good riddance to the bad rubbish.’ The reporter’s
tenth paragraph reveals the main character is a FBI agent.

Occupational roles
Occupational roles (i.e. those defining work lives) of the main characters fell into four
categories: professional, student, blue collar, and other. Ten men out of a total 19 in pri-
mary or central roles in the stories occupied professional roles, including several federal
government employees, a chief executive officer of a technology consulting firm, the
president of the Urban League, administrator of a community center, and a religious
leader. There were two students, and three blue collar workers (a hairdresser, mass transit
operator, and a part-time recreation center worker). Four people (a musician, an activist,
and two unemployed) fell into the category ‘other’ as their occupational roles could not
easily be placed in traditional occupational niches. Secondary characters in stories were
also important to development of the narrative. Of the 16 men in this role, 11 were pro-
fessionals, including a physician, professor, political leader, academic advisor, university
dean, and writer. Only one secondary character was unemployed.

Personal roles
In total, 36 different instances of personal roles were noted in the stories. Two stories –
‘Dad Redefined’ and ‘Special Agent’ – had the most personal roles with five each. While
10 other stories had either one or no roles listed for the main characters, the most fre-
quently seen roles were of fathers and grandson or sons.
476 Journalism 13(4)

When the main character’s personal role was a father, two of the three stories had a
main character who did not succeed in overcoming his struggle. However, from a holistic
prospective, two of the three stories provided a story that ultimately noted progress for
Black men. In one story, the father who was an activist died in spite of his fight against
cancer, and the young father who struggled dealing with growing up with his absentee
father was dedicated to not doing the same for his son. However, his struggle to find a
job, obtain a car, to own a home, and maintain a normal relationship with his son all
plagued his ability to live a successful life. In the story titled ‘Young Apprentice’, the
main focus is a father’s attempt to prepare his son for the challenges of a race-con-
scious world. The main character and his wife are college educated and recently sepa-
rated, but both are dedicated to making sure their son beats the negative ‘odds’ facing
young Black men.
The role most seen was that of son and grandson, with three stories focused on Black
males who were sons and one focused on a Black male who was a grandson. In these
personal roles, all main characters succeeded in their struggles, and three of the four
stories reported were categorized as being progressive, meaning the stories advanced a
positive counter-stereotype within the media. Within the story ‘A Path All His Own’, a
Black Republican working in the Bush Administration who was born in Montgomery,
Alabama, is called the ‘unblack Black man’ (Washington Post Staff, 2007: 60). He over-
came being abandoned as a small child and, by most accounts, is a successful profes-
sional with a PhD who still struggles with personal issues such as dating and connecting
with his Black heritage. Ultimately, his grandmother and others from his hometown are
proud of him, despite his challenges and behaviors assimilating into White America and
facing a possible future problem finding ‘his way back home’ (2007: 77).
The story lines associated with sons varied. In one story, scholar athletes tried to be
the best students in their school; in another, a wrongfully accused hairdresser gained his
freedom from prison; and in another, an unemployed day laborer sought to find a stable
job. All of the stories depicted Black males who were affected by either negative social
or familial pressures, but who nevertheless worked to overcome their problems and
move forward toward success. One such article told the story of two high school students
who were both ‘wooed by an elite private’ school in Maryland, but whose fathers felt
they could better stay and serve as positive ‘examples’ for other young Black men in their
own inner city high school in Washington, DC. They met the challenge, and both fin-
ished high school as the valedictorian and salutatorian of their graduating class. In con-
trast, the story ‘The Meaning of Work’ highlighted a 25-year-old man, the son of a single
woman and a father who was ‘only a vague neighborhood presence’. With his mother
unable to ‘prepare herself for life’, the man seemed to lack the necessary tools, too. After
a number of unsuccessful attempts to obtain and keep employment in the low-paying
field of manual labor, he obtained a job moving furniture and boxes in government build-
ings, which for him had ‘potential’.

Recognition and independence

In coding for the element of recognition, researchers identified instances of the main
character receiving some form of affirmation or other positive acknowledgment from
Tyree et al. 477

