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Constructing collective memories of movements for African peoples' equality: Containing the legitimation crisis for white domination

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CONSTRUCTING COLLECTIVE MEMORIES OF
MOVEMENTS FOR AFRICAN PEOPLES' EQUALITY:
CONTAINING THE LEGITIMATION CRISIS FOR WHITE DOMINATION
By Kelly J. Madison.
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communication)
December 1996
Copyright 1996 Kelly J. Madison
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UMI Number: 9720261
Copyright 1996 by
Madison, Kelly Jennetta
All rights reserved.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, written by
Kelly J. Madison
under the direction of k.S.?..... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School in partial fulfillment of re~
quirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean of C nduatf Studies
Date
DISSHITATION COi : e
Chairperson
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Kelly Jennetta Madison Sandra Ball-Rokeach
Constructing Collective Memories of Movements
for African Peoples' Equality: Containing the
Legitimation Crisis for White Domination
This dissertation is an analysis of the way in which
collective memories of African peoples' struggles for equality
are constructed in mainstream film and are decoded by African
American and European viewers. It is argued that movements
for African peoples' equality created a legitimation crisis
for white domination in general, including the ideological
rationalizations and socially constructed identities that
underscore this form of hegemony. A textual analysis is
presented in which it is argued that the mainstream films
analyzed help contain the legitimation crisis for white
domination by presenting paternalistic white supremacist
discourses through which to remember key historical moments of
movements for "racial" equality. This dissertation also
reviews the literature on cultural audience studies and
presents both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of
viewers of one of the films in question- Mississippi Burning.
The purpose of this analysis was to assess with regard to a
particular ideological formation, which discourses are
resisted and which remain hegemonic, what is the range of
resistance and acquiescence, how and why are some viewers able
to resist the ideological inscriptions of the text while
others acquiesce? The study concludes that although African
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Americans were generally more résistent in their decoding of
the film than European Americans, their resistance was, on
average, low to moderate. Resistance to the way in which
supremacist whiteness is imbedded in the film was low for both
groups, indicating that whiteness is still discursively
hegemonic. Those viewers, both African American and European
American, with knowledge of counter-hegemonic discourses were
the most résistent to paternalist white supremacist discourse
of movement history. Familiarity with alternative, counter-
hegemonic discourse on movement history was a more significant
predictor of resistance to white supremacist ideology than
ethnicity, education, income, or political affiliation.
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]_1
DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of all the
people who have struggled, and who continue to struggle,
courageously and persistently against the oppression of white
supremacy. Knowledge and appreciation of their deeds may be
constrained, but the impact is still felt.
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Ill
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For loving support on what seemed like a never-ending
drama, I would like to thank my husband, Mekki ElBoushi,
without whom I would not have made it. I would also like to
thank my mother and father, Joan Madison and Jonathan F.
Madison Jr. for their abiding faith and encouragement.
Special thanks to my mentor Sandra Ball-Rokeach for her time,
patience, cogent criticism, open-mindedness, and emotional
support; to the other members of my committee, Sheila Murphy,
Darnel Hunt and Lynn Spigal for their valuable analysis,
advice and critique; to Miriam Metzger, Suzanne Regan and
Julia Johnson for words of encouragement and practical support
at just the right moments; and to Sheila Braslau for always
pleasantly going above and beyond the call of duty.
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IV
table of CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.................
Chapter
1. CULTURAL STUDIES AND RACISM, IDEOLOGY,
HEGEMONY AND THE MEDIA........................ 4
Cultural Studies : General Problematics
and Assumptions.......................... 4
Defining "Race" and Racism................ 8
White Supremacy and Ideological Strategies.. 12
Hegemony................................. 17
White Supremacist Ideology and
White Hegemony in the US................ 23
White Supremacy and Subjectivity.......... 26
White Domination, Black Resistance
and Legitimation Crisis................. 27
Media Representations of Movements for
Black Equality: Containing the Crisis 33
2. WHITE SUPREMACIST IDEOLOGY, COLLECTIVE MEMORY
AND FILM: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS................... 35
Collective Memory and Legitimation
Crisis Containment..................... 35
Mainstream film and Movements for
African Peoples' Equality............... 37
An Introduction to Textual Analysis....... 38
Revisionist Narratives of Struggles
for African People's Equality........... 43
The Reproduction of White Supremacy....... 44
Mississippi Burning: Containing the
Crisis For White Domination............. 51
Conclusions.............................. 69
3. AUDIENCE DECODING AND THE MEDIA HEGEMONY THESIS. . 72
From Ideological Imposition to
Oppositional Decoding................... 73
David Morley and the Complexities
of Audience Resistance.................. 75
The Interpretivists: Anti-Elitism and the
Celebration of Popular Taste............ 79
Polysemy, Semiotic Democracy & the
Rejection of the Media Hegemony Thesis.... 85
Critiquing the Idea of Essentially
Resistant Subcultures................... 92
Critiquing the Assumption of Pluralistic
Access to Counter-Hegemonic Discourse 96
Beyond the False Dichotomy of Media Power
Versus Audience Power................... 97
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V
4. METHODS....................................... 102
Quantitative Survey...................... 101
Survey Participants.................. 101
Demographic Characteristics.......... 103
Survey.............................. 104
Composite Indexes.................... 106
Qualitative Survey : In-Depth Interviews 108
Subjects............................ 108
Interview Format.................... 109
5. SURVEY RESULTS................................ Ill
Correlation Coefficients.................. Ill
Counter-hegemonic Resistance to the
Film and Related Discourses............. 113
Regression and Path Analyses.............. 121
6. QUALITATIVE AUDIENCE STUDY..................... 130
Interview Respondents.................... 131
Overall Thoughts on the Film.............. 133
Decoding the Depiction of "Whites"........ 144
Decoding the Depiction of "Blacks"........ 152
Resistance to ideas of FBI and
Federal Government Commitment........... 167
7. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS.................... 175
Conclusion: Reconstituting the Past
for Aims of the Present................. 182
Policy Implications...................... 184
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................. 186
9. APPENDIX...................................... 192
Mississippi Burning survey................ 192
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VI
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Pearson's Correlation
Coefficients for Relationships Among
Independent Variables and Between
Independent and Dependent Variables...... Ill
Table 2: Means and Standard Deviations of
African American Versus European American
Respondents on Each Resistance Item.
T-Tests of Group Mean Differences....... 114
Table 3: Analysis of Variance for resistance
items by Ethnicity, with Income
and Education as Covariates............. 117
Table 4: Percentage Breakdowns of
African American Versus European American
Responses on Resistance Items : Items By
Level of Decoding/Discourse Resistance.... 119
Table 5: Statistics for the Regression of
Familiarity with Alternative discourses on
Demographics, and Resistance Indexes on
Alternative Discourses and Demographics... 123
Table 6: Goodness of Fit Measures of Proposed
Causal Model for Each Type of Resistance:
Akaike's Information Criterion, Bentler-
Bonett Normed Fit Index, Bentler's
Comparative Fit Index................... 128
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vil
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Path Diagram of Causal Model for
Counter-Hegemonic Resistance............ 122
Figure 2: Path Diagram for Causal Model
of Film Resistance, with
Path Coefficients Added................. 124
Figure 3: Path Diagram For Resistance to
Civil Rights Movement Myth, with
Path Coefficients Added................. 125
Figure 4: Path Diagram for Resistance to
Modern Racist Myth, with Path
Coefficients Added..................... 127
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1
INTRODUCTION
The following dissertation deals with the role of the
mass media in the construction of collective memory.
Collective memory refers to the shared memories and
recollections of social groups. Both individual and
collective memory may at times be in err; both may be
distorted and biased. However, distortion and bias in
collective memory is of much greater consequence because, as
Zelizer (1995) puts it, collective memory is usable. Shared
memories of the past are constructed, nurtured and invoked as
tools to defend political aims, objectives and realities of
the present. What is consistent with the aims, objectives and
desired realities of particular social groups are remembered,
commemorated, embellished and even fabricated. What is
inconsistent and, therefore, threatening is erased, obscured
and willed absent. Although collective memory, by
definition, involves a process of discussion, negotiation,
debate and contestation, groups with social, economic and
cultural power are at a distinct advantage when it comes to
constructing recollections of the past that serve their
interests. As LeGoff (1992) observed, "to make themselves the
masters of memory and forgetfulness is one of the greatest
preoccupations of the classes, groups, and individuals who
have dominated and continue to dominate historical societies"
(p.54). The forces of domination are particularly
preoccupied with constraining memory and forgetfulness when
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2
historical events call into question the legitimacy of the
structure of power. This dissertation is an examination of
the ways in which this type of historical threat is contained
through the construction of collective memory.
Movements for African peoples' equality created a
legitimation crisis for white domination by. challenging and
calling into question the structure of "racial" power. What
follows is an analysis of the role of the mass media in
containing this legitimation crisis— managing it, reigning it
in, controlling it such that the damage to white domination is
minimized. One mechanism utilized in this process of
legitimation crisis containment is the construction of
collective memories through revisionist narratives of movement
history that highlight "white" heros, marginalize "black"
agency, and obscure the deeper structure of white domination.
In addition, an audience study is presented that is designed
to assess how, why, and to what extent some people resist
while others accept this partial and particular account of
struggles for African peoples' equality.
In the growing "white" backlash against the legal,
political and programmatic gains of struggles for "racial"
equality, collective memories of the movements are crucial.
As Milan Kundera (1981) so eloquently professed, "the struggle
of man (sic) against power is the struggle of memory against
forgetting" (p.3).
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3
Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical framework of
cultural studies and the ways in which this theoretical
framework informs the study of racism, ideology, domination
and the mass media. The cultural studies framework is the
theoretical basis of this dissertation. Chapter 2 presents a
textual analysis that explores the films on struggles for
African peoples' equality in general, and Mississippi Burning
(1988) in particular. This analysis examines how white
supremacist ideology, as inscribed in these texts,
accommodates and co-opts struggles for African peoples'
equality such that white domination is ultimately reproduced
and reinforced. In addition to this textual analysis a study
of audience decodings of Mississippi Burning will be
presented. Chapter 3 reviews theory and research within
cultural studies on the ways in which audiences decode or
interpret media texts, with a special emphasis on the
effectivity of hegemonic ideologies there imbedded. The
audience study to be presented contains both a quantitative
and a qualitative component. Chapter 4 presents the methods
involved in the audience study. Chapter 5 presents the
results of the quantitative analysis. Chapter 6 presents the
qualitative analysis of audience decoding and also draws
conclusions and presents suggestions for further research.
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4
CHAPTER 1
CULTURAL STUDIES AND RACISM, IDEOLOGY,
HEGEMONY AND THE MASS MEDIA
In this chapter the general problematics and assumptions
of the cultural studies approach will be introduced and then
used to set up the theoretical framework for this study.
Especially relevant from the cultural studies paradigm are
theories of the social construction of reality, theories of
ideology, and the theory of hegemony. These theories will be
the basis for this study of how revisionist narratives of
struggles for African peoples' equality help to contain the
legitimation crisis for white domination.
Cultural Studies; General Probelmatics and Assumptions
British Cultural studies is generally concerned with the
intersection of meaning and power. This area of cultural
studies is particularly concerned with the processes and
mechanisms through which power is forged, sustained, and/or
diminished through the construction and circulation of
meanings, discourses and ideologies that arise in a social
formation and are the medium through which people interpret
and respond to their conditions of existence. "Culture" in the
term "cultural studies" refers to "the sum of available
descriptions through which societies make sense of and reflect
their common experiences" (Hall, 1986, p.35). As Hall (1986)
notes, "'Culture' is not a practice; nor is it simply the
descriptive sum of the 'mores and folkways' of societies...it
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5
is threaded through all social practices, and is the sum of
their inter-relationships" (p.36). These descriptions and
interpretations, of which culture is comprised, are made
active and have a material existence in institutions,
conventions, artifacts and practices. The most important
institutions in this process of activating, constructing and
circulating of meanings are the mass media.
As Fiske (1987) explains, there are certain fundamental
Marxist premises which underlie most work in cultural studies.
First, capitalist society is divided, inherently contradictory
and conflictual. The primary arena of division was originally
believed to be class due to the influence of Marxist theory on
the field. Since then it has been acknowledged and
demonstrated that class is but one of a number of important
axes of power that structure modern industrial societies.
Other social divisions, such as gender, "race"/ethnicity,
sexual orientation, and religion, are also fundamentally
important, to the extent that they structure a given society
and/or are an important way of classifying out social
existence in a given culture.
Within the cultural studies framework that I will be
applying, society is thought of as a complex and overlapping
network of groups related to each other in terms of ideology
and unequal power in a structure of domination. This
structure of domination and subordination is not static.
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6
rather it is the site of contestation, struggle and social
change.
À second premise of cultural studies is that the social
construction of meaning is inextricably linked to the social
structure and must be explained in terms of that structure and
its history. For example, the discourses (socially located,
patterned ways of understanding some topic) that are dominant
in a culture at any given historical moment are, to a large
extent, determined by the social structure: by the desire to
rationalize particular forms of institutional oppression and
inequality; by which groups have superior access to the
resources of knowledge production and dissemination; etc. At
the same time, social structures are held in place and
"reproduced," in part, by the meanings and discourses which
legitimate and rationalize them. It is assumed that the
various forms of class, "race" and gender inequality could not
continue, in the absence of systematic violent coercion and
threat, without a critical mass of the population interpreting
them as in some way legitimate and/or inevitable. Thus, there
is an interdependent, co-determinate relationship between the
reproduction of meaning or culture and the reproduction of the
social structure.
One pillar of the cultural studies framework is the idea
of the social construction of meaning. Here the cultural
studies emphasis on power is combined with semiotic theories
of meaning to create a fully politicized theoretical framework
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7
for the study of how and why ways of thinking and interpreting
"reality" develop, are sustained, are contested and are
transformed. Stuart Hall (1982) describes this theoretical
development as a moment in which scholars discovered that
there is no "naturally arising consensus" on societal values,
beliefs and interpretations. "The world has to be made to
mean," argues Hall (1982, p. 67), and the crucial determinant
of which values, beliefs and interpretations become dominant
is social power, which social groups have the power to make
the meanings that reflect their experiences and interests
stick. At the heart of this intersection between meaning and
social power is "ideology."
"Ideology" is a central concept in the theoretical
framework of cultural studies that I will be applying. Terry
Eagleton (1991), in a book entitled Ideology, exhaustively
critiques scholarly debate with regard to this concept,
summarizing and distilling various theories into a framework
of what he calls "ideological strategies." These ideological
strategies are the mechanisms through which systems of meaning
work to promote domination. Since the concept of ideology is
crucial to the area of cultural studies that I wish to employ,
as well as to the analyses that will be presented here, I will
first offer a few definitions and then, in the following
sections Eagleton's framework of ideological strategies will
be used to explain and illustrate the ways in which a cultural
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8
studies perspectives informs the study of racism, white
supremacy and mass media.
Defining "Race" and Racism
Following Eagleton's (1991) survey of the literature and
debate over the concept of ideology, I will be using the term
to mean systems of ideas and beliefs that promote the
domination of one socially significant group over another.
This definition stresses the relational and conflictual nature
of ideology. The interests involved in the study of ideology
are of a specific kind: those that are central to the
production and reproduction of social domination.
Before I can define, racism a few words on the concept of
"race" are in order. I will be defining "race" as a socially
defined group that ostensibly marks out a major natural bio-
genetic division within humankind, discerned on the basis of
certain external physical criteria.
A number of scholars from a variety of fields have for
some time been arguing that "race" is a social construction.
Begley (1995), in an article on the social construction of
"race" published in Newsweek. cites a 1989 survey of
anthropologists that found that at least 70% of cultural
anthropologists and 50% of physical anthropologists reject
"race" as a biological category. According to Begley, recent
research by geneticists from Stanford University's Human
Genome Diversity project confirms a controversial finding by
biologist Richard Lowentin over two decades ago, that "genetic
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9
variation from one individual to another of the same "race"
swamps the average differences between racial groupings" (p.
68) Luca Cavalli-Sforza, chair of Stanford's bio-diversity
project, is quoted in the Begley article as saying, "the more
we know about humankind's genetic differences, the more we see
that they have almost nothing to do with what we call 'race'"
(p.68).
One impetus for this conclusion is that researchers have
found that there are as many ways to group people as there are
physical traits. That is because "racial" traits are
statistically nonconcordant, and "lack of concordance means
that sorting people according to these traits produces
different grouping than sorting them by those (equally valid)
traits" (Begley, 1995, p.68). Anthropologist Alan Goodman,
dean of natural sciences at Hampshire College is cited in
Newsweek magazine as stating that while "human variation is
very, very real,... race, as a way of organizing [what we know
about that variation], is incredibly simplified and
bastardized" (Begley, 1995). Thus, the argument against
"race" is not that we are all the same, it is that human
variation is incredibly diverse. Not only don't the standard
categories of "race" (which vary from culture to culture and
throughout history) capture this diversity in a meaningful
way, they have developed historically to systematically
minimize, distort, and structure this variation in ways that
have worked to forge and maintain power.
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10
In order to understand this last argument we need to
examine the ways in which ideas about "race" arose out of a
need to rationalize various forms of oppression and
exploitation. The connection between the social construction
of "race" and the rationalization of domination is in part
evidenced by when, where, and from whom modern day notions of
"race" arose. According to Goldberg, the modern day notion of
"race" arose in the sixteenth century along side the rise of
European colonialism. Goldberg (1993) argues that,
the sixteenth century... marks the divide in the
rise of race consciousness. Not only does the
concept of race become explicitly and consciously
applied, but also one begins to see racial
characterization emerging in art as much as in
politico-philosophical and economic debates (p.24).
