Stereotypical Images of Black Women in the Media: The Impact on Potential Jurors

• In Event: Feminist Criminologists of Color on the Impact of Perceptions, Media, Crime, and Justice on Women and Girls of Color

Abstract

While depictions of Black women on television and in other forms of media continue to portray us as loud, ignorant, violent, overly-sexualized, prostitutes, gold-diggers or home-wreckers, it is in fact the case that many more African-American women are enrolled in colleges and in graduate programs, settling into satisfying careers and living satisfactory single lives than one might think. The continuous depiction of Black women as being desperate to get married and unfulfilled as women unless they have a baby comes as an unpleasant surprise to many of us and is probably an overly drastic attempt to maintain patriarchal standards of what women should aspire to be. It is harmful to believe that Black women just walk around in an angry, violent, heartbroken and lovesick state of mind all day. Jurors are consumers of popular culture like everyone else. How does one erase such presumptions about Black women being generally out of control, violent, and irrational about their relationships in domestic violence cases, custody battles, theft, burglary or fraud charges, for example, when one is selected to sit on a jury, particularly if those are the only messages portrayed in the mass media, with little to no competing definitions on display?

Author

• Allison Cotton, Metropolitan State University of Denver