others. Eleven (58%) of the 19 central characters received such recognition from others.
Three received none, and five were deemed not applicable. Recognition came from a
variety of sources including the media, family, supervisors and the community. Eleven of
the central characters or 58 percent demonstrated independence in the stories.
A close critical reading of these stories revealed an apparent relationship between
receiving recognition and exhibiting independence, as demonstrated in the finding that
nine (80%) of the central characters demonstrated independence as well as received
recognition from others. This relationship of recognition to independence was seen in
several stories. In ‘For the Love of Ballou’, the two main characters were standout ath-
letes and stellar students, anomalies at Ballou Senior High, which has had a ‘reputation
as one of Washington’s worst and most dangerous’. The two made a pact to excel and
defy the odds. One of the students said, ‘My whole thing is to change the stereotype of
people in Southeast… We wanted people to say that good, intelligent, athlete students
come out of Ballou.’ Southeast Washington, a predominantly African American quad-
rant of the city, is infamous for poverty and high crime rates. Even so, the two straight-A
students were determined to be role models and tutored their football teammates, many
of whom had nearly failing grades. Their coach credited the duo for raising the aca-
demic performance of their teammates during their high school years. In addition to
becoming valedictorian and salutatorian, they were also ranked as best dressed and
most attractive by their student peers. The story was indicative of progress and triumph
over the struggles and obstacles of these two young Black men, thereby advancing a
positive counter-stereotype.
The factors of recognition and independence were seen together again in the story ‘A
Chance To Get Into The Room’. A Black man struggled to land his company, Enlightened
Inc., a multimillion dollar contract from the District of Columbia government. In this
‘fledging Black firm’, his team of Black entrepreneurs worked 18-hour days, left the
office at 4 a.m. and returned at 8 a.m. to tackle the task. In 2003, Enlightened Inc. was
ranked by Entrepreneur magazine as the country’s ‘best and brightest’ company. In 2004,
Inc. magazine named the company among ‘the 500 fastest growing companies in the
country’. The main character demonstrated self-authorization. While some, including his
former boss at MCI, perceived him as ‘overly conscious of race’, the main character was
determined to use his awareness of racial discrimination as a motivator. Acknowledging
that minority firms had to work substantially harder, he maintains, ‘We have to fight for
every job we get. Once you start sitting back, relaxing, you lose the edge.’ The company
ultimately got the multimillion dollar contract.

Discussion and conclusion

This research showed that the majority of the stories – slightly more than half – met the
Post’s goal of representing Black men in ‘uncommon ways’ – what this research concep-
tualized as a counter-stereotype. The study demonstrates that when Black journalists
assume control over production within a White-owned news enterprise, they have at least
the potential to more accurately represent Black men’s lives in longer, explanatory jour-
nalism, such as this series represents. The series thus illustrates the potential of what
Entman (1994) argued journalists should do in their news-making process. Entman
478 Journalism 13(4)

makes a case that it is ‘legitimate for journalists to consider reshaping news practices to
make images of Blacks more complicated’ (1994: 517). Entman also argues that single
stories involving African Americans may be accurate one at a time, but when these sto-
ries accumulate they construct a ‘distorted impression of Blacks as a social category’ and
work to ‘obscure larger truths about the diversity and … positive contributions of Black
community’ (1994: 517). Further, Entman asserts that journalists should make a system-
atic decision to have more varied and complex images of Blacks in news coverage more
representative of Black America.
The deeper messages of race politics present in today’s elite reporting emerge from
the study’s overarching finding that journalistic determination was only exercised
‘slightly more than half’ in this series. This small-scale study lends credence to Campbell’s
(2005) earlier findings that journalists of color sometimes face insurmountable obstacles
when working within White-owned news corporations, even when they are well organ-
ized and clearly intentioned. Campbell’s work lies alongside the research of Byerly and
Warren (1996), whose surveys among working journalists at major newspapers found
that Black journalists who identified with racial equality movements used their insider
understanding of the Black experience to shape their journalism. In other words, yes
there are constraints, but Black journalists’ efforts to reframe reporting in ways that more
accurately represent the experiences, problems, and progress of African Americans go on
nonetheless. The present study’s findings may best be situated within this racialized dia-
lectical process characterizing today’s newsrooms.
Journalistically speaking, with that point in mind, this research suggests there are
a number of ideas to be considered in assessing what the series achieved. Not every
story in the series offered new or groundbreaking coverage, representation or per-
spective of the Black man. Rather, the series offered a reading of the Black male
experience from a Black male standpoint – something not often seen in White-owned
(i.e. majority) newspapers. Stories attempted not to emphasize the anomalies of crime,
poverty, and the dysfunction that can breed in the Black community, but instead to
present communities as places for Black men to raise children and engage in healthy
interaction, such as nostalgic conversations with friends over a game of bowling. The
stated desire of the series editors’ part not to leave Black men ‘voiceless on the side-
lines’ was evidenced in extensive quotes that explained the feelings, mindset, and
histories of the men being featured. Through these quotes, the men spoke for
themselves.
Nonetheless, some stories did have Black men ‘filtered through the prism of experts’
and relied too heavily on statistics – something the series editors said they wanted to
avoid. These stories failed to represent Black men in the same manner, because the arti-
cles’ voices shifted from the Black men to experts and numbers that ineffectively told the
Black men’s stories. Further, these stories often left the reader with more questions than
answers concerning the main character. For example, one story (The Meaning of Work)
noted that academics and policymakers:

… debate the reasons that unemployment among black men is consistently and disproportionately
high. Are the reasons, societal, as some argue, or are they a matter of individual responsibility,
as others argue? Are they a reflection of racism? Or defeatism? Or laziness?
Tyree et al. 479

Stories that took this approach failed to reach the series’ outlined goals, and it is possible
other journalists attempting to cover Black men might find success in approaching their
subjects and people in a different manner that allows the individuals’ experiences to tell
the story, not solely numbers and experts.
This study also examined representations of Black masculinity in the series, with
respect to how the five factors – struggle, recognition, independence, achievement, and
community – were constructed, depicted in story lines, and influenced story narratives.
Seventy percent (13 of 19) of the men featured in the series succeeded in their struggle,
as defined by the series title. In other words, the Black men moved progressively forward
in their actions and life by overcoming their problem(s), achieving success or being
viewed by others as having done one or both. The study found stories making a connec-
tion between Black men’s ability to get recognition and the independence and self-
determination they were able to attain as a result. Recognition came from various sources,
including family and community members, but what was most noteworthy is that nearly
all (80%) of the central characters demonstrating independence received recognition
from others. In terms of achievement, many Black men were featured in respected and
accomplished roles, including a physician, politician, professor, university dean, FBI
Agent, and president of the Urban League. Further, these Black men were connected to
the community and their neighborhoods in various ways. The most frequently seen roles
were of father, grandson or sons, but Black men were also featured in roles outside of the
family, such as religious leader and public intellectual. In general, the series offered a
strong example of how Black masculinity can be exhibited in news media text, and, quite
possibly, news texts within a majority White newsroom can advance representations of
Black men with representations of Black masculinity for a diverse (White and Black)
audience consumption.
As the newspaper industry experiences shrinking readership and the loss of power as
one of US media’s critical gatekeepers, and individuals self publish or blog journalistic
content online, it is critical that representations in national agenda-setting newspapers
such as the Post do not continue the practice of representing Black men in stereotypical
ways. The long history of negative and stereotypical depictions of Black men entrenched
in traditional American media suggests the need for more national newspapers and media
outlets to create articles and stories that offer different and ‘uncommon’ views of the
Black man. The Post’s series shows a majority-owned and operated newspaper can pro-
duce a collection of newspaper articles offering a counter-stereotype of Black men, if
there is an interest to do so within its structure. While one series cannot fix the problem,
the study demonstrates the possibilities for enlightened reporting when Black male jour-
nalists assume control over issues and stories associated with their own community and
lived experience – i.e. from the Black male standpoint.

Future research
The intent of this research was solely to examine the text produced by the Post’s writers
and editors to determine if it met the series goals as outlined by its editors. News texts are
best understood when considering the context out of which they emerge. Future, larger-
scale research on race-related journalism would do well to incorporate ethnographic
480 Journalism 13(4)

dimensions that might include participant-observation in the newsroom, greater depth of

the news company’s history of reporting on race issues, and the routines of journalistic
practice that churn out stories on a predictable schedule. A newsroom ethnographic case
study, coupled with a content analysis of the newspaper’s stories and analysis of the
demographics of those within the newsroom, could help draw more specific connections
between who is successful under what conditions in producing counter-stereotypes of
Black men within a given newspaper’s structure. Studies that take a social science
approach may adopt an agenda-setting model to determine the extent to which news
stories containing counter-stereotypes of African Americans can shape public opinion on
a given race-related issue, and subsequently influence policy agendas that are driven by
public opinion.
An additional problem to consider is audience reception. As with any series that
appears story by story over a period of months, the readers may not have read all of the
stories to enable them to see both the stereotypes and the counter-stereotypes of Black
men contained in the cumulative total. This potential problem of partial reading and/or
lag time between stories was more likely to have been overcome for those who obtained
the series in its book form. Therefore, it could be beneficial to understand more about the
ways that audiences (men and women, varied races) read and responded to stories within
the series and whether they believe the stories reshaped the image of African American
men in the news media.
The foregoing study has laid a tentative but useful foundation for additional research
to move in several directions to better understand the relationship between reporters’
race and journalistic goals and their news products. This particular study, which con-
cerned African American men and Black male representation, had the goal of exploring
the potential for the making of counter-stereotypes. Again, this is of importance when
considering the history of African American stereotypical representations in the US news
media. It thereby suggests the potential for additional conceptual work and theory build-
ing regarding representations of race and gender in the media.