As Goldberg notes, "the scientific catalog of racial
otherness, the variety of racial alien, was a principle
product of the [enlightenment] period" and a crucial force in
legitimizing white domination. Although "race" does not exist
as an objective, scientific, or natural way of dividing up
humankind, "racism," as a subjective, political and
ideological form of division, surely does.
In the United States, social relations of "race" are
structured in terms of "white" domination. The main
ideologies that underpin European American domination- the
ones that transform it into "white" domination- are "racism"
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11
in general and specifically "white supremacy." I define racism
as a system of thought that 1) constructs a notion that all
people are divided into a supposedly natural, bio-genetic
classification system called "race"; 2) sets up a hierarchy or
stratification system in which these "races" are placed in
terms of the relative superiority or inferiority of their
"naturally" associated traits (physical, intellectual, moral,
artistic, temperamental, etc.); and 3) promotes and
legitimates the domination of the "superior race" or "races"
over their supposed inferiors. By "white supremacy" I mean
that variant of racism in which the so-called "white race" is
constructed as being the at the pinnacle of this racial
hierarchy or stratification system.
I have chosen to follow a growing number of scholars who
specialize in the study of culture, "race" and ideology, in
using the term "white supremacy" instead of "racism" because
in the cultural and historical context of the US the latter
addresses the specificity of the topic under study, whereas
use of the former often amounts to a mystifying euphemism that
unhelpfully yet conveniently (for those invested in the
current structure of "racial" power) obscures the nature of
the problem at hand.
Given that "race" is a social construction, it is
important to be reflective about the terms used to identify
the social groups that have been caught up in "racial"
struggle. Throughout this dissertation I will use the terms
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12
African American and European American when speaking in my own
voice, in order to avoid reproducing the racial meaning
imbedded in the terms "black" and "white." Though not perfect,
European American and African American direct meaning away
from racial categories and towards ethnicity and
historical/social experience. I will use the terms "black"
and "white" when describing popular discourses that are
racialized, that are part of the process of constructing a
"racial" social reality, and that contain no sense of the idea
that "race" is a social construction.
White Supremacy and Ideological Strategies
Eagleton (1991) argues that ideology works to promote and
legitimate the domination of one socially significant group
over another through discursive mechanisms of unification,
orientation, rationalization, and naturalization. I will
briefly discuss each of these ideological mechanisms in turn.
First, Eagleton notes that one of the basic properties of
ideology is that it "constructs an imaginary unity" between
individuals, making them feel connected or bound together in
a way that they otherwise might not. Here ideology works by
supplying an identity or "subjectivity" for the groups that it
constructs and/or refers to. This point about ideology can be
illustrated by allowing it to illuminate the earliest workings
of white supremacy. The conflictual social relations of
European peoples variously located in structures of national,
economic, religious and gender domination were constructed.
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13
through the development and embracement of white supremacist
ideology, into an imaginary unity. The lower orders of
European civilizations, on the basis of whose subjugation
elites had amassed the resources necessary to successfully
conduct themselves in colonial expansion, were gradually
constructed as part of the superior, racial "we," who have a
legitimate, natural/biological right and capacity to exploit
the subhuman beings of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and
elsewhere. Thus, according to Goldberg (1993), in a massive
study of the origins and the development of racism entitled
Racist Culture. the upgrading of the European masses
manifested in the Enlightenment lessening of customary social
hierarchies and the replacement of these hierarchies by
egalitarian sentiment was partially built on the construction
of the racial subjectivity of "whiteness." (Goldberg 1992, see
also Roediger 1991, Allen, 1994).
Of course the identity of the dominant group is not the
only one that is constructed by an ideology. An ideology
constructs an imaginary unity for the group or groups whom it
contributes to subordinating. Within white supremacist
ideology, the peoples of Africa, the Americas and Asia could
be conceived of as 'natural resources' because, it was argued,
they were savage and barbaric peoples without history or
language, not capable of rationality, a lower form of human
life relative to "whites"— if human at all. "Race" was thus
added to the configuration of identities or subjectivities
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14
already constructed by European ideologies of domination, in
order to legitimize new forms of subjugation and capital
accumulation.
Next, ideology tends to orient the actions of those it
unifies, providing them with goals, motivations and
prescriptions for action. Examples of this orienting effect
with regard to white supremacy include the discourses of
"manifest destiny," and the so-called "white mans burden" in
which the "white race" was said to be predestined by God to
rule over and civilize the "lesser races" (Frederickson,
1971).
Ideologies work by rationalizing some outcome or social
state that benefits one social group at the expense of other
groups. This rationalization involves presenting explanations
and justifications that appear to be logically consistent
and/or ethically acceptable for beliefs, practices,
institutions and outcomes that might otherwise be deemed
unconscionable. Various discourses of white supremacy were
initially developed to rationalize the seizure of land, the
enslavement, and the genocide of "non-white" peoples, given
the advent of European colonialism. Most of these
rationalizations revolved, as they do today, around the
identities or subjectivities of "whites" versus various "non
whites" constructed within white supremacist ideology.
The antagonistic encounter between peoples of differing
cultural and physical traits, in the context of an imbalance
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15
of economic and technological power backing the goal of
expanding various European empires, overdetermined the
construction of white supremacist interpretation and
rationalization (Goldberg, 1993). Territorial penetration and
seizure as well as various forms of labor exploitation turned
fundamentally "...on the conception of indigenous peoples as
a natural resource, as part of the spoils acquired in the
victorious but 'just wars' of colonial expansion" (Goldberg,
1993, p.26). Furthermore, the defining of "non-whites" as
"irrational," was one of the most important and common
arguments made for setting severe limits on the natural and
inalienable rights of the indigenous peoples of Africa, the
Americas, and Asia. As Goldberg notes, "the rational, hence
autonomous and equal subjects of the enlightenment project
turn out, unsurprisingly, to be exclusively white, male,
European, and bourgeois" (p.28).
Ideologies tend to universalize values, interests,
beliefs, and realities that are actually specific to a certain
place, time, culture and/or social group. That is, an
ideology tends to take ideas, interests and social realities
that benefit a particular social group and make them appear to
be the ideas, interests and social realities of all humanity
throughout history. In this way, the partial and particular
ideas and interests of some social group do not appear to be
self-interested, self-serving, or merely one idea, interest or
mode of existence among many alternatives. One example of this
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16
kind of universalization within the realm of white supremacist
ideology is the assumption that the civilizations of "the
white race" have always been more "advanced" than those of so-
called "lesser races," indeed, that rationality and
civilization are "white" inventions. Research presented over
the last few decades has only begun to debunk this myth,
suggesting that this assumption about "white" or "Aryan"
civilization developed through a process of systematically
ignoring, denying and suppressing knowledge about the
complexity of African civilizations and the Afroasiatic roots
of so-called "Classical" European civilization. For example,
Martin Bernal's (1987) award winning Black Athena demonstrates
the kind of ideological "work" that, since the eighteenth
century, some European scholars have put into squaring the
history of Greek civilization with the imperatives of white
supremacy. This type of constraining of information has a
profound effect on the extent to which the idea of "white"
racial superiority appears now to most people to be a
universal, timeless, and, therefore, legitimate and inevitable
"reality."
Another effect or strategy of ideology is the
naturalization of ideas, beliefs, and values that promote the
domination of one group over another. This process of
naturalization is two-fold. On the one hand it refers to
discourses that posit "natural" reasons for the domination of
one social group over another, with appeals to biology.
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17
genetics, or God. All racist ideologies are inherently
imbedded in this form of rhetorical naturalization. On the
other hand, naturalization refers to the fact that when an
ideology is dominant or hegemonic in a particular culture, its
rationalizations appear natural, self-evidently valid, like
"common sense" to a critical mass of the population.
In all of these ways ideologies legitimize the domination
and authority of some social group, thereby, securing
acquiescence or "consent" by making a structure of domination
seem just, valid, credible, natural, and/or inevitable. When
an ideology reaches a high level of inculcation— when it is
dominant— many people cannot imagine how things could ever be
different; a system of belief that is partial and particular
has become coterminous with "reality" itself. Such a state of
ideological dominance, in which the partial and particular
ideas and beliefs that benefit one social group become widely
seen as "common sense," is characteristic of the social
condition known as "hegemony."
Hegemony
In addition to theories of the social construction of
reality, and of ideology, the concept of "hegemony" is
particularly useful in understanding and analyzing the
cultural politics of "race" in the US context. Part of the
impetus for the critique of simplistic models of ideological
imposition has come from a reappropriation of the theoretical
writings of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was an important Italian
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18
socialist militant of the 1920's and 1930's. He formulated
most of his theoretical advances after being imprisoned in
1926 during Mussolini's reign. The central concept in his
work is that of "hegemony, " by which he means a state of
pervasive social authority "... which, at certain specific
conjunctures, a specific class alliance wins, by a combination
of coercion and consent, over the whole social formation, and
its dominated classes: not only at the economic level, but
also at the level of political and ideological leadership; in
civil, intellectual and moral life as well as at the material
level: and over the terrain of civil society, as well as in
and through the condensed relations of the State" (Hall,
1980b, p.331-332).
Hegemony was conceptualized by Gramsci as the production
of a provisional and 'unstable equilibrium' in the class
struggle that is in no way guaranteed or immanent. It is a
condition of social authority that has to be originally
produced and constructed through a combination of coercion and
consent and, in turn, has to be constantly reworked, rewon and
reproduced in the face of resistance from class alliances
representing the interests of subordinated groups. Thus,
Gramsci builds into his conceptualization the idea that
hegemony is rarely if ever complete, is always up against the
forces of resistance, and is really, therefore, a dynamic
process of domination as opposed to a static state.
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19
The important point is that, as Stuart Hall (I980b) puts
it, Gramsci's analysis "... depends... not on a presumed,
necessary or a priori correspondence between (economic)
structure and (political and ideological) superstructure, but
precisely on those historically specific mechanisms and a
concrete analysis of those historical 'moments' through
which such a formative relationship between structure and
superstructures come to be forged" (332). Thus, the theory of
hegemony problematizes and exposes what is taken for granted
in Marx's dictum that 'in every epoch the ruling ideas are
those of the ruling class.' A theoretical space is thereby
constructed to study the process through which what Marx took
to be inevitable— the ideological domination of the elite—
is secured, reinforced and occasionally over-thrown.
Gramsci (1971) avoids reductionism by acknowledging that
what "leads" in hegemony is not a united class but an
'historical bloc' or 'class alliance.' Although an historical
bloc or alliance has a 'class based character'- in terms of
the group interests served and the majority of the members- it
consists not only of members of the dominant group but also of
members of subordinated groups who have been won over
ideologically and/or by specific concessions and compromises.
Applying this aspect of Gramsci's theory to "race", there is
no necessary correspondence between ones positioning in the
social structure as black, white, yellow, red or brown and any
particular mode of interpreting this experience. Thus, while
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20
it is important to recognize that white supremacy has a
"class" or group based character- in terms of the group
interests its serves and the social position it emanated from-
it is equally important to note that it ultimately has no
exclusive "class" or group belongingness. That is, we must
recognize that it is the ideology and the subjectivities it
produces and not people of a particular ethnic group that are
the problem. It is white supremacist discourse itself that
constrains us to think about the problem as one simply of
"white" people against "non-white" people when really it is an
ideological conflict between forces for and against white
domination. In an ideological struggle you cannot
necessarily tell whose side any one person is on by their
particular fit into the socially and ideologically constructed
categories in play. Thus, some African Americans are quite
mired in white supremacist thought and practice while some
European Americans are aware of and staunchly fighting against
white supremacy in our culture, practices and institutions.
This does not, however, mean that there is no structure
in terms of who is more likely to think what. Generally
speaking it is safe to assume that African Americans are, on
average, less acquiescent to some forms of white supremacy
than are European Americans. The acknowledgment of "no
necessary class belongingness" (Hall, 1983) guides the scholar
in recognizing the complexity of the opposing forces and
points out the need to examine the mechanisms through which
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21
ideologies and the oppressive structures they help promote are
reproduced.
After hegemony has been achieved its reproduction is
largely through "consent" rather than coercion. This "consent"
is reproduced through control of economic, political and
ideological institutions such that even members of
subordinated groups are generally persuaded and "educated" to
accept as their own, systems of belief, interpretation, values
and morals that emanate from, and serve the interests of, the
dominant group. In this way, interpretations, beliefs and
values that promote the domination of a class and legitimate
the subordination of subaltern classes become pervasively
naturalized, rationalized and legitimated, "not as befitting
the narrow interests of one class, but, as national-popular
will, in the universal interests of all, 'common sense'"
(Hall, 1982, p. 82). "Common sense" was for Gramsci a fully
historicized and processual conception. He argues for example
that "every philosophical current leaves behind a
sedimentation of 'common sense'; this is the document of its
historical effectiveness" (1971, p.326). Therefore,
What needs to be explained is how it happens that
in all periods there coexist many systems and
currents of philosophical thought, how these
currents are born, how they are diffused, and why
in the process of diffusion they fracture along
certain lines and in certain directions... for it
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22
is this history which shows how thought has been
elaborated over the centuries and what a collective
effort has gone into the creation of our present
method of thought which has subsumed and absorbed
all this past history, including all its follies
and mistakes. (1971, p. 327)
The general problematic of the study of racism within a
cultural studies framework is to take up Gramsci's challenge
by attempting to analyze racist philosophies or 'conceptions
of the world' in a historically and politically sensitive way.
The goal of such analyses is to illuminate the process through
which racial ideologies have been 'born', 'diffused' and
'fractured along certain lines and in certain directions'
culminating in our present methods of thought, our present
state of cultural politics, and underlying our present
structure of power relations.
Gramsci's theory of hegemony stresses the process of
domination within in the context of a continuous struggle
between forces of domination and forces of resistance. Hall
(1986) interprets Gramsci's theory of hegemony as suggesting
that we attend to the ways in which a dominant group or social
formation makes relatively small concessions to subordinated
groups in times of legitimation crises, effectively quelling
rebellion and resolving glaring contradictions in order to
regain legitimacy without changing the larger substance of the
dominant order. As Hall (1982) notes, hegemony "achieves the
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23
establishment of a certain equilibrium in the class struggle
so that, whatever the concessions the ruling 'bloc' is
required to make to win consent and legitimacy, its
fundamental basis will not be overturned" (p.77). Thus,
Gramsci's theory of the process of domination compels the
scholar to analyze and be mindful not only the social
mechanisms through which stable relations of inequality and
domination are won; of equal importance is the concrete
analysis of those moments when the forces of anti-hegemonic
resistance crystalize into a fully blown legitimation crisis
for the hegemonic order and the historically specific
mechanisms through which that unstable equilibrium is rewon.
If that state of pervasive social authority and unstable
equilibrium cannot be rewon through concessions alone then the
dominant order will resort to coercion and violence in order
to regain control. The interpretation of this coercion and
violence will be mediated by control of the news media in
order to construct legitimacy and consent for the actions
taken by the dominant order.
White Supremacist Ideology and Hegemonv In the US
The process through which "racial" ideologies and
identities have been constructed has varied from culture to
culture depending of the specific circumstances, power
relations and, therefore, the different needs of dominating
groups in each individual society to rationalize, stabilize
and reproduce specific forms of domination. Historians David
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24
Roediger (1991, 1994) and Theodore Allen (1994) have begun to
illuminate this process of racialization within the US through
their historical analyses of the social construction of
whiteness. Theodore Allen (1994) in The Invention of the
White Race. Volume 1. argues that, "when the first Africans
arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no "white" people
there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be
for another sixty years." Allen presents evidence that
creation of "race" consciousness in the US was initially a
calculated effort on the part of the Anglo-American plantation
elite designed to weaken and divide the growing forces of
proletarian insurrection evident in events like Bacon's
Rebellion of 1675, where anglo- and African-American bond
laborers united to demand an end to bond-servitude. The
notion of "race" and the discourse of white supremacy were
purposely promulgated in the US as the solution to the problem
of social control. Under the banner of "the white race" a
system of privileges for European Americans was formally
instituted in order to unite the European proletariate with
the plantation elite and divide them from their African
counterparts, who were, in the process, reduced to lifetime
hereditary bond servitude on the basis of their supposedly
inferior racial status.
Both Roediger and Allen have begun to document the
complex and tragic process through which Europeans of various
nationalities and class statuses became "white." Many
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25
European immigrant groups were not considered "white” when
they arrived in the US. David Roediger, in The Wages of
Whiteness traces the process through which, eventually, each
"not-yet-white" group of European immigrants seized upon the
ideology of white supremacy in order to define themselves
within and among those deserving of opportunity and privilege
in the US. The force of these new immigrants' desire for
liberty, opportunity and democracy was, thus, channeled into
the service of one of the most undemocratic and oppressive
systems of human subjugation imaginable.
The reconciliation of these profoundly contradictory
impulses for liberty and oppression was found in the
meticulous elaboration and reworking of white supremacist
ideology; consequently, white supremacist ideology has been a
central, foundational element of US culture. Massive
oppression promotes and requires massive rationalization. As
Stuart Hall (1982) has noted, "A set of social relations
obviously requires meanings and frameworks which underpin them
and hold them in place (p. 67)." The only way to for European
Americans to embrace their white privilege and continue to
think of themselves and of the US in general as champions of
liberty and justice, was to think of Native, African, Mexican,
and Asian Americans as variously less human and therefore not
subject to the same principles of fair and just treatment.
Thus, from the beginning the elaboration of white supremacist
ideology has turned fundamentally on the construction of
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26
"white” and various "non-white” identities or subjectivities,
on the social construction of who "white” people are relative
to "black,” "red,” "brown," and "yellow" people.
White Supremacy and Subjectivity
In 1967 African American writer James Baldwin was asked,
in an interview on CBS news, why there is so much prejudice
against "Negroes." Eloquently expressing what may be the
fundamental ideological conflict of "race" relations in the
United States, he replied, "If I am not who you say I am, then
you are not who you think you are" (1967). Baldwin's
statement lays bare the essence of the struggle over "racial"
meanings both past and present. If "black" people were not
subhuman, what would that have made the "white" people who
were enslaving them? The belief in "black" inferiority was
necessary to rationalize the extreme economic exploitation of
African people if "whites" were going to continue to think of
themselves as defenders of liberty, freedom, and equality.
Thus, the meaning ascribed to the identity of that group we in
American culture think of as "white people" has from the
beginning been inexorably linked to the meaning we ascribe to
that group we think of as "black people." The "racial"
meanings of "black" and "white" are interdependent, thus a
change in the meaning of one implies a change in the meaning
of the other.
Changes in these meanings do not simply have an impact at
the level of ideology or what is "merely" in our heads.
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27
Racial ideologies have had major ramifications throughout US
history in terms of structuring our legal, economic,
political, educational and social systems; and social
relations of "race" are still structured in terms of a highly
inequitable "white" domination. This domination, including
the ideologies that help to reproduce it, is neither static
nor uniform, but in a continuing process of change under the
pressures of social, political and economic transformation,
conflict and struggle.
White Domination. Black Resistance and Legitimation Crisis
The ideologies of white supremacy and the oppressive
social institutions, policies and practices which they have
rationalized have been major sources of contestation and
social struggle from their inception. Throughout US history
members of subordinated "racial" groups and their allies have
fought against white domination through all means including
suicide, armed resistance, political organizing and protest,
and legal confrontations. One of the greatest challenges to
white supremacy- in terms of the scope of impact on policy,
social practices and especially on discourse and ideology-
came from the African American civil rights, black power and
black consciousness movements of the mid-fifties, sixties and
early seventies. These movements dealt white supremacist
domination a serious blow by demanding, at the material level,
equal treatment in the economic, educational, political, legal
and civil spheres. At the same time they attempted to
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28
cultivate, at the ideological level, belief in African
American equality based on a new sense of pride in, and
respect for, being "black."
The initial center-piece in this movement for African
American equality was the strategy of civil disobedience.
This strategy consisted of transgressing Jim Crow customs of
racial segregation by attempting to exercise constitutional
rights to public accommodations and transportation, and then
reacting nonviolently as the specter of white coercion and
violence, on which this form of domination was ultimately
based, reared its ugly head, civil disobedience effectively
held a very unflattering mirror up to European Americans
pervasively invested in a benign and superior "white"
identity. In effect, the strategy of civil disobedience
forced many European Americans to confront a level of
arrogance, hatefulness, injustice and brutality exercised in
the name of "whiteness" that seriously challenged the
legitimacy of the superior and rewarding subject position to
which they were accustomed within the ideology of white
supremacy. There is little doubt that the images of brutal
"white" reaction to peaceful attempts by African Americans to
exercise their basic human rights had much to do with the
dismantling of Jim Crow, and the general silencing of more
vulgar forms of public white supremacist expression.
However, the changes in American society and culture that
were wrought by these African American movements have not
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29
came from the African American civil rights, black power and
black consciousness movements of the mid-fifties, sixties and
early seventies. These movements dealt white supremacist
domination a serious blow by demanding, at the material level,
equal treatment in the economic, educational, political, legal
and civil spheres. At the same time they attempted to
cultivate, at the ideological level, belief in African
American equality based on a new sense of pride in, and
respect for, being "black.”
The initial center-piece in this movement for African
American equality was the strategy of civil disobedience.
This strategy consisted of transgressing Jim Crow customs of
racial segregation by attempting to exercise constitutional
rights to public accommodations and transportation, and then
reacting nonviolently as the specter of white coercion and
violence, on which this form of domination was ultimately
based, reared its ugly head. Civil disobedience effectively
held a very unflattering mirror up to European Americans
pervasively invested in a benign and superior "white"
identity. In effect, the strategy of civil disobedience
forced many European Americans to confront a level of
arrogance, hatefulness, injustice and brutality exercised in
the name of "whiteness" that seriously challenged the
legitimacy of the superior and rewarding subject position to
which they were accustomed within the ideology of white
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30
official desegregation of public facilities, affirmative
action programs in education and in the workplace. For those
African Americans who would not be appeased by these
concessions various means of coercion were used by the
government to quell the insurrection, from illegal
surveillance, framing of black activists and widespread
incarceration to murder and assassination (Marable, 1984). A
combination of concessions, coercion and ideological
accommodation contained the movement without substantially
changing the larger structure of white domination.
American society is still structured by a highly
inequitable white domination. According to Hacker's (1992)
examination of 1990 census data on income, "between 1970 and
1990 the median income for white families rose from 34,481 to
36,915. During these decades, black family income barely
changed at all going from 21,151 to 21,423. In relative terms
black incomes dropped from 613 to 580 for each $1000 received
by whites" (p.97). In 1992 the mean income for European
American families was 38,909, compared to 21,161 for African
American families (Chideya, 1995). Although the number of
African American families making over $50,000 per year rose
by 4.6% between 1970 and 1990 (from 9.9 to 14.5%) the
comparable figure for European American families rose by 8.4%
(from 24.1% in 1970 to 32.5% in 1990). In the mean time the
number of African American families living on under 15,000 per
year rose from 34.6% in 1970 to 37% in 1990 compared to 14.3%
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31
in 1970 to 14.2% in 1990 for European Americans. African
American individuals are approximately three time more likely
to live in poverty than European Americans (Chideya, 1995).
According to the 1990 census 44.8% of African American
children lived below the poverty line compared to 15.9 % of
European American children. The infant mortality rate for
African American babies is still twice that of European
American babies, and has in fact increased slightly from a
multiple of 1.92 in 1970 to a multiple of 2.04 in 1990.
Education is still very much segregated with 64% of African
American children still attending segregated and inferior
schools (Hacker, 1992). From educational to occupational
opportunity, from physical health to social services, African
Americans are still disproportionately represented among the
have nots and European Americans are still disproportionately
represented among the haves. US society is still structured
in white domination, and white supremacy— in a more subtle
form— is still the dominant, hegemonic ideology through which
people understand "race” relations in US culture.
In addition to these still dismal statistics, we face a
historical moment in which programs designed to counter
"racial" inequality are being dismantled and the ability to
challenge inequality through the legal system is being
systematically restrained. Culturally, the desire to redress
the oppression and on-going inequality of white domination is
drowned out by calls of "reverse discrimination,"
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32
delegitimated by stern condemnation of "political
correctness," and ridiculed by denunciation of "playing the
race card.” Blatantly racist literature (i.e. literature that
is explicitly premised on ideas of racial superiority and
inferiority) such as The Bell Curve and The End of Racism are
popular successes. US culture appears to be coming full
circle. Looking back on the promise, the "dream" of the civil
rights and black power movements, a crucial area for research
is the process through which white supremacist ideology has
been able to contain its legitimation crisis, nurturing a
growing white backlash and delivering us to this cultural
moment.
In an article entitled "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology':
Return of the repressed in media studies," Stuart Hall (1982)
argues that the "ideological" has as a characteristic and
defining mechanism "...movement towards the winning of a
universal validity and legitimacy for accounts of the world
which are partial and particular and towards grounding these
particular constructions in the taken-for-grantedness of the
'real'" (p.65). White supremacist ideology has come a long
way in terms of winning validity and legitimacy for partial
and particular accounts of "race" relations realities since
the end of the mass movements for African American equality.
Antonio Gramsci's (1971) theory of hegemony suggests that we
attend to the ways in which a dominant group or social
formation makes relatively small concessions to subordinated
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33
groups in times of legitimation crises, effectively quelling
rebellion and resolving glaring contradictions in order to
regain legitimacy without changing the larger substance of the
dominant order. Given that the African American movements for
equality have largely been quelled and yet the larger
structure of inequitable white domination largely remains, the
questions that must be raised are as follows. In what ways has
white supremacist ideology accommodated, coopted and been
altered by, African peoples' struggles for equality? In what
ways has the form of this very accommodation enabled the
production of new variants of white supremacist discourse
thereby allowing for the more effective reinforcement and
reproduction of both the central premises of this ideology,
and the general structure of white domination? James Baldwin
said that white supremacy is a fundamental element of US
culture because 'if blacks are not who whites say they are
then whites are not who they think they are. ' What meanings,
interpretations and frameworks have been constructed and
reproduced in order to reconcile the ideology of white
supremacy with the movement's challenge that "black" people,
and therefore "white" people, 'are not who they were said to
be'?
Meâiâ Representations o £ . Movements Black Equality:
Containing the Crisis
The past forty years of US history represent an era of
unprecedented, volatile, uneven, and highly contested change
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34
in US culture with regard to "racial" discourse. This papers
seeks to examine and illuminate the politics of signification
over "race," "whiteness," and "blackness" by analyzing a small
but crucial aspect of the way in which mainstream "white" mass
media has dealt with the legitimation crisis and ideological
upheaval prompted by movements for African peoples' equality.
One place to look for contemporary "signs" of the
politics of signification over who "white" people are as a
group in relation to "black" people is in media texts that
specifically deal with important historical moments in "race"
relations. In the late eighties and early nineties one of the
most vigorous sites in this ideological struggle was popular
film. After a couple of decades or so had passed since the
various controversial events and ideological battles of the
fifties, sixties and seventies, the American and British film
industries chose to represent struggles for "black" equality
in a number of films on the U.S. and South Africa. These films
are particularly important in terms of the politics of
signification with regard to race because they deal with those
historical moments in which the ideology of white supremacy
has been explicitly and vigorously challenged by subordinated
groups. How African peoples' movements are retrospectively
dealt with should offer special insight into how the
legitimation crisis for white supremacist discourse has been
dealt with in our culture and society.
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35
CHAPTER 2
WHITE SUPREMACIST IDEOLOGY, COLLECTIVE MEMORY
AND FILM: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
The past forty years of US history represent an era of
unprecedented, volatile, uneven and highly contested change in
US culture with regard to "racial" discourse. This
contestation and change was prompted by movements for African
American Equality: the civil rights, black power and black
consciousness movements of the mid-fifties, sixties and early
seventies. In the words of Gramsci's theory of hegemony,
these movements created a legitimation crisis for white
domination and white supremacist ideology. However, over the
last two and a half decades, the forces of white domination
have been in the process of containing this legitimation
crisis. This dissertation seeks to examine and illuminate this
process of containment by analyzing revisionist narratives of
the history of struggles for "black" equality.
Collective Memory and Legitimation Crisis Containment
Historical revisionism plays an important role in the
shaping of "collective memory." Whereas personal memory
refers to the individual's ability to conserve and recollect
information, collective memory refers to recollections of the
past that are determined and shaped by social groups. As
Zelizer (1995) explains it, in collective memory "remembering
becomes implicated in a range of other activities having as
much to do with identity formation, power and authority.
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36
cultural norms and social interaction as with the simple act
of recall" (p.214). Collective memory is therefore memory
with a purpose, and that purpose is typically to create a
version of the past that is harmonious with the agendas,
political configurations, and desired identities of the
present. Within research on collective memory what is
forgotten is just as important and strategic as what is
recalled. "How memories are erased, forgotten, or willed
absent has come to be seen as equally important to the ways in
which memories are set in place" (Zelizer, 1995, p.220). What
is important in the study of collective memory is why memories
are constructed by particular groups in particular ways at
particular times. This chapter will analyze the ways in which
mainstream film constructs collective memories of struggles
for African peoples' equality such that the legitimation
crisis for white domination is contained and white supremacist
ideology is reinforced.
Discursively, part of the process of containing the
legitimation crisis for white domination has involved
conceding that some aspects of "black" protest movements- as
defined by "whites"- were, indeed, legitimate. In the process
the black power movement and its violent and coercive
suppression is largely erased from collective memory; the
whole movement for African American equality becomes defined
as "the civil rights movement." This concession is evidenced
in the perfunctory write-ups on "the movement" in most public
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37
school history textbooks, the commemorations of selective
aspects of "the movement" repeatedly presented during "black
history month" and the institutionalization of Martin Luther
King Jr.'s Birthday as a national holiday. The M.L. King
Holiday is invariably accompanied by the widespread
dissemination of selectively innocuous excerpts from his
speeches, especially his self-consciously restrained "I have
a dream" speech from the 1963 march on Washington. Indeed, so
selective is the revisioning of Martin Luther King Jr. that
conservatives of all colors co-opt his rhetoric, invoking his
words and his moral authority to aid in the dismantling of
programs designed to redress "racial" oppression. As noted
above, collective memories are constructed and invoked as
tools to defend the political aims of the present.
Mainstream Film and Movements for African Peoples' Equality
In the late eighties and early nineties one of the most
vigorous cultural sites in the construction of collective
memories of struggles for "black" equality was popular film.
After a couple of decades or so had passed since the various
controversial events and ideological battles of the fifties,
sixties and seventies, the American and British film
industries chose to represent struggles for "black" equality
in a number of films on the U.S. and South Africa. These
films were especially conspicuous during the initial
onslaught, at which time it became quite a trend to produce
films dealing with this subject matter. These films are
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38
particularly important in terms of the politics of
signification with regards to "race" and racism because they
deal with those historical moments in which the ideology of
white supremacy has been explicitly and vigorously challenged
by subordinated groups. How African peoples' movements are
retrospectively dealt with in mainstream (i.e. "white") media
should offer special insight into how the legitimation crisis
for white supremacist discourse has been dealt with in our
culture and society. This chapter explores these films in
general and Mississippi Burning (1988) in particular to
examine how white supremacist ideology has been adapted or
altered in ways that both accommodate and coopt African
peoples' struggles for equality such that white domination is
ultimately reproduced and reinforced. Before presenting this
examination, a brief introduction to "textual analysis" is in
order.
An Introduction to Textual Analysis
Much of the research and theory in communication has
concerned the study of texts or content. But the study of
texts or content has varied widely from one perspective to
another. Content analysis, which involves the systematic
assessment of the amounts of various themes and types in a
random sample of media content, has been a popular way of
studying media output, especially in U.S. communication
studies. In cultural studies, textual analysis is the
dominant method of examining mass media texts. Textual
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39
analysis is more concerned with the ways meanings are
structured than with the amount of a certain type of content
per se. As Burgelin (1972) notes, "there is no reason to
assume that the item which recurs most frequently is the most
important or most significant, for the text is clearly a
structured whole, and the place occupied by the different
elements is more important than the number of times they
recur" (cited in Woollacott, 1982, p.93). Often the cultural
and ideological significance of a particular text or series of
texts can be best understood less in terms of the
quantification of its manifest content than in terms of a
semiotic analysis of both the manifest and underlying meanings
privileged in the text. A semiotic analysis examines the
relationships between different aspects of the plot as well as
the signs and technical devices that make up the codes
contained in the content that privilege one meaning over
another. A semiotic analysis further analyzes the way these
privileged and/or silenced meanings articulate the social
identity or subjectivity of the reader and connect with the
larger social political, historical and ideological context in
which the content is produced and read.
Textual analysis in the cultural studies tradition
combines semiotic theory and methods with theories of
ideology. This type of analysis focuses on media content as
discourse (i.e. significatory manifestations of socially
located ways of making sense of specific topics) and reorients
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40
research and theory towards the systems of rules, codes and
ideologies that govern the various discursive formations of
which the media content in question is a part. It takes
seriously the fact that the distinctive feature of mass media
content is that is it concerned with "the production and
articulation of messages within specific signifying systems,
the rules and meanings of which we tend to take for granted"
(Woollacott, 1982, p.93).
The messages in the media are both composed and
interpreted in accordance with certain rules or codes. Fiske
(1987b) defines a "code" as "...a rule governed system of
signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members
of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate
meanings in and for that culture" (p.4). A fundamental
premise of semiotics is that "reality is always encoded; the
only way we can perceive and make sense of 'reality' is
through the codes of our culture. Thus, as Fiske (1987b)
notes,
there may be an objective, empiricist reality out
there, but there is no universal objective way of
perceiving and making sense of it. What passes for
reality in any culture is the product of that
culture's codes, so "reality" is always already
encoded, it is never 'raw' (p. 4-5).
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41
"Culture" is seen here as a contradictory and complex whole as
well as in processual terms; never static, always in the
making or unmaking as the case may be.
Fiske (1987b) goes on to present a very helpful diagram
and typology that presents the codes and levels of meaning
that are at stake in audio-visual communication. At the first
level, the level of "reality" people, places and things are
already encoded in a particular culture by the "social codes,"
such as physical appearance, dress, make-up, environment,
behavior, speech, gesture, expression, sound, etc. For
example, people typically spend time deciding what to wear,
and then dress differently for a job interview as opposed to
a disco, according to cultural rules and conventions regarding
dress and the meanings of identity that are contained within
these codes.
In order to transform this level into an electronic media
message at what Fiske calls the "representational level,"
these social codes are further encoded and electronically
transmitted by "technical codes" such as those of lighting,
camera angles, editing, music and sound. For example, though
most audience members have never consciously thought about it,
they have learned the rule that when the music turns from a
major to a minor key something negative is about to happen.
These technical codes transmit what Fiske calls the
"conventional representational codes" which shape the re
presentations of narrative, conflict, character, action.