Notes
1 Based on the foreword and purpose of the work, it is assumed there was a need for a different
type of representation of Black men within the coverage of the Post. Therefore, the writers
and editors worked to produce a series designed with the sole purpose of offering an alterna-
tive representation of Black men they deemed was needed and not usually seen within the
Post.
2 Detailed demographics of reporters and editors were not available, but the authors were able
to gather some information from personal knowledge of those within the newsroom as well as
survey responses from a small number of current and former reporters involved with the series.

References
Bogle D (2001) Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks
in American Films, 4th edn. New York: Continuum.
Bogle D (2004) Black beginnings: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Birth of a Nation. In: Jackson
II RL and Dangerfield CL African American Communication and Identities. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE, 281–290.
Tyree et al. 481

Bordo S (1989) The body and the reproduction of femininity: A feminist appropriation of Foucault.
In: Jaggar A and Bordo S (eds) Gender/Body/Knowledge. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Byerly CM and Warren CA (1996) At the margins of center: Organized protest in the newsroom.
Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13(1): 1–23.
Campbell CP (2005) A myth of assimilation: ‘Enlightened’ racism and the news. In: Hunt DM
(ed.) Channel Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America. New York: Oxford
University Press, 137–154.
Collins PH (2004) Black Sexual Politics. New York: Routledge.
Entman RM (1994) Representation and reality in the portrayal of Blacks on network television
news. Journalism Quarterly 71: 509–520.
Fairclough N (2003) Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Oxford:
Routledge.
Fanon F (1967) Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Markmann CL. New York: Grove Press.
Gandy OH Jr (1998) Communication and Race: A Structural Perspective. London: Arnold.
Gray H (1997) Anxiety, desire, and conflict in the American racial imagination. In: Lull J and
Hinerman S (eds) Media Scandals: Morality and Desire in the Popular Culture Marketplace.
New York: Columbia University Press, 85–98.
Grosz E (1994) Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Hall S (ed.) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London:
SAGE.
hooks b (2003) Teaching Community. A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge.
Hunt DM (ed.) (2005) Making sense of blackness on television. In: Hunt DM (ed.) Channeling
Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America. New York: Oxford University Press,
1–24.
Jackson R (2006) Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identify, Discourse, and Racial Popular
Media. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Jackson RL II and Dangerfield CL (2004) Defining Black masculinity as cultural property: Toward
an identity negotiation paradigm. In: Jackson RL II (ed.) African American Communication
and Identities. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 197–208.
Kerner O (1988) The Kerner Report. New York: Pantheon Books.
Merida K (2007) Editor’s note. In: Washington Post Staff (eds) Being a Black Man: At the Corner
of Progress and Peril. New York: Public Affairs, vii–x.
Neal MA (2006) The New Black Man. New York: Routledge.
Stabile CA (2006) White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in US Culture.
New York: Routledge.
Taylor C (1992) Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’: An Essay. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Washington Post Staff (2007) Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril. New York:
Public Affairs.

Biographical notes
Tia CM Tyree is an assistant professor in Howard University’s Department of Journalism. She is
the Public Relations and Advertising Sequence Coordinator and teaches several public relations
courses. Her research interests include hip hop, rap, pop culture, film, and African American rep-
resentations in the media. Her recent publications include: ‘Lovin’ Momma and Hatin’ on Baby
Mama: A Comparison of Misogynistic and Stereotypical Representation in Songs about Rappers,
482 Journalism 13(4)

Mothers and Baby Mamas’, Women and Language 32(2): 49–58 (2009); and with A Krishnasamy
‘Bringing Afrocentricity to the Funnies: An Analysis of Afrocentricity within Aaron McGruder’s
The Boondocks’, Journal of Black Studies 42(1): 23–42 (2011).

Carolyn M Byerly is a professor in Howard University’s Department of Journalism. She teaches

graduate-level seminars in mass communication theory, research methods, media effects and other
topics. Her research examines issues related to gender, race, sexual orientation, culture, and other
dimensions of media and social movements. She is the co-author of Women and Media: A Critical
Introduction and Women and Media: International Perspectives (Wiley, Blackwell, 2006), as well
as many book chapters and journal articles. She is completing an empirical study on the status of
women in news companies in 59 nations, through the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Kerry-Ann Hamilton received a PhD from Howard University with a focus on health communica-
tion in the developing world using mobile technology. She completed a Masters of Arts in interna-
tional communications from the American University. While studying at the American University,
she worked as a communication associate with Management System International’s USAID/
Global Development Alliance contract. She was a CNN correspondent for the 2004 presidential
election. Following graduation, Hamilton was assigned to Trinidad and Tobago as a foreign cor-
respondent for the Associated Press before pursuing doctoral work. The Jamaican-born researcher,
photojournalist, public relations professional and humanitarian plans to pursue a career in interna-
tional development and communications through praxis, research and teaching.