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42
dialogue, setting, casting, costume, etc. For example, we can
often tell the hero from the villain because he is more
attractive and we can often guess the plot because of the
conventionalization of rules governing the narrative.
The social, technical and representational codes are
organized into coherence at the ideological level by the
"ideological codes" such as those of individualism,
patriarchy, white supremacy, classism, materialism,
capitalism, etc. So, for example, Fiske argues that the
female heroine is typically attractive according to
eurocentric standards or codes of beauty. If she plays a
"strong role" like a police officer or detective she is
usually still presented at some point as a sexual object and
as weak or vulnerable in order to constrain her threat to
patriarchal codes of femininity and masculinity.
A textual analysis examines all three of these
interacting levels of meaning and code- social, technical and
representational- in order to explicate how certain meanings
are privileged over others in a text. The aim of textual
analysis is to deconstruct and, thus, expose the underlying
ideological imperatives of the text. In the next section this
kind of textual analysis on films that deal with struggles for
African peoples' equality will be presented.
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43
Revisionist narratives of Struggles for African Peoples'
Equality
From 1987 to 1991 some of the most widely seen films
dealing with important historical moments in African peoples
struggles for equality, either in the US or in South Africa,
were Cry Freedom f19871. A World Apart (1989). Mississippi
Burning fl988K Heart of Dixie f19891. Dry White Season
( 19881 . and The Long Walk Home f 19911. All of these films are
ostensibly about important historical periods in the struggles
of African peoples for equality- from the U.S. civil rights
and integration battles of the fifties and sixties, to the
"black consciousness" movement and Soweto massacre in South
Africa- yet all star European actors as the principle
characters and protagonists. All ironically privilege a
particular "white" experience of struggles for "black"
equality.
Each movie either principally follows or contains the
same narrative structure;
1) "White" hero experiences some extreme form of racism
vicariously through some "black" contact
2) "White" hero develops a relatively radical anti-racist
consciousness,
3) "White" hero sacrifices a great deal at the hands of
white racists to further the cause of the struggle for "black"
equality (usually in some type of leadership capacity).
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44
4) "White" hero suffers terribly for his or her efforts
but manages to somehow prevail in the end.
The exception to this narrative structure is Mississippi
Burning (which will be discussed in detail later) in which the
FBI's alleged role in solving the murders of three civil
rights workers is the central narrative and the narrative
structure explained above appears as a crucial subplot.
Such subject matter- key moments in oppressed groups'
struggles for equality- and perhaps even such a narrative
structure- how members of the dominating group come to
consciousness and join the struggle- is arguably full of
radical potential. These films are ostensibly about critical
moments in struggles for African peoples equality, and that
does promote critical interrogation of the oppressive
ideologies of white supremacy and of the social systems which
these ideologies help reproduce and underscore. But the
critique of white supremacy is not thoroughgoing and could
never be, because these films are all deeply imbedded within
the very ideology they ostensibly seek to expose and denounce.
In effect, white supremacy is only interrogated in these films
to the extent that is needed to accommodate and contain the
legitimation crises for white domination manifested in various
insurrections by African peoples.
The Reproduction of White Supreroacv
White supremacy is reproduced in at least three ways in
these film texts: 1) by defining white supremacy in a
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45
particularly extreme, blatant, and therefore superficial way;
2) by privileging "white" experiences of, and agency within,
the struggles over "black" experiences and agency; and 3) by
constructing a paternalistic form of white supremacy as the
ideological framework within which to understand critical
historical moments in struggles for African peoples' equality
here and abroad. I will discuss each of these points in turn.
In each film white supremacy is constructed as
superficially extreme and thus aberrant in terms of
contemporary US "race" relations. In other words, these films
define white supremacy as extreme forms of racial violence,
overt restrictions on civil rights, and pathological hatred.
Mississippi Burning. Cry Freedom, and Dry White Season revolve
around vicious white supremacist murders. Heart of Dixie. The
Long Walk Home and A World Apart construct the problematic of
"racism" as assaults on "black" men, women and children, Jim
Crow/apartheid segregation, and/or wrongful imprisonment. This
construction of white supremacy as only the relatively extreme
and blatant works to contain and defuse the legitimation
crisis for the ideology of white supremacy as a whole. Once
the idea that white supremacy equals hatred, extreme violence
and/or overt racial restrictions is secured, the more subtle
and pervasive forms of white supremacy that continue to
underpin and reproduce inequality are left unexamined and
unchallenged. The implication that arises out of defining
white supremacy in this way is that once we have brought an
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46
end to the organized reign of white violence and overt racial
restrictions, once we have achieved a society in which it is
generally taboo to publicly voice racial hatred, the problem
of white domination will have been resolved. The deep
structural, economic and institutional nature of white
domination is mystified and obscured. In this way, these
movies contribute to a discourse in which white supremacy,
defined as extreme and overt, is believed to have been all but
eliminated in this country. Therefore, continued agitation on
the part of activists and organizations still struggling for
equality is constructed as unwarranted and illegitimate.
Contemporary discourse admonishing African Americans for
"playing the 'race card'" illustrates this sentiment well.
White supremacy is also reproduced in these films by the
way in which they privilege "white" experiences and agency
over "black" experiences and agency. In an article about white
supremacist ideology and signification Richard Dyer (1988)
notes that how oppressed groups are re-presented "is part of
the process of their oppression, marginalization or
subordination" (p.44). Likewise for the dominating group,
how they are represented is part of the process of their
domination, centralization or "super-ordination." In the
narrative structure presented above, it is the agency and the
developing character of the "white" protagonist that is the
engine that moves the story along. The "white" protagonist is
the subject; we experience "reality" through his or her eyes.
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47
The "black" characters are objects, seen largely from the
outside through the eyes of the "white" hero or heroine.
These movies delve into the complexity of the experiences
of the "white" protagonist(s) and their families. Only the
characters and lives of the "white" protagonists are fully
developed. We learn of how their relationships with their
spouses, children, friends and colleagues are affected by
their "consciousness" of white supremacy and their efforts to
create some measure of justice for "black" people. In this
way, the "white" protagonists elicit empathy from the
audience. We are lead by the technical and representational
codes in the text to empathize with them and we have been
provided with enough depth of portrayal with which to do so.
Although the extent of the discrepancy varies from film
to film, the "black" characters are far less developed than
the "white" protagonists in every instance. The main role of
the "black" characters is that of victim and the main
character development afforded them is in terms of their
immediate and relatively superficial responses to their
victimization. The only films approaching any kind of balance
in terms of depth and quality of "black" versus "white"
representation are Cry Freedom and The Long Walk Home. Steven
Biko, played by Denzel Washington in Cry Freedom, is allowed
just enough character development as is required for him to
explain black consciousness discourse to the "white"
protagonist. But there is a big difference between explaining
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48
black consciousness and being directed by the text to take up
the subject position of an African person living through the
complexities of coming to such an anti-hegemonic
consciousness. When Biko has fulfilled this role of
explaining black consciousness to the "white” protagonist, he
is murdered before the film has reached the half way mark.
Thus, he is still an object in that his life is explored with
only the depth of an outsider looking in on it instead of from
his own perspective and lived experience.
Likewise, the "black" maid played by Whoopi Goldberg in
The Long Walk Home is afforded little character development in
the film. She is the simple and long-suffering Mammie figure.
We do not experience through her the pain, anger and
complexity of coming to consciousness of one's oppression and
human equality, or the trepidation, self-doubt and
exhilaration at asserting a long suppressed agency. One moment
she is riding a segregated bus and the next she is simply
walking in protest. The transition is marked by nothing more
than attendance at a church rally, a few words with her
husband about how long the walk will be, and painful feet.
As objects, the "black" characters can elicit only
sympathy, not empathy. The experiences of "black" people are
thus devalued, simplified, marginalized, decentered and
subordinated relative to the experiences of the "white"
protagonists. In this way the over valuation of "white"
experiences and the under valuation of "black" experiences
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49
that is characteristic of all forms of white supremacy is
clearly reproduced and reinforced in these texts.
The third point concerns the form that white supremacist
ideology takes in these texts. These films tend to construct
a paternalistic white supremacist discourse in which the
"white" protagonist is symbolically positioned as the
Parent/Father and the "black race" is symbolically positioned
as the Child. Paternalistic white supremacy (PWS) is a
discourse with a long history in US culture (see Frederickson,
1971). Paternalistic discourses on "race" relations were
developed and used by both pro and anti-slavery forces in
antebellum America. It was a discourse that posited "the
white race" as innately industrious, cerebral, complex,
masculine, independent and subject to "finer sensibilities"
and emotions. The subjectivity supplied for the "black race"
within this discourse is characterized as docile, dependent,
simple, childlike, closer to nature or primitive, 'feminine,'
etc. In the proslavery version of this discourse these
supposedly inherent traits of the two "races" justified and
necessitated what was viewed as "benign" domination and
enslavement of "blacks" by "whites." In the liberal, anti
slavery version of this discourse these traits were used to
critique the unjust and inhumane treatment of the "weaker
black race" while at the same time affirming a belief in the
paternal responsibility and natural superiority of "whites."
These films about "white" heros of struggles for "black"
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50
equality invoke a contemporary version of the liberal form of
paternalistic white supremacy both by implication and by
explicit construction of the subject positions of "blacks" and
"whites" historically contained within this discourse. The
films on South Africa differ markedly from the films on the
United States in this regard. In the South African films this
paternalistic white supremacist discourse is invoked by
implication: the "white" characters are the ultimate leaders
and heros, they come up with the complex plans for action,
their lives and feelings are far more indepthly portrayed
implying their greater complexity and finer sensibilities.
When they become the victims of oppression it is clear that
they could not possibly acquiesce or lay idly by; they will
obtain justice of some sort or die trying. The "black" South
Africans are not presented as particularly docile, but the
lack of depth in their portrayals relative to the "white"
protagonists implies relative simplicity. They make efforts
to obtain justice but they are always represented as less than
effective in their solo efforts and spend most of the movie
acting as background help for the efficacious "white"
protagonists.
Despite these deficits in representation, the "black"
South Africans are portrayed as having far more agency,
urgency and complexity as compared to their US
counterparts. The films portraying the African American
struggles for equality not only imply the aforementioned
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51
paternalistic white supremacist differences in aptitude and
temperament through "racial" differences in depth and quality
of portrayal, but these stereotypes of "blacks" are also
explicitly invoked (this point will be elaborated upon in the
textual analysis that follows).
Paternalistic white supremacist representations of
blackness and whiteness, as presented in these films,
construct a revisionist narrative of African peoples struggles
for equality in which the "black children" could not have made
it without the aid of the "white Parent/Father." This "White
Man's burden" theme of paternalistic white supremacy is an
especially insidious form of racist discourse because its
"positive" facets- a sense of responsibility, compassion, and
aid on the part of the "white" protagonist(s)- tend to obscure
its negative and supremacist underpinnings, inoculating it
against critique.
Mississippi Burning; Containing the Crisis ÊQe White
Domination
In order to illustrate these three ways in which white
supremacy is reproduced in these films, I will present a more
in-depth textual analysis of Mississippi Burning, and then use
this film as the backdrop for further discussion. I have
chosen to examine Mississippi Burning because it is the most
widely seen film in the group, having had a blockbuster
opening. Academy Award nominations, a long run on many cable
stations and showings on prime time network television in 1993
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52
and 1994. It is also the most blatant in terms of its
paternalistic white supremacist constructions.
Mississippi Burning is a fictionalized account of an
actual event that took place at the beginning of the Council
Of Federated Organization's (COFO) 1964 "Mississippi Summer
Project." Three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew
Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered by local police
officials and the Ku Klux Klan. COFO was a coalition of
usually disparate civil rights organizations— the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)— that had joined forces in
1962 to take on Mississippi, which was believed to be the
nation's worst white supremacist state. The Mississippi
Summer Project was a plan to recruit and train up to a
thousand mostly European American college students from the
North to go to Mississippi and teach disenfranchised African
Americans at "freedom schools" about their constitutional
rights, and to help staff a massive voter registration drive.
The underlying premise of the project was that the inevitable
violence against these young Northern "whites" would finally
draw the attention of the nation to Mississippi and break the
civil rights deadlock there (Cagin & Dray, 1988). Before the
project had really even been put into action, the plan had
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53
worked all too well and Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner had
disappeared.
In the film Mississippi Burning the missing activists and
the civil rights movement in general are relegated to
background material. It is the story of two completely
fictionalized FBI agents and their efforts to solve the
murders that takes center stage. Agent Ward is the young,
Northern, liberal. Harvard graduate who is committed to the
aims of the civil rights movement. Agent Anderson is the
older. Southern, ex-Sheriff who is a graduate of the 'school
of hard knocks,' and highly ambivalent towards the civil
rights movement.
The perspective of Southern agent Anderson is constructed
as the ideal subject position for the viewer. That is,
Anderson is the all knowing character whose discourse is
privileged in the hierarchy of disparate and conflicting
discourses contained within the film (McCabe, 1974). For
example, the camera is often positioned as if from Anderson's
perspective- through his eyes- and from his perspective all is
known. Unlike his naive liberal partner, Anderson knows where
to go, what to observe, and who to talk to. From early in the
film the televisual codes tell the viewer that it is Anderson
who will discover who the murderers are; he is simply trying
to gather enough evidence and to keep the naive agent Ward
from ruining the case.
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54
Mississippi Burning contains various devices to construct
the idea that Mississippi is in fact "burning" because outside
agitators like Northern civil rights workers and government
agents are coming in and stirring up trouble. Anderson
continuously makes this point, personifying ambivalence about
the civil rights movement manifested in the conflicting
discourses of "law and order" versus "social justice."
Although it is clear that Anderson believes in "justice," it
is equally clear that he does not sympathize with civil rights
activism of the type being engaged in by Chaney and the
others. Take, for example, one scene in which agent Ward is
looking at pictures of the murdered civil rights workers,
Anderson; You admire those kids, don't you?
Ward: Don't you?
Anderson: I think they're being used...I think
they're being sent down here in their Volkswagens
and their sneakers just to get their heads bashed
in.
Ward: Did it ever occur to you that they might
believe in what they're doing?
Anderson : Did it ever occur to them that they were
going to end up dead?
Ward: Maybe.
Anderson : Well in Washington they sure as hell
knew, didn't they?
Ward: Some things are worth dying for.
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55
Anderson: (condescending, impatient tone) Well down
here they see things a bit different.. .down here
people feel some things are worth killing for.
Note how the dialogue implies that the civil rights
workers have been sent by "Washington," negating the agency of
the African American civil rights organizations and mystifying
the contentious relationship between the movement and the
administration in Washington that existed at that time (see
for example, Marable, 1984; Haines, 1988).
Everyone that liberal agent Ward talks to gets kidnapped,
beaten, bombed, lynched and/or has their house burned down.
Anderson continuously blames these crimes on movement
activism/governmental interference until Ward eventually comes
to agree. At the scene of a burned down church that the three
murdered civil rights workers had visited the night of their
murders in efforts to start a voter registration drive, an
agitated Anderson parodies the civil rights workers in a
sarcastic and flippant tone, saying, "Sorry you folks didn't
get to vote, guess most of you folks didn't even know you had
one... now you got no place to go on Sunday." In addition to
blaming the workers for the violent destruction, Anderson
implies that the local "blacks" are so ignorant and simple
that most would not even know that they had a right to vote.
Worse yet, he implies that if indeed that basic knowledge of
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56
disenfranchisement were lacking, nothing would be lost by
allowing this political oppression to continue.
In the movie, the bodies of the civil rights workers are
eventually found after the wife of the deputy Sheriff/klansman
involved in the murders tells Anderson where the bodies are
located. Somehow the woman's husband finds out that she told
Anderson and the woman is beaten by her husband and put in the
hospital. The beating of the "white" woman is the turning
point of the film, ironically proving, once again, the logic
behind COFO's plan to bring in the more highly valued
"whites." Just as the leaders of COFO counted on violence
against young "white" students to move the government, the
media and the nation into action, the film counts on the
beating of the "white" woman (and not the many nameless
"black" victims) to be the act that truly condemns the
antagonists and demands immediate action by the protagonists.
Anderson finds out about the deputy's wife being beaten and
gets into a fight with Ward who, after threatening Anderson
with a gun, decides that they will go solve the case
Anderson's way, with 'no rules,' no holds barred.
At this point the agents resort to "Klan-like" vigilante
tactics. They get the needed confessions, first, by calling in
an African American 'FBI specialist' to threaten the Mayor
with castration, and then, by ostensibly rescuing another of
the Klan members from a staged lynching designed to make him
think his co-conspirators had turned against him. The movie
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57
ends with what is meant to look like old newsreel footage of
the defendants leaving the courthouse with their sentences
typed on to the screen. The final image is of the vandalized
tombstone of one of the murdered civil rights workers which
reads "...Will Not Be Forgotten." Though these civil rights
workers are not forgotten they are clearly remembered in a
particular, partial and ideological way.
The factual distortions in this movie are as monumental
as they are ideological. First there is the implicit
assertion that the civil rights workers were sent by the
Federal Government. This assertion implies a high level of
commitment from federal authorities to the movement. In fact
the civil rights workers were organized and trained by members
of CORE and SNCC and many including Chaney were local people
(Haines, 1988). It is well known that one of the most
difficult battles of the civil rights movement was simply
getting the federal government to be involved at all. By most
historical accounts, the highest levels of the Federal
government were against the activism being engaged in by the
movement and did as little as possible to further the movement
for African American civil rights, intervening only when it
proved embarrassing not to do so (e.g. Cagin & Dray, 1988,
Haines, 1988). The move to recruit and train "whites" to go
down to Mississippi as civil rights activist was a calculated
response by the African American leadership of COFO who had
learned all too well that the violation of "black" bodies and
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58
civil rights was held at a considerably lower premium than
"white" bodies and civil rights in terms of gaining the needed
publicity to move the government and the public at large to
action.
Why the silence and distortion on this area of critigue
of the political system? White racism, apathy and obstruction
at this level of government would be too much for the
ideologies of American freedom, democracy, and paternalistic
white supremacy to accommodate. Racism in the United States
is better accommodated by these ideologies when it is
represented as a localized, individualized psychological
problem which in which "good whites" fought against "evil
whites" and won. It is important that in this construction the
common denominator of "whiteness" drops out of the equation.
The idea that at the highest levels of government and other
important institutions there might have been what in this
simplistic schema are being classified as "evil whites" hits
too close to the social, institutional and political structure
exposing the shallowness of the "psychological" account of
race relations. Within contemporary white supremacist
ideology and discourse "racism" is never institutional or
structural, only personal, individual, aberrant.
Next there is the way in which the handling of the case
by the F.B.I. was constructed. It is widely known and
acknowledged among historians who specialize in this area that
the F.B.I. generally did far more to obstruct than to help the
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59
civil rights movement (Haines, 1988; Skolnick, 1969). J.
Badger Hoover, then director of the FBI, was very much against
the movement and claimed to believe that it was tied to
communism. Furthermore, in this specific case, F.B.I.
officials publicly announced that they would not protect the
civil rights workers (Haines, 1988). Only after the murders
of the two "white" activists (Goodman and Schwerner) provoked
a national outcry (as sadly predicted) did the F.B.I. enter
Mississippi in force in order to solve the murders (White,
1989). As for the conviction with which the typical F.B.I.
agent approached the task of aiding African Americans in their
struggle for equality. Time magazine quotes an F.B.I. agent
who asserts that during the early sixties "in about 90% of the
situations in which Bureau personnel referred to Negroes the
word 'nigger' was used" (White, 1989). Thus, once again we
see an instance in which the meaning constructed in this film
limits the public's consideration of historical facts and
perspectives to only those issues and interpretations that are
relatively innocuous to the ideology of white supremacy and
the general structure of white domination.
The fiction about bringing in an African American F.B.I.
agent can be similarly explained. In a review article of
Mississippi Burning historian Harvard Sitkoff (1989) argues
that
Although there were no black FBI agents in
Mississippi in 1964, the essential falsehood is the
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60
depiction of the FBI in 1964 as foe of those who
violently opposed the black struggle for equality.
Against the wishes of its director, J. Edgar
Hoover, who was then orchestrating a vendetta
against Martin Luther King Jr. , the FBI had to be
forced into protecting the civil rights volunteers
in Mississippi and aggressively investigating the
disappearance of [the missing civil rights
workers]...” (p.1019).
There were no African American FBI agents in Mississippi in
1964 (in fact they were not even allowed in the agency until
1962) but the invention of one strengthens the highly
ideological misconception that white supremacy is not
institutional. The use of an 'African American F.B.I.
specialist'- who is allowed to threaten the white Mayor with
castration no less- implicitly argues that in the sixties the
federal government and its agencies were firmly anti-racist,
therefore they could not have embraced racist policies and
practices.
Perhaps the most ideological construction of Mississippi
Burning in terms of reinforcing the ideology of paternalistic
white supremacy is the relegation of African American people
to the background in their own struggle, and, of course, the
concomitant positioning of "whites" at the forefront. The
film's first scenes are of the three civil rights workers
being pulled over by the police while driving along the rural
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61
roads of Mississippi. In the movie the two "white" activists,
Goodman and Schwerner are in the front seat and the "black"
activist, Chaney, is in the back seat. This placing gives the
distinct impression that it is the "whites" who are in charge,
they are they leaders and the "black" man is the follower. In
reality Chaney was driving. He was the one that knew the back
roads of Mississippi and had the greater knowledge of what to
avoid and how to behave if trouble should arise (Cagin & Dray,
1988). The fact that he is relegated to the back seat is not
a trivial detail. It resonates with all kinds of white
supremacist institutions and meaning for the viewer of the
film. As it turns out this placement of the "black" person in
the back seat and of the "whites" in the front and driver's
seats is simply the first such construction among many as the
films paternalistic white supremacist discourse unfolds.
In Mississippi Burning. African American people are
simply ineffectual victims. They are inanimate objects that
are variously thrown away, beaten, broken, walked over and
hung. For the most part they do not have names or identities.
Their identities are so obscure that in the end of the movie,
one of the many nameless, faceless "black" victims is being
buried and only after viewing the movie twice times did I
figure out it was Chaney.
In contrast to the "whites" (even the "white" villains),
the "blacks" in the movie are not actors but reactors, despite
the fact that it is their houses being burned, their children
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62
being kidnapped and beaten, their fathers being hung. The
only African American who speaks up- after being spoken to- is
a boy named Aaron. He is the only African American character
whose name is used more than once. When the F.B.I. come upon
a group of African Americans, gathered for some reason at the
ruins of the burned down church, it is this child who is
addressing the crowd. What the writers of the movie have this
character say is barely comprehensible, implying that the
African American voice is not of importance or value. As the
camera pans in from behind the boy, he says, "One day there'll
come at time when we don't hafta say 'good mornin suh mista
Sheriff.. .there'll come a time when we won't hafta say 'Mr.
Stukky,' one day there'll come a time when we'll just say
' Stukky, a Sheriff... and one day there'll come a time when
the Sheriff won't even be a white man!" During this speech the
camera is only momentarily on the speaker, a camera technique
that further marginalizing his words. In the middle of the
speech, the camera is positioned from the point of view of the
FBI agents coming on the scene. Then it focuses on the
"black" audience, all with docile defeated and scared
expressions. As they see the FBI agents approaching the
downtrodden "black" crowd starts scurries away before the boy
even finishes his "speech". The importance of a speakers
words are typically signified by having these words be at
least comprehensible and focusing on the speaker and an
attentive audience. All of the codes of the camera and
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63
dialogue in this scene marginalize and devalue the thoughts
and words of the speaker.
Of course Aaron is only "assertive" relative to the other
complacent "black" victims; not in comparison to the
effectual, active "whites" (both heros and villains). The
most assertive things that this Aaron character says in the
movie are- when approached by the F.B.I. agents right after
his speech- "the reason folks don't want to talk to you is
because they're afraid it might get back to the law," and "it
ain't colored folks you should be talking to." Thus, not only
doesn't the most assertive African American character in the
movie have agency, he does not want it either. He implies
that it is not necessary to know the experience and
perspective of "blacks" or even to get any input from the
"black" community. In this way the struggle for justice and
equality is constructed as a "white" mans struggle, in which
African Americans are just the terrain over which the "whites"
work out their moral dilemmas.
Later, when the church that Aaron is praying at gets
attacked by the Klan, the boy neither runs, nor fights back,
nor tries to protect himself or the women and girls being
beaten. He falls to his knees in prayer, looking like a
sacrificial lamb waiting for slaughter. And, of course, he
gets kicked in the face.
Adding insult to injury on behalf of those African
Americans who in fact stood courageously and fought vehemently
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64
for their rights in this struggle, the paternalistic white
supremacist discourse constructed in the movie implies that
"blacks" are like ignorant animals in the sense that they
don't even know enough to protect themselves much less mount
any offensive strategy. For example, after Aaron's father
gets lynched and his family's house burned down. Ward and
Anderson come to investigate the ruins. The lynching scene
ends with Aaron's father laying sideways in a medium shot of
his chest and head. His face is contorted by pain, sweat,
darkness, and the eery glow of the background flames. After
a two second long-shot of this fiery spectacle the film cuts
directly to the charred remains of a cow in the barnyard the
next day. The cow also lays sideways and is presented in a
medium close-up shot of its chest and head. Its face is
contorted in death, charred darkness, and the eery fumes of
smoke. Anderson looks at the carcass of the charred cow and
has the following conversation with Ward;
Anderson: Ya know, cows won't run away, no one
knows why (focus changes to "black" boy just
sitting there, emotionless, in the midst of the
smoldering rubble)...they're just stupid I guess.
They just stand there till their bellies swell up
(camera now leaves "black" boy and goes back to
Anderson) and they pop.
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65
Ward: (without the normal pause) They have
relatives in Detroit (as if in answer to Anderson's
assertions or on the same subject)
Anderson: Are they going to go?
Ward: I didn't give them any choice.
The sequence implies that it's a good thing the "blacks" were
given no choice, that they have the "white" Father to look
after them, because, like dumb animals, they probably wouldn't
run away or defend themselves. 'No one knows why, just stupid
I guess.'
The use of a child as supposed representative or "leader"
of the African American community is another paternalistic
white supremacist device that serves to marginalize African
Americans in general, and African American males in
particular. The movie opens with segregated drinking
fountains. A "white" man in a suit comes and drinks from the
one marked "white." The "white" man's counterpart is
symbolically presented as a "black" boy who comes and drinks
from the fountain marked "colored." In this way the subject
positions of Father and Child, provided by the paternalistic
white supremacist discourse, are in effect starting from the
opening credits.
In addition to having the character of a young boy be the
only regular "black" character who is even slightly assertive,
it is, conspicuously, another "black" boy who is talked into
anonymously identifying the Klansmen who bombed a "black"
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66
home. Hence the Jim Crow custom of calling African American
men, however old, "boy" as a sign of their inferiority to
"whites" has its symbolic counterpart in the movies use of
"black" boys instead of men or women to do the adult work of
standing up for African American rights. These paternalistic
white supremacist constructions negate the role of African
American leaders and organizations, local and national. In
these films the weak and childlike "blacks" need the strong
and paternalistic "whites" to lead them to the promised land.
"Black" women are also used to marginalize and "feminize"
(in the patriarchal sense) both the African American community
in general and the African American man in particular. When
the F.B.I. agents go to "black" homes to question people about
the Klan's terrorist activities, time and again it is the
"black" woman who they are shown speaking to as the "black"
men lurk and lay around in the background. In the courtroom,
in the church, at the funerals, in the marches, it is "black"
women who are focussed upon and "black" men who are
conspicuously absent. In one important scene towards the end
of the movie, we are presented with Agent Ward marching in
Chaney's funeral procession. A widely disseminated picture
from this scene, often used in magazine articles on the movie
and in the promotion campaign for the movie, presents the
viewer with thirteen "black" women, six "white" men, one
"white" woman and only two "black" men.
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67
À "black" male preacher, who has been conspicuously
absent up to this point, is addressing the congregation in
this scene. Before he is three sentences into his speech the
theme music of the film- a "black" woman singing a gospel song
about being "tired and weak" in a low moan- begins to drown
his words out. As he says "I am sick and tired and I want you
to be sick and tired too," the image on the screen is of
Klansmen in white uniforms. As he says "I..I..I..am sick and
tired of going to the funerals of black men who have been
murdered by white men," his linguistic construction of meaning
around brutal white oppression is countered by the visual
image of good, liberal, 'down-for-the-cause,' agent Ward
marching in the funeral procession. When he says, "I am sick
and tired of the people in this country who continue to allow
these things to happen," the visual code presents the
designated villains- fat, lower-class, neanderthal, Southern
"white" Klansmen and/or local police. When he says "what does
it mean 'inalienable rights' if you are a black man? What
does it mean, 'liberty and justice for all'?," the visuals are
of the FBI agents, representatives of the US government,
gathering together to go after the racists. After the
metadiscourse has used the "black" man's voice to make its
point about how this is not a controversy that implicates the
entire white power structure, the 'black man's message' is
over. He continues speaking but what he says is drowned out
completely now by the music, and the visual code has gone on
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68
to other stories, namely the "white" F.B.I agents gearing up
to save the "black" community by putting the bad people in
jail. Thus, the "black" man's voice and perspective is only
important to the extent that it can be used in presenting the
mystifying, accommodating and co-opting white supremacist
perspective.
Epitomizing the films construction of "the black
perspective" and of the detrimental effects of naive outside
agitators for civil rights, we are presented with a scene of
the two F.B.I. agents driving up to a situation in which the
local police have cordoned off an area where "blacks" are
"rioting," and burning their own houses and church in response
to the acquittal of several "white" terrorists. Aside from
this being "black riot" that never took place, this form of
African American rebellion- the only real rebellion by African
Americans in the whole film- is constructed as utterly
irrational in that they are destroying their own property and
not that which is owned by their oppressors. In the scene,
the "blacks" are fuzzy background material for the
conversation between the good and bad "whites." The liberal.
Northern agent Ward wants to talk to the "blacks." Sheriff
Stukky won't allow it, asserting that it is "Just a bunch of
crazy niggers tearing up their own assholes...local problem."
Ward and Anderson go back to their car and have the following
conversation :
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69
Anderson: (sarcastic, accusatory tone) Look at
those flames Mr. Ward...that's why they sent you
down here wasn't it?
Ward; (without conviction) It would have happened
anyway and you know it.
Anderson: You know if I were a Negro, I'd probably
think the same way they did.
Ward: If you were a Negro, nobody'd give a damn
what you thought!
Clearly Ward's last statement, indictment of white supremacy
that it is, is evidenced in this film and all others that
marginalize African American experiences, perspectives and
agency, privileging "white" heros and paternalistic white
supremacist narratives of African peoples' struggles for
eguality.
Conclusions
In the beginning of this chapter it was argued that the
African American movements of the mid-fifties sixties and
early seventies held up a very unflattering mirror to those in
this country that think of themselves as "white," thereby
challenging and creating a legitimation crisis for the
superior subject position to which they were accustomed within
the hegemony of white supremacist ideology. I wonder whether
movement participants, especially at the early stages of the
struggle, would have guessed that more than two decades later
white supremacy would still have enough ideological power to
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70
fashion a more flattering mirror in which a paternalistic
discourse would name "whites" the main heros of the struggles,
and "blacks" the docile, ineffectual and dependent victims.
The movement leaders and participants did not realize until it
was too late that the extracurricular conceits of white
domination- the "whites only" signs, the separate schools, the
voting restrictions, etc.- could be conceded without changing
the deeper structure of that domination; it had been so deeply
ingrained into the institutions, the material realities, and
the minds of the American people . Likewise, the more blatant
and arrogant elements of white supremacist discourse- the
explicit and crude representations and assertions of "white"
superiority and "black" inferiority- have largely been
surrendered without necessitating a change in the deeper
structure of white supremacist ideology.
In the controversy that ensued following the release of
Mississippi Burning, defenders of the film often rationalized
the more blatant white supremacist constructions by arguing
that it is 'simply a matter of economics.' 'The [white]
audience' would not want to see movies about African or
African American heroes in the struggle against white
supremacy. Allen Parker, the director of Mississippi Burning,
went so far as to assert that "the two heros in this story had
to be white, this is a reflection of our society as much as of
the film industry," and that "at [that] point in time the
movie could not have been made any other way" (White, 1989).
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If, as it is claimed, European American audiences do not want
to see movies about African or African American heroes of
African and African American struggles against white
supremacy, but apparently do want to see the matter addressed
with "white" heroes, what might this mean? What is to be
gained by the European American audience through participating
in the construction of such conspicuously restricted and
biased collective memory? Part of the answer seems to lie in
the most common purpose of historical revision: serving the
need of a community to resist change in its self conception
(Hutton, 1988). The legitimation crisis and the guilt that
African people's struggles for equality engendered for
European Americans in terms of their rewarding subject
positions within white supremacist ideology is contained
through the construction of a revisionist narrative of
movement history that decenters African Americans and
recenters a paternalistic representation of "white" heros.
The "black" struggle against white supremacy is thereby
rearticulated as 'our'- "black" and "white"- struggle against
"racism" and, ironically, the ideology of white supremacy gets
reproduced, reinforced and naturalized in the bargain.
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CHAPTER 3
AUDIENCE DECODING AND THE MEDIA HEGEMONY THESIS
The study of audiences within the cultural studies
paradigm has generated a great deal of theoretical development
and debate. The central issue around which this the debate
has revolved is whether and to what extent audience members
resist ideologies embedded in media texts. Theoretical
development began much the same way as it did in the American
media effects tradition with simplistic ideas of ideological
imposition in which the audience was assumed to be passive
recipients of media messages. Then, in the tradition of the
Uses and Gratifications critique, scholars began to reject
these simplistic models and theorize audience activity and
resistance. As Morley (1992) notes, uses and gratifications
"... highlighted the important fact that different members of
the mass media audience may use and interpret any particular
program in a quite different way from how the communicator
intended it, and in quite different ways from other members of
the audience" (p. 52-53). Audience research in cultural
studies has built upon this insight. But unlike uses and
gratifications, critical audience studies— with a basic
interest in power and domination— have attempted to develop
a theory of text and audience that maps out how interpretation
or decoding of various politically and ideologically
structured content is regulated by the audience member's
social positioning and the surrounding historical, political
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73
and ideological contexts. Along the way debate over these
issues has pitted scholars with a populist, anti-elitist
perspective who highlight audience activity and resistance
against scholars who come from a perspective of ideological
critique who highlight the role of the media in the
reproduction of hegemony. This following is a history of this
debate, emphasizing the theories and issues being contested,
and ending with a discussion of the theoretical underpinnings
and aims of the audience study presented in this dissertation.
From Ideological Imposition to Oppositional Decoding
In the early seventies, media studies in England
experienced what Stuart Hall (1982) has called a'rediscovery
of ideology. ' Initially much of this work assumed that
"...the ideological effects of the media could, in effect, be
deduced from the analysis of the textual structure of the
messages they emitted" (Morley, 1992, p.7). The film journal
Screen was very influential in developing this model of
ideological imposition via film. Using a combination of
Althusserian and Lacanian psychoanalytic notions of
subjectivity and ideology, 'Screen theory' argued that various
symbolic mechanisms in the film text fixed an irresistible
"subject position" or identity for the spectator that
completely determined his or her interpretation of the text.
Stuart Hall's (1980) seminal article on encoding and
decoding initiated a critique of this relatively simplistic
notion of ideological imposition. Elaborating on the concept
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74
of "meaning systems" taken from Parkin (1972), Hall argued
that cultural consumption of media products involves a complex
process of interaction between the encoded text and the
socially located, decoding audience member. Hall's
formulation took on board Gramsci's insights about hegemony in
which domination in capitalist democratic societies is never
complete or total and is largely based on the manufactured
"consent" of the dominated. There is a constant struggle in
which work must be done on behalf of dominant social
formations in order to reproduce the legitimacy of their
domination precisely because the given structure of power is
neither necessary nor complete. Resistance to hegemony, to
one degree or another, is always present. With these insights
in mind Hall's newly elaborated 'complex process' of cultural
consumption included, at the moment of decoding, not only
interpretations inscribed by dominant ideologies and
"preferred" by the mechanisms of the text, but also the
possibility of resistance. The levels of resistance were
codified in the model's conception of "negotiated" and
"oppositional" readings of a text.
Hall and others at Birmingham University's widely
acclaimed Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)
argued that although it was useful and important to analyze
the mechanisms through which a text tends to fix certain
ideological meanings and confer certain subjectivities on the
spectator we cannot assume that any individual audience member
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75
will embrace these meanings or accept these subject positions.
As Brunsdon (1981) argued, "the relation of the audience to
the text will not be determined solely by that text, but also
by positionalities in relation to a whole range of other
discourses... elaborated elsewhere, already in circulation and
brought to the (text) by the viewer" (p.37). The members of
the CCCS argued that any particular reading of a text is
determined by the interaction between the discourses imbedded
and "preferred" in the text and the discourses brought to bear
on the text by the reader/viewer.
This idea that media messages are "polysémie" or subject
to multiple interpretations has been taken up by some cultural
studies scholars with a vengeance. In the following section I
will attempt to clarify the main lines of argument in the
development of this crucial debate.
David Morley and the Complexities of Audience Resistance
The first major study of audiences that attempted to
examine Hall's model of "preferred," "negotiated," and
"oppositional" readings was the Nationwide research project
sponsored by CCCS. As Morley puts it, "Our concern in the
Nationwide research project was to connect the theoretical
guestion of the maintenance of hegemony with the empirical
question of how a particular program acts to 'prefer' one set
of meanings or definitions of events... " and to "...
investigate theb3T
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accepted by its audience” (p.91). This project was composed
of a textual analysis that resulted in a monograph called
Everyday Television; Nationwide (Brunsdon & Morely, 1978) , and
an audience study which also resulted in a monograph called
The Nationwide Audience (Morley, 1980). The textual analysis
explored the distinctive mode of address and ideological
themes of the BBC's popular newsmagazine show Nationwide.
Nationwide offered human interest stories and supposedly "non-
political” coverage of the major news events of the day,
especially those that affect 'the ordinary viewers.' As such,
the program naturalized a partial and particular idea of who
the ordinary viewer or citizen was as well as which concerns
and views could legitimately be called those of 'the average
man. '
The audience study explored the extent to which a range
of groups from different educational, occupational and, to a
small extent, ”racial"/ethnic backgrounds, accepted or
rejected Nationwide's mode of address and "common-sense,”
"non-political" interpretations of various issues and events.
Twenty nine groups of managers, apprentices, trade unionists,
and students were shown videotapes of Nationwide and then
interviewed in focus group sessions in order to assess their
interpretations.
According to Morley, the study indicated that
interpretations had multiple determinations, most important of
which are social position and access to, or imbeddedness in.
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77
various discursive formations. Morley argued that "social
position" (e.g. class, "race"/ethnicity, gender, etc) did not
"directly correlate" with decoding frameworks, meaning there
was no perfect correlation between the two. Instead, the
relationship was mediated by "...the various cultural
repertoires, and symbolic resources available to differently
placed sub-groups within the audience" (1992, p.118).
Despite these arguments to the contrary, some scholars,
from what Morley (1992) later dubbed the 'don't worry be
happy' school of principally American Cultural studies (p.11),
interpreted the Nationwide project as a repudiation of the
encoding/decoding model; especially of the idea that
interpretations are a patterned or structured and that these
patterns are in part determined by social groupings (e.g.
Turner, 1990; Fiske, 1987; Grossberg, 1983). This line of
argument has come to be called the "interpretivist" (Evans,
1990) or "new revisionist" (Curran, 1990) paradigm. This
misreading of Morley's nationwide study may have been the
result of the 'fuzzy' conclusions Morley drew at the end of
the monograph:
"... there are always internal differences and
divisions within each group, and different groups
will operate different decoding strategies in
relation to different kinds of material and in
different contexts. The basic dominant, negotiated
or oppositional code model will need to be
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78
considerably refined before it can provide us with
an adequate conceptual framework for accommodating
all the relevant sub-divisions and differentiations
within the basic code patterns (1992, p.118)
This statement may have initiated the banality of
"interpretivist" audience research that Meagan Morris (1990)
spoke of in her often cited article "Banality in Cultural
Studies." At any rate, it is in the spirit of this statement
by Morley that many scholars took up the question of audience
research in that way that has become known as new revisionist
or interpretivist. The interpretivist paradigm is marked by
its populist rejection of intellectual and cultural elitism,
and its shift in concern from ideology and domination to
celebrations of active audiences, popular pleasures, and
unlimited polysemy, resulting in implicit and explicit
rejections of the theory of hegemony.
Although it is now widely accepted that encoding and
decoding involves a complex process in which the discourses
imbedded in a text meet the discourses brought to bear by the
audience member, just what this audience activity amounts to
in terms of ideological struggle is still a hotly debated
issue. The following section charts the history of this
debate.
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79
The Interpretivists; Anti-Elitism and the Celebration of
Popular Taste
Following the CCCs's Nationwide study, which in part
sought to critique and refine notions of the omnipotent all
determining text, a number of other scholars took up this
aspect of the critique by taking issue with the elitism of
studies that analyze and condemn popular culture texts without
inquiring into questions of popularity, taste and
interpretation from the audience member's point of view.
Janet Radway, in her highly acclaimed study entitled Reading
the Romance (1984) was one of the first cultural studies
scholars to raise these issues in an audience study. Radway
critiqued previous textual analyses for proffering simplistic
models of ideological imposition that did not allow for
resistance on the part of audience members. She argued that
scholars using textual analysis assumed that their "expert"
interpretation of the underlying ideological structure of a
text- was the "real" reason why people enjoy a media product.
Radway strongly objected to the fact that most textual
analyses failed to include any study of the people who
actually used and enjoyed various media "texts," thereby
dismissing in an elitist way the rationales for use offered by
actual audience members. Thus most textual analyses assumed
a passive audience, implicitly denying the possibility of
resistance and ignoring the reader/decoder's own ideas about
the pleasures they received.
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80
In Reading the Romance. Radway surveyed women from a
small town who had a romance novel reading group. This group
enjoyed a particular type of romance narrative in which the
harsh, overly "masculine" male is eventually "feminized" and
made more sensitive and caring by the persistence and
perseverance of the heroine. The women in the reading group
often faced some kind of objection in the home to their
romance reading and Radway argued that continuing to read was
therefore a small act of defiance to the patriarchal order.
She argued that the romances gave these readers a reason to
endure despite the hardships of being a woman in a patriarchal
order.
I en Ang (1985) put forth a similar argument in a book
entitled Watching Dallas. The book is based on a study of 41
letters written to Ang by Dutch viewers of Dallas in response
to a magazine advertisement. Ang was interested in validating
the pleasures that viewers get out of watching Dallas in the
face of what she argued were 'anti-popular culture' discourses
used by those who disliked the show, berating both the program
and its fans. Like Radway, Ang searched for some type of
redeeming value in the consumption of texts in which pleasure
is inscribed by admittedly oppressive ideologies. She states
that "Women's weepies, and all other forms of popular culture
for women (such as fashion, lyrical love songs and soap
operas) must no longer be simply condemned: we must recognize
that they have a positive value and meaning in women's lives"
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81
(p.131). In a problematic and contradictory conclusion, Ang
tries to construct a middle ground between what she sees as
two extremes. On the one hand we have condemnation of popular
texts both for their "low culture" representations and their
reproduction of oppressive ideologies. On the other hand, Ang
admits, is the opposite populist extreme in which any pleasure
is by definition justified and is above all discussion.
Despite this gesture, Ang ultimately appears to stand squarely
within this latter perspective emphasizing the "danger of an
overpoliticizing of pleasure" (p. 132) and arguing that
"fantasy is ... a fictional area that is relatively cut off
and independent" from political consciousness and practice (p.
135). After asking if "experiencing pleasure in fantasies of
powerlessness necessarily [leads] to political passivity" (p.
132), she summarily concludes that "fiction and fantasy...
function by making life in the present pleasurable, or at
least livable, but this does not by any means exclude radical
political activity or consciousness" (p. 135). However, the
question is not whether such pleasures "necessarily" "exclude"
radical political activity. This kind of hyperbole in framing
the ideological role of mass media is less than constructive
in terms of the theoretical and political deconstruction of
discursive forms of domination. This hyperbole is common
among interpretivists who reject the media Hegemony thesis.
Ang first argues that, "what is at stake here is the
relationship between fantasy life, pleasure and sociopolitical
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82
practice and consciousness” (p. 132) Then she denies that
there is any relationship among these areas of thought because
the fact that a women finds pleasure in admittedly
conservative and patriarchal representations is somehow ”a
completely different issue" (p. 135).
Radway and Ang both point out the importance of studying
the audience's own perceptions of their cultural practices and
of avoiding elitist dismissals of the tastes and the
interpretations of popular culture audiences. After all, the
cultural studies scholar is rarely, if ever, outside of the
cultural processes being studied. Scholars studying popular
culture are subject to unconscious ideological processes,
despite our attempts to deconstruct them and make them
conscious. It is in the study of audience interpretations that
the scholar is open to surprise in the form of access to, and
refinement of her or his own unexamined assumptions and
positionings.
However, neither Radway nor Ang are able to successfully
fuse their 'neo-mass culture debate' attack on "elitism" with
a concern for the role of mass media texts in the reproduction
of domination. Radway's attempt at redeeming romance readers
has her celebrating seemingly superficial and unsubstantial
facets of resistance. In fact the resistance she notes—
demanding time away from traditionally feminine duties in
order to read— may ultimately reinforce acquiescence given
the type of romance narrative the readers were partial too—
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83
ones that ' give them a reason to endure, ' as opposed to a
reason to resist, the patriarchal order. Likewise, the
only way that Ang appears to be able to resolve her concern
with validating popular tastes and pleasures, and rejecting
the reproduction of domination through media texts, is to
disengenuously deny the connection between the two. Ang
(1985) concludes her study by stating that "...where cultural
consumption is concerned, no fixed standard exists for gauging
the progressiveness of a fantasy. The personal may be
political, but the personal and the political do not always go
hand in hand" (p. 136). However, feminist, anti-racist,
Marxist, anti-homophobic, and other forms of
political/ideological criticism has been in the process of
constructing such a standard of progressiveness since their
inception. The criteria for progressiveness is whether of not
the discourses in play promote and reproduce some form of
domination. The standard is not "fixed," however certain
general parameters are clear and without them there would be
no basis for the role of intellectuals in challenging
oppression and inequality. As for the latter statement about
the personal and the political, Althusser (1986) argued that
every time we uncritically engage in a social practice that is
inscribed by an oppressive ideology we have helped to
reproduce that ideology and the form of domination that it
underscores, both in ourselves and in society at large. Thus,
the personal is political in this very important way, whether
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84
or not we are comfortable with, or even aware of, possible
contradictions between the two. Often we are complicit in
forms of domination that we intellectually and ethically
reject to one extent or another. In order to study domination
from a critical perspective this type of complicity has to be
confronted, examined and challenged.
In any case, much of the work in audience studies
following Radway and Ang largely gave up the questions of
ideology and hegemony that Morley and the CCCS had raised, in
favor of illustrating audience activity and countering
cultural elitism. As Morely (1992) argues, "recent reception
studies which document audience autonomy and offer
optimistic/redemptive readings of mainstream media texts have
principally been invoked not simply as a challenge to a
simple-minded effects model, but, rather, as in themselves
documenting the total absence of media influence in the
semiotic democracy of postmodern pluralism" (p. 26).
The need felt by cultural studies scholars to address
questions of both cultural elitism and ideological domination
has had unfortunate consequences. Unable to resolve the
connections and contradictions between the two, the latter has
been thrown out by many within the interpretivist paradigm.
As a result, some scholars are in the ironic position of
minimizing or denying the need to examine and fight against
particular forms of ideological domination in the name of
fighting against cultural domination/elitism. Perhaps it is
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85
the long tradition of cultural populism in the US— marked by
a naive and peculiarly apolitical aversion to "elitism" as
opposed to certain central forms of inequality like class,
race and gender— that explains the way that Cultural Studies
has lost much of its critical edge as it crossed the Atlantic
(see Budd, Entman, Steinman, 1990; Morris, 1990; O'Connor,
1989). As Brundson (1981) has argued this anti-elitist line
of reasoning runs the risk of placing supposedly "critical"
scholars in the position of indirectly authorizing and
validating whatever the culture industry produces.
Polysemy. Semiotic Democracy & the Rejection of the Media
Hegemony Thesis
Part of the theoretical impetus for the emphasizing
resistance by the audience is based on the idea that media
messages, like all messages, are "polysémie" or characterized
by a semantic openness that allows for a multiplicity of
meanings to be derived from any single text (see for example,
Fiske, 1986, 1987b, 1989; Liebes & Katz, 1989; Katz & Liebes
1986; Liebes, 1989). John Fiske has been instrumental in
developing the concept of polysemy and theories of audience
resistance. His theory of cultural consumption and polysemy
have been extensively and insightfully critiqued by a number
of scholars (see especially Budd, Entmann & Steinman, 1990;
Evans, 1990 ; Schudson, 1987; Carragee, 1993, 1991; and
Morely, 1992).
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86
Fiske's theory of cultural consumption is based on at
least three related concepts: polysemy, the producerly text
and semiotic democracy. Fiske adapts a concept from Barthes
in his idea of the "producerly text.” According to Fiske
(1989), "a producerly text does not prescribe either a set of
meanings or a set of reading relations for the viewer” (p.63).
Instead, a producerly text is marked by the "opening up of its
discursive practice to the viewer” (1987b, p.239). According
to Fiske, this polysémie and producerliness quality of media
content leads to a "semiotic democracy." In this semiotic
democracy the mass media and the meanings produced therein
lack of authority over the audience, offering not ideological
imposition but a "democratic delegation” of the production of
meanings and pleasures to viewers (1987, 1989). Thus, he
readily concedes that media "works" are ideologically
structured in domination but believes that the moment of
decoding, where the "work” becomes a "text,” is a pluralistic
"semiotic democracy" in which dominated groups consistently
reject attempts at ideological closure.
Fiske (1986) has argued that the open, polysémie quality
of any given text is necessary for a mass media product to be
popular given the diversity of Western Capitalist societies.
For example, he argues that
The failure of ideological criticism to account for
the polysemy of the television text is paralleled
by its failure to account for the diversity of
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87
Western capitalist societies. Despite generations
of life under the hegemony of capitalism there are
still a wide range of social groups and subcultures
with different senses of their own identity, of
their relations to each other and to the centers of
power. This diversity shows no signs of being
homogenized into the unthinking mass so feared by
members of the Frankfurt school, and, in a
different way, by ideological critics of the late
1970s. Rather, divergent and resistant subcultures
are alive, well and kicking, and exerting various
forms of pressure and criticism upon the dominant
ideology of Western capitalist societies. (1986,
p.392)
Inherent in this argument is the assumption that "diversity"
in identities and subcultures necessarily equates with
resistance and oppositionality. Fiske's error is a simple
inversion of the error of the Frankfurt school theorists.
Adorno and Horkhiemer (1979) failed to conceive of domination
and resistance at the same time, and, therefore, tended to
theorize domination as an omnipotent power that 'effected all
the same and was escaped by none' (p.369). Fiske tends to
conceive of resistance in a similar way as monolithic,
theorizing power and resistance as a simple mutually exclusive
dichotomy: if there is any evidence of resistance then there
is no domination.
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88
The reason for this error is Fiske's use of a mechanistic
theory of hegemony. Like many other interpretivist scholars,
Fiske interprets the notion of hegemony as a state of pure
ideological domination; more in line with Adorno and
Horkheimer's perspective than with Gramsci's. With this
mechanistic theory of hegemony as an omnipotent state of
domination, Fiske tends to set up an overly simplistic model
of the impact of hegemony that can therefore be countered with
an equally simplistic observation about the "diverse" nature
of Western capitalist societies, and the existence of
"résistent subcultures." To Fiske, hegemony means more than
the pervasive inculcation of ideologies supportive of
maintaining the structure of domination; he thinks of it as an
omnipotent imposition that, when in effect, would completely
homogenize not only thought but social groupings as well.
Altheide (1984), in an article entitled "Media Hegemony; A
failure of perspective," also illustrates this widespread
misinterpretation of what most cultural studies scholars who
use the concept extensively mean by hegemony. Like Fiske,
Altheide presents a simplistic definition of hegemony as a
state of fixed and seamless ideological domination and, then,
after overstating the theory, projects his definition and
criteria on to other scholars using the concept and then
proceeds highlight moments of resistance that "disprove" the
media hegemony thesis (see Carragee, 1993, for further
critique of Altheide). However, most theorists in cultural
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89
studies who use the concept of hegemony have long since
rejected the mechanistic, Adorno and Horkheimer version in
favor of the more nuanced Gramscian theory.
The major advantage of Gramsci's theory of hegemony is
that it attempts the theorization of both domination and
resistance at the same time. Gramsci (1971) insisted on the
existence of opposition, arguing that hegemony is a process of
domination that is never complete, is always up against forces
of resistance, and therefore has to constantly be reworked,
reproduced and rewon. Hegemony, according to Gramsci,
manifests itself in an unstable equilibrium between the forces
of resistance and the forces of domination. The essential
element of Gramscian notions of hegemony is that dominant
groups, through their control of a society's major
institutions (mass media, political, educational, economic),
are able to pervasively legitimize structures of domination
and subordination by pervasively naturalizing ways of
experiencing the world that serve their interests. When, in
any particular historical moment, enough people from both the
dominant and subordinated groups are thereby 'persuaded" to
grant their active or inactive consent to the given structure
power, a society riddled by inequality remains relatively
stable and dominating groups sustain a pervasive social
authority for their rule.
Simply pointing to the fact that various subcultures and
forms of resistance exist does not negate the workings of
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90
ideology, oppressive domination or hegemony. There is no
reason to assume that this diversity automatically translates
into pluralistic access to a wide variety of perspectives and
interpretations or routine use of the polysémie potential of
media content. Furthermore, this polysémie potential has its
own limits. Hall's comments on this topic are instructive:
Polysemy must not be confused with
pluralism. Connotative codes are not
egual among themselves. Any
culture/society tends, with varying
degrees of closure, to impose its
segmentations... its classifications of
the world upon its members. There
remains a dominant cultural order, though
it is neither univocal nor uncontested.
The acknowledgement of the polysémie qualities of media
messages was initially a valuable corrective to
unsophisticated notions of uniform content and uniform impact
of media content within cultural studies. However, certain
interpretivist theorists— following in the footsteps of their
Uses and Gratifications predecessors— have taken this notion
to the opposite extreme, arguing that there is no structure,
no dominant order, at the moment of decoding. Taking this
line of reasoning to the next logical step, scholars in the
interpretivist paradigm argue that "...people habitually use
the media against itself, to empower themselves" (Budd,
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91
Entman, & Steinman (1990). Budd, Entman and Steinman (1990)
have argued that the notion that people routinely use the
content of the mass media to empower themselves through
résistent readings is the basis of an insidiously naive and
unhelpful optimism in the American version of Cultural
studies. According to Budd, et.al., the thrust of this
critique seems to be that "whatever the message encoded,
decoding comes to the rescue... media domination is weak and
ineffectual, since the people make their own meanings and
pleasures" (p.170). Therefore, "we don't need to worry about
people watching several hours of TV a day, consuming its
images, ads and values...people are already critical, active
viewers and listeners, not cultural dopes manipulated by the
media" (p. 170). Thus as Fiske argues the moment of decoding,
given the polysémie quality of media texts, is a semiotic
democracy in which subordinated groups empower themselves
through oppositional readings.
However, democracy requires informed citizens and
likewise, semiotic democracy would require widespread access
to alternative, counter-hegemonic discourses. Since Fiske
readily concedes that dominant ideologies usually structure
the meaning in "mainstream" mass media texts, the question is
where, how and to what extent do audience members gain access
to alternative and oppositional discourses. The answer for
Fiske appears to be the subculture.
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92
Critiquing the Idea of Essentially Résistent Subcultures
Fiske, apparently believing that various subcultures
define and maintain themselves solely out of the free choice
of their members, has a tendency to simplistically define
subordinated groups as essentially "résistent." For example,
Fiske often cites Hodge and Tripp's (1986) brief examination
of Aboriginal children in their research on children and
television as evidence of people from subordinated groups
being essentially résistent in the face of texts that clearly
bear the dominant ideology (See Fiske, 1986, 1987b, 1989).
But Fiske is reading a great deal into what Hodge and Tripp
have to say. Hodge and Tripp interviewed 10 children, ages 9-
12, who were aboriginal or part, separated from their families
and boarded in white foster homes. Almost all these children
liked the television show Diff'rent Strokes, and the main
reason given was because it showed "blacks." Fiske garners
his example of oppositional reading from Hodge and Tripp's
troubling and ironic discussion of how these children
displayed "information deprivation about the world outside
their immediate experience" because "eight of the children did
not distinguish between aborigines and American blacks," and
one boy included Indians from Westerns as Aboriginals. They
also stated that one girl said that she sometimes enjoyed
seeing fights in media texts when there's a "black" and a
"white" at which time she says 'come on blackie.' Fiske's use
of this example as somehow emblematic of the essentially
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93
résistent nature of the viewing situation in general, and of
subordinated groups in particular, is problematic. From this
scant bit of data provided by Hodge and Tripp, Fiske (1987b)
argues that,
Hogde and Tripp have shown how Australian
aboriginal children have made American
Westerns into their cultural capital.
They constructed a category, a tool to
think with, that included them, American
Indians, and American Blacks in a way
that enabled them to find in the Western
some articulation of their subordination
to white imperialism, and presumably, to
identify with instances of resistance to
it. Such a reading position will, we may
predict, affect the sense they make of
the inevitability of the final narrative
defeat of the indians or non-whites. It
was their ability to make non-white sense
from, and find non-white pleasures in, a
genre of white imperialism and
colonialism that made it popular with
them. Without this ability to be
producers of their own culture, the
makers of their own meanings and
pleasures, it would be difficult to
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94
account for Aboriginals' choosing to
watch westerns.
Obviously, Fiske reads far more into Hodge and Tripp's
discussion than is called for, but what is especially
troubling is the way he equates realizing that you are part of
a subordinated group with general counter-hegemonic resistance
to that oppression.
Fiske is not alone in assuming an essentially résistent
type of cultural consumption on the part of subordinated
groups. BoBo (1988) in her study of "black women" as cultural
readers of The Color Purple argued that,
A Black audience, through a history of theatre
going and film-watching, knows that at some point
an expression of the exotic primitive is going to
be offered to us. Since this is the case, we have
one of two options... One is never to indulge in
media products, an impossibility in an age of media
blitz. Another option, and I think this is more an
unconscious reaction to and defense against racist
definitions of Black people, is to filter out that
which is negative and select from the work,
elements we can relate to. (p. 101)
Bobo imagines that "black" viewers are essentially conscious
enough to routinely select out the non-racist elements of a
media text, thus thwarting its hegemonic impact. This
conceptualization of essentially résistent subordinated groups
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95
seems to be caused by overestimating the degree to which
alternative or oppositional discourses are readily accessed
and used in the subcultures of subordinated groups. Fiske and
Bobo both seem to assume that alternative, counter-hegemonic
discourses are widely available and widely used, especially by
members of subordinated groups, to decode and resist dominant
ideologies structured into media texts. This assumption
appears to underlie Fiske's call for a "readers liberation
movement" based on a theory of audience reading that,
asserts the readers right to make, out of the
programme, the text that connects the discourses of
the programme with the discourses through which
he/she lives his/her social experience, and thus
for programme, society and reading subject to come
together in an active, creative living of culture
at the moment of reading (1986, p.207-208).
But, as Morley (1992) notes in reference to this passage,
"... it is perhaps less a question of the readers' rights to
make out of a programme whatever meaning they wish...than a
question of power- for example, the presence or absence of the
power or cultural resources necessary in order to make certain
types of meaning..." (p.29).
Fiske acknowledges that we are all contradictory subjects
but does not adequately apply this understanding to the extent
to which the subcultures of subordinated groups are complex
and contradictory mixes of resistance and acquiescence.
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96
oppositionality and complicity. The subcultures of oppressed
groups contain and habituate the use of both résistent
discourses and the discourses of the very ideologies that
oppress them. This is so because subcultures are by definition
not independent islands but part of the larger society and
culture, and are, therefore, subjected to the very same
institutions, ideologies and practices through which dominant
groups rationalize and reproduce their superior social
position. Thus, as Martin-Barbero (1988) has argued "we need
to recognize that the hegemonic does not dominate us from
without but rather penetrates us, and therefore it is not just
against it but from within it that we are waging war" (p.
448).
Critiquing the Assumption of Pluralistic Access to Counter-
Hegemonic Discourse
Once we reject the assumption that subordinated groups
operate within some kind of essentially résistent subcultural
orientation, the interpretivist notion that although dominant
ideologies are structured into the text they are not
structured into the decoding of the text becomes especially
problematic. Certainly they are correct, given the gross over
representation of middle and upper class, European American
males at all levels of the US mass media industry, that mass
media content is relatively more structured at the moment of
encoding than at the moment of decoding, where these products
encounter a far more diverse audience. However, it may be a
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97
mistake to underestimate the extent to which the cultural
power of these dominating groups constrain and channel access
to the cultural codes and resources that are regularly
summoned in the decoding practices of all members of the
audience, including those of subordinated groups.
Those who argue that audience members can and do make
anything they want out of a media message assume pluralistic
and unconstrained access to alternative and oppositional
discourses. However theorists espousing the media hegemony
thesis argue that the question of which discourses are
consistently brought to bear at the moment of decoding is not
an idiosyncratic, individual level question but one that is
determined, in part, by dominant patterns of encoding, and, in
part, by access to relevant knowledge, information and
interpretation (e.g. Hall 1980, Morley 1980, 1992; Carragee,
1990, 1993; Press, 1989). Knowledge and information are in
turn constrained by the mechanisms, processes and histories of
particular forms of ideological and material domination.
Bevond the False Dichotomv of Media Power Versus Audience
Power
Which ever side of this debate the scholars falls on,
these are questions for investigation, not blanket statements
of audience or media power. This investigation needs to be
historically specific and ideologically contextualized. The
debate over the possibility of audience resistance is over.
Almost everyone has conceded that resistance from the audience
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98
is possible. However, the fact that, theoretically, a number
of readings could be made of some message does not mean that
they will be made in large numbers or in any particular
instance. Theoretical possibility does not necessarily egual
empirical or phenomenological reality. As Morley (1992)
argues, "of course there will always be individual, private
readings, but we need to investigate the extent to which these
individual readings are patterned into cultural structures and
clusters." Only by examining this clustering or structuring
of decoding will we be able to explain the role of the mass
media in the process of domination and resistance to
domination. Now that most researchers agree that resistance
is possible, we must explore the nature, substance and extent
of this resistance.
Following in the footsteps of Morley's Nationwide project
of text and audience, a few scholars have presented research
that attempts to go beyond simplistic notions of both
ideological imposition and audience activity (Dahlgren, 1988;
Lewis, 1991,1985; Richardson & Corner, 1986; Sigman & Fry,
1985). These studies are more sensitive to "the complex
interactions between the preferred or dominant meanings within
the text, the structural and cultural positions social actors
inhabit, the discourses and codes associated with these
positions, and the influence of these discourses and codes on
audience interpretations" (Carragee, 1993, p.336). In a
review of the literature and debate on the media hegemony
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99
thesis, Carragee (1993) argues that what is still needed are
studies that contain a careful examination of the symbolic
worlds constructed by texts, along with detailed analyses of
interpretation strategies employed by audience members in
decoding these messages" (p.344). He argues that audience
studies need to go beyond descriptions of decoding
possibilities as "preferred," "negotiated," and "oppositional"
into the range and character of decodings in each position.
"The challenge for future studies on audience reception of
[media] texts," according to Carragee, "is to chart the manner
in which and the reasons why, some audience members resist and
others accept the hegemonic meanings and values embedded in
[therein]" (p.344).
This study is an attempt at the kind of research on the
media hegemony thesis that Carragee outlines. The textual
analysis of Mississippi Burning has already been presented.
What follows is an audience study with two components. The
first is a quantitative analysis of audience interpretations
of Mississippi Burning conducted after this film was shown on
prime-time network television in 1993. This quantitative
analysis is designed to assess the range of preferred,
negotiated and oppositional decodings of this text, and the
relationship between these decoding possibilities and the
structural and cultural positions inhabited by the audience
members. The qualitative component of the study is comprised
of written responses and interviews of audience members
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100
designed to assess the manner in which and the reasons why
some audience members resist and others accept the ideological
meanings embedded within the film. This audience study should
further illuminate the process through which collective memory
and white supremacist ideology is constructed, reproduced and
contested. The following chapter lays out the methods used in
conducting this study of audience decoding and resistance.
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101
CHAPTER 4
METHODS
In order to assess the theoretical questions laid forth
in the preceding chapter a multi-method study of encoding and
decoding was conducted. The encoding study examined
mainstream wide-release films presenting narratives of
struggles for African peoples' equality here and in South
Africa. The ideological and textual analyses of these films—
with a special emphasis on Mississippi Burning— were
presented in Chapter 2.
The study of audience decoding is two-fold: a survey of
subjects who viewed Mississippi Burning in their homes when
presented as ABC's Sunday Night Movie of the Week during
prime-time in 1993; and in-depth interviews with viewers
individually and in focus groups.
Quantitative Survey
Survey Participants
198 subjects participated in the survey from a random
selection of households in Pasadena California. 250 residents
initially agreed to watch ABC's Sunday night movie of the
week, Mississippi Burning, and then fill out a questionnaire
assessing their attitudes and opinions about the movie and
related topics. In order to target the relatively smaller
African American population, five blocks were randomly
selected from areas known to be comprised mainly of African
American residents, according to census information obtained
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102
from the Pasadena City Hall. Another five blocks were
randomly selected from residential blocks known be comprised
mainly of European Americans in the city of Pasadena. Only
African Americans and European Americans were asked to
participate. People from other ethnic groups were told that
we were conducting a survey of network preferences.
After selecting the blocks, a sample of households was
selected. A team of four researchers, the principle
investigator and three research assistants, solicited
participation in the survey. Half of the 250 surveys
initially circulated were distributed on the blocks known to
have mainly African American residents. The other half of the
250 surveys were distributed on the blocks known to have
mainly European American residents. Requests for
participation were made at every third house on each block
until 25 African American or European American people had
agreed to take part in the study. When unable to obtain 25
participants on a selected block (a problem that occurred four
times) researchers moved on to the adjacent block. More than
one participant from a household was allowed.
One hundred and seventy-seven African American and
European American households were initially asked to
participate. Of these, forty five declined and 132 contained
one or more people who agreed to participate. The household
response rate was .746. From these 132 households, 250
residents 15 years old and over agreed to take part in the
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103
study. Of the 250 who agreed to participate, 52 were later
unobtainable or did not fill out the survey. One hundred and
ninety-eight completed all or most of the survey, leading to
a survey return rate of .792. One hundred and six of the
respondents were European American, 92 were African American.
The sample, as gathered, is not a random probability
sample. Resource constraints made random probability sampling
infeasible. The sample is therefore not necessarily
representative of all African American and European American
Pasadenans, much less African Americans and European Americans
in general. However, the sampling technique used did gather
responses from African Americans and European Americans of a
diverse array of class, political and educational backgrounds.
Never-the-less, the representativeness of the sample is
questionable and should be interpreted with caution.
Demographic Characteristics
The African American respondents varied in age from 16 to
62. The frequency distribution of age shows small spikes at
24, 27, 29, and 59. There were 50 females and 42 males.
47.3% of the African American respondents had monthly
household incomes of 1500 or less per month. 39.7% had
household incomes of 1500 to 3000; 8% had incomes of 3000 to
5000/month; and 5% had over 5000/month. 52.3% had up to a
high school diploma, 28.3% had some college, an AA or
vocational degree; 15.2% had bachelors degrees and 3.3% had
masters degrees. As for political affiliation, 29.6%
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104
identified themselves as liberals, 36.6% identified themselves
as moderates, 9% identified themselves as conservatives and
24.8% selected "other".
The European American respondents ranged in age from 15
to 65, with small spikes at 28, 35, 40, and 46. 57 were female
and 49 were male. 8.9% had incomes of 1500/month or less.
54.5% had incomes of 1500-3000. 26.7 had incomes of 3000 to
5000/month and 9.9 had incomes of over 5000/month. 33% had
education only up to a high school diploma, 30.2% had some
college (AA or vocational degree); 33% had a bachelors degree;
and 3.8 % had masters degrees.
As for political affiliation, 29.2 identified themselves as
liberals, 34.9 identified themselves as moderates; and 27.4%
identified themselves as conservatives.
Survey
The survey was composed of 37 items (see Appendix for
complete survey). 13 questions assessed interpretations and
oppositional decoding of the film Mississippi Burning. The
first 6 items were open-ended written response questions
allowing respondents room to set their own agendas as to what
struck them about the film. The next five assessed
oppositionality/acquiescence to the films representations
(overall, of "whites", of "blacks," and of "black" passivity,
of one of the film's themes) on six-point scales ranging from
"disagree" to "agree." On the survey "disagree" is labeled
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105
"1" and "agree" is labeled "6." For all of the statistical
analyses these scales are recoded so that increasing
resistance or disagreement is signified by a numerical
increase. 8 items assessed agreement/opposition to
paternalistic white supremacist myths about the civil rights
movement on six-point scales. 6 Items assessed
agreement/opposition to neo-white supremacist discourse on
"race" relations and African Americans.
1 item assessed the amount of time spent discussing
"race," racism and "racial" problems. 1 item, called
"familiarity with alternative/counter-hegemonic discourse,"
assessed exposure to a variety of sources of knowledge about
the civil rights movement (some mainstream/dominant, some
alternative). Subjects were given one point for each
mainstream source indicated (e.g. "mainstream news reports
looking back on that time," "fictionalized television shows,"
etc.), under the assumption that even mainstream discourse on
movements for equality are likely to contain, by definition,
a kernel of counter-hegemonic discourse. Each non-mainstream
source, and each source deemed to offer more in-depth and/or
counter-hegemonic coverage, was given two points (e.g. "black
newspapers and magazines," "actual experience with or
participation in the movement," "books on the subject," etc.).
Inter-coder reliability between two coders scoring this item
was .83.
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106
The final 8 items assessed various demographic variables:
age, gender, employment status, occupation, income, education,
ethnicity/”race,• ' political affiliation.
Composite Indexes
Three composite indexes were formed from survey items.
The first index is called "Film Resistance" and is comprised
of items measuring counter-hegemonic resistance to the main
ideological themes of the film, as laid forth in the textual
analysis. The 5 items from which the Film Resistance index
was comprised were:
1) Overall Resistance
2) Resistance to Whiteness
3) Resistance to Blackness
4) FBI positive force in real life?
5) Federal government strongly committed to movement?
Cronbach's Alpha for the 5 item "Film Resistance" index
was .8105.
The second index measured belief in white supremacist
myth about the movement for "black" equality, and is called
"Civil Rights Movement Myth" index. This myth contains the
legitimation crisis for white domination in various ways as
argued in the textual analysis. The six items that comprised
this index were:
1) FBI was a positive force.
2) Federal government was strongly committed.
3) Racism was really only a Southern problem.
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107
4) Whites played a major role within the movement.
5) As many whites were for as against the movement.
6) The civil rights movement successfully created equal
opportunity for blacks.
Cronbach's Alpha for this 6 item "Civil Rights Myth"
index was .8945.
The third index attempts to measure resistance to "modern
racist" (white supremacist) discourse. The textual analysis
discussed the ways in which these narratives of "white" heros
of struggles for "black" equality contribute to and help to
reproduce modern white supremacist discourse. The six items
from which the "Modern Racist Myth" index is constructed are:
1) Blacks now have equal opportunity.
2) Racism is no longer a problem.
3) Blacks are just as racist as whites.
4) Definition of racism.
Responses on this fourth item were scored from 1 to 3, 1 being
low resistance and 3 being high resistance, depending on
whether racism is defined as individual level and extreme
(e.g.hatred), or as structural and relating to power (e.g.
oppression, subjugation) or somewhere in between (eg.
superiority/inferiority). Inter-coder reliability among three
coders was .74.
5) How much have whites done to create equality.
6) Reasons why blacks are still not equal.
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108
This item was coded from 1 to 3 depending on extent to which
"black" pathology/inferiority is given as cause versus larger
structural, historical reasons and lingering racism.
Intercoder reliability was .77.
Cronbach's Alpha for the six item "Modern Racist Myth"
index was .8221.
Qualitative Survey: In-Depth Interviews
Subjects
Five individual in-depth interviews were conducted with
survey participants of varying demographic characteristics:
two lower-class African American women, one 33 and one 41
years old; one 21 year old lower class African American Man;
one 33 year old upper middle class African American Man; one
56 year old upper-middle class European American woman.
Individual interviews were conducted in the homes of the
respondents.
Six focus group interviews were conducted with subjects
who had not been part of the quantitative survey. Subjects
were referred to the researcher by acquaintances and survey
respondents. Focus groups were composed as follows:
African Americans-
One group of 6 African American high school age girls of
varying class backgrounds.
One group of 4 middle aged, middle and upper-middle class
African Americans of mixed gender.
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109
One group of 4 thirty year old middle-class African
Americans of mixed gender.
European Americans-
One group of 3 middle class European Americans, two males
and one female, ranging in age from forty to late sixties.
One group of 4 lower-class European Americans of mixed
gender, ranging in age from thirty five to forty five.
One group of 3 upper-middle class European Americans, 2
males and one female, ranging in age from mid-twenties to
early thirties.
All respondents were friends and acquaintances of each
other prior to the study. Respondents watched the movie in
the home of one of the group members and then participated in
the interview which took any where from one to two hours.
Researchers unobtrusively noted participant reactions to the
film (comments, gesture, expression) while in progress. Some
participants received food and refreshments provided by the
researcher. All but one group of the European American
respondents were interviewed by European American female
interviewers. The African American respondents were
interviewed by an African American female researcher.
Interview Format
The open-ended interview question format for both
individual interviews and focus groups was based on a subset
of the quantitative survey and was designed to probe deeper
into the discourses used to make sense of the movie.
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110
collective memories of the civil rights movement, and "race"
relations in general. Interviews began with very general
questions about how the movie made the respondents feel and
what in general they liked or disliked. After these general
items, respondents were questioned about the more specific
aspects of the film, of collective memories of the movement,
and of racism, as deemed important in light of the
textual/ideological analysis.
In focus groups, interviewers were careful to make sure
that each respondent was given the opportunity to respond to
each question. To make sure that no one participant dominated
the interview, researchers made a conscious effort to rotate
the order in which participants responded to questions.
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Ill
CHAPTER 5
SURVEY RESULTS
The following statistical analyses were performed on the
quantitative data in order to assess 1) the amount of
résistent decoding; 2) the range of resistance; 3) which
themes are resisted and which are not; and 4) the significance
of what theorist in cultural studies have called "position in
the social structure" (i.e. demographic variables), especially
as such positioning relates to familiarity with counter-
hegemonic knowledge, discourse, and resistance.
Correlation Coefficients
First, Pearson's correlation coefficients were computed
in order to examine the relationships among all of the
independent variables, and between these independent variables
and the dependent variables under study.
Table 1: Pearson's Correlation Coefficients for Relationships
Among Independent Variables and Between Independent and
Dependent Variables.
ETHNIC INCOME EDUC POLIT ALTDISC
ETHNIC 1.0000 .3515** .2217** .2738** -.3066**
INCOME .3515** 1.0000 .3804** .3929** .2413**
EDUC .2217** .3804** 1.0000 .1716* .3356**
POLIT .2738** .3929** .1716* 1.0000 -.2071**
ALTDISC -.3066** .2413** .3356** -.2071** 1.0000
OVRES -.2268** .0790 .2058** .0032 .3972**
WHTRES -.1278 -.0120 .0601 -.0713 .1108
BLKRES -.3161** -.0145 .1448* -.3196** .5531**
RESIST -.3188** .1230 .2503** -.2364** .6168**
CRMYTH -.2755** .1242 .1945** -.3401** .6373**
MODMYTH -.3354** .1069 .1161 -.4702** .6783**
* = Signif. < .05
** =
= Signif. < .01 (2-tailed)
** Note in relation to negative correlations=> ethnicity;
black= 0, white= 1; polit: liberal= 1, moderate= 2,
conservative= 3.
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112
Ethnicity and familiarity with counter-
hegemonic/alternative discourses are significantly correlated
(at the p. < .01 level) with each other and with all other
independent and dependent variables except resistance to the
depiction of "whites." The significant negative correlation
between ethnicity and familiarity with alternative discourses
indicates that, in general, African Americans tend to have
more familiarity with these discourses than European
Americans. Familiarity with counter-hegemonic/alternative
discourse is negatively correlated with political affiliation.
This means that as conservatism increases, familiarity with
alternative discourses about the movement decreases.
Political affiliation is significantly correlated with
all other variables except the overall resistance item
("overall this movies seemed to be a fair and accurate
depiction of the events that took place") and resistance to
the depiction of "whites." Political affiliation was
positively correlated with education at only the .05 level of
significance. Given the way that political affiliation was
coded, this means that an increase in conservatism is
correlated with increasing education at the .05 level of
significance. Political affiliation was negatively correlated
with resistance to civil rights movement myth and modern
racist myth. This means that an increase in conservatism is
significantly correlated with a decrease in resistance to
these mythic discourses.
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113
Education is significantly correlated with all variables
at either the .01 or .05 level of significance, except for
resistance to the depiction of "whites" and modern racist
myth. Income is significantly correlated at the .01 level
with all other independent variables and is not significantly
correlated with any of the dependent variables.
Familiarity with counter-hegemonic/alternative discourses
is correlated at the .01 level with all other variables. It
has the largest correlations with all of the dependent
variables except resistance to the depiction of "whites."
Especially high correlations are found between familiarity
with alternative discourses and overall resistance to the
film, resistance to the depiction of "blacks," the resistance
index, the civil right movement myth index and the modern
racist myth index.
Counter- Hegemonic Resistance to the Film and Related
Discourses
Table 2 presents group means and standard deviations for
African Americans and European Americans on all of the
resistance items, as well as t-tests of the differences
between these means. All but one of the measures presented in
Table 2 of résistent decoding and resistance to various
discourses are scored from 1-6; 1 being low resistance to the
depiction or discourse, 6 being high resistance to the
depiction or discourse. The response options on these
resistance items ranged from "agree" to "disagree" on a six
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114
point scale. The exception is the "whites have done enough"
item which asked how much whites have done to ensure that
"blacks" have an equal opportunity. This item offered the
following response options: too much (1), more than enough
(2), just enough (3), not quite enough (4), not nearly enough
(5), and almost nothing (6).
Table 2: Means and Standard Deviations of Afric
versus European American Respondents on each resis
T-tests of Group Mean Differences:
Afro-Am. Euro-Am.
an American
tance item.
t-test D. Resistance Item Mean SD Mean SD
Overall Depiction 2.69 1.67 2.00 1.27 3.22 .002
Depiction of Blacks 3.33 2.03 2.18 1.42 4.64 .000
Depiction of Whites 2.26 1.43 1.95 .96 1.79 .076
FBI Commitment 3.58 1.76 2.61 1.51 4.09 .000
Federal Gov. Committed 3.24 1.99 2.61 1.58 2.44 .016
Major White Movement Role_ 3.88 1.75 2.83 1.50 4.46 .000
Whites for the Movement 4.30 1.90 3.50 1.76 3.03 .003
Racism= Southern Problem 4.34 1.93 3.90 2.00 1.51 .132
Not About Race 4.23 2.08 2.81 1.89 4.95 .000
Movement Created Equality_ 3.82 2.04 3.42 1.62 1.52 .130
Blacks Now Same Opportun._ 3.77 1.75 3.22 1.60 2.30 .023
Racism No longer Problem_ 4.96 1.45 3.91 1.82 4.38 .000
Whites Have Done Enough 4.10 1.23 3.22 1.41 4.51 .000
For the African American respondents, the average level
of resistance ranged from a low of 2.26 ("2" being right of
the midpoint between agreeing and somewhat agreeing) on the
"depiction of whites" item, to 4.96 (the midpoint between
somewhat disagree and disagree) for the "racism is no longer
a big problem" item. The average score among African
Americans for all of these items combined was 3.7.
For European American respondents the average level of
resistance ranged from 1.95 (midpoint between agree and
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115
somewhat agree) on the "depiction of whites" item and 3.91 (a
bit less that "somewhat disagree") on the "racism is no longer
a big problem" item. The average score for European Americans
on these items combined was 2.93.
African Americans were least résistent, on average, to 1)
the depiction of whites (M= 2.26, SD= 1.43), 2) the overall
depiction (M= 2.69, SD 1.67), 3) the idea that the Federal
government was committed to the movement (M= 3.24, SD=1.99),
and 4) the depiction of "blacks" (M= 3.33, SD=2.03). Though
resistance on these items, which are all central themes of the
movie, is lowest for African Americans, this low level of
resistance is significantly higher than the averages for
European American respondents on each of these items.
European Americans were least résistent towards 1) the
depiction of whites, 2) the overall depiction (M= 2.00, SD=
1.27), 3) the depiction of "blacks" (M=2.18, gD= 1.42), 4) the
idea that the FBI was committed to the movement (M= 2.61, SD=
1.51) and 5) the idea that the federal government was
committed to the movement (M= 2.61, SD= 1.58). Again, all of
these items reflect central ideological themes of the film.
African Americans were most résistent towards the ideas
that 1) whites have done enough to further the cause of equal
opportunity for blacks (M= 4.10, SD= 1.23), 2) the conflict
was not about race but good versus bad (M= 4.23, SJQ= 2.08), 3)
there were as many whites for as against the movement 4.3,
SD= 1.90), 4) racism was mainly a southern problem 4.34,
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116
SD= 1.93), and 5) racism is no longer a big problem (M= 4.96,
SD= 1.45).
European Americans were most résistent towards the ideas
that 1) the movement created equality (M= 3.42, SD= 1.62), 2)
there were more whites for than against the movement (M= 3.5,
SD= 1.76), 3) racism was mainly a Southern problem (M= 3.90,
SD= 2.0), and 4) racism is no longer a big problem (M= 3.91,
SD= 1.82). However, this resistance only ranges from neutral
to a bit less that "somewhat disagree."
African Americans were significantly more résistent than
European Americans on most items. The difference between the
average level of resistance by African Americans versus
European Americans was significant at least at the .01 level
for all items except the idea that racism was mainly a
southern problem (t= 1.51, p.= .132), the assertion that the
movement successfully created fairness and equality for blacks
(t= 1.52, p.= .13), and the depiction of whites (t= 1.79, p.
.076). On these three items the difference in group means
approaches significance. Especially divergent were the
average African American versus European American responses to
the ideas of FBI commitment (t= 4.09, p.< .001), racism no
longer being a problem (t= 4.38, p.< .001), whites played a
major role in the movement (t= 4.46, p.< .001) , whites have
done enough (t= 4.51, p.< .001), the depiction of blacks (t=
4.51, p.< .001), and the conflict was not about race (t= 4.95,
E-< .001).
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117
Table 3: Analysis of Variance for Resistance Items by
Resistance item DF
Mean
Sauare F
Sig.
of F
Overall Depiction
Covariates 2 8.359 4.619 .011
Ethnic 1 30.769 17.001 .000
Depiction of Blacks
Covariates 2 7.129 2.434 .091
Ethnic 1 34.494 11.778 .001
Depiction of Whites
Covariates 2 2.037 1.927 .149
Ethnic 1 1.208 1.142 .287
FBI Commitment
Covariates 2 12.376 6.033 .003
Ethnic 1 58.109 28.326 .000
Federal Gov. Commitment
Covariates 2 19.803 7.098 .001
Ethnic 1 20.211 7.244 .008
Major White Movement Role
Covariates 2 .702 .288 .750
Ethnic 1 34.325 14.075 .000
Whites for the Movement
Covariates 2 4.819 1.458 .236
Ethnic 1 18.304 5.539 .020
Racism= Southern Problem
Covariates 2 33.945 10.214 .000
Ethnic 1 27.485 8.270 .005
Not About Race
Covariates 2 12.058 3.228 .042
Ethnic 1 71.585 19.167 .000
Movement Created Equality
Covariates 2 5.132 1.607 .204
Ethnic 1 26.953 8.442 .004
Blacks Now Same Opportun.
Covariates 2 2.644 .966 .383
Ethnic 1 59.829 21.868 .000
Racism No Longer Problem
Covariates 2 1.921 .742 .478
Ethnic 1 94.858 36.630 .000
Whites Have Done Enough
Covariates 2 1.617 .882 .416
Ethnic 1 26.885 14.638 .000
Analysis of covariance was used to assess whether or not
these ethnic group differences in mean resistance persist
beyond differences in income and education. Table 3 presents
the results of the analysis of covariance which tests the
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118
differences in ethnic group means on all resistance items
while using income and education as covariates (i.e.
controlling for income and education). The general pattern of
significant ethnic group mean differences remains largely the
same. Ethnic group differences in resistance to the depiction
of whites approached significance (p.= .076) on the t-test
without controlling for income and education. In the analysis
of covariance, having controlled for the effects of income and
education, mean ethnic differences on this item are no longer
significant (p.= .287). Mean ethnic differences on "whites
were for the movement" item are also slightly less significant
after controlling for income and education (p.= .020),
although they are still significant and the .05 level. All
other ethnic differences in means either retain the same high
level of significance or become significant at the .01 level
after controlling for income and education.
Table 4, which presents percentage breakdowns of African
American versus European American responses on each item,
reveals more information about the levels of preferred,
negotiated, and oppositional decoding/resistance. A large
number of African Americans (42.5%), and an even larger number
of European Americans (67.9%) reported little or no resistance
to the movie on the first item: Overall Mississippi Burning
was a fair and realistic portrayal of the events that took
place. Only 16.1% of African Americans and 6.6% of European
Americans initially expressed high levels of resistance before
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119
being probed on specific aspects of the film. This could mean
that the questions and the thought that these questions
prompted in the respondents' minds caused many to think about
and resist aspects of the film that they might not have
otherwise resisted.
Table 4; Percentage Breakdowns of African American Versus
European American Responses on Resistance Items: Items By
Level of Decoding/Discourse Resistance. (Bold= Afro-
Am. s/Plain-type= Euro-Am.s)
% Low % Medium % High
Item Preferred Negotiated Oppositional
1) Overall 42.5/67.9 41.3/25.4 16.1/ 6.6
2) Depiction of Blacks 38.5/64.7 24.2/28.5 37.4/ 6.6
3) Depiction of Whites 61.4/72.7 29.5/26.4 9.1/ .9
4) FBI Commitment 29.3/46.6 38.2/44.7 32.6/ 8.7
5) Fed. Gov. Committed 36.7/46.6 28.7/42.8 34.4/10.6
6) Major White Role 26.2/45.6 29.5/43.7 44.3/10.7
7) Whites for Movement 23.3/32.0 24.4/34.9 52.4/33.0
9) Racism Southern Prob 20.9/31.1 19.8/22.6 59.4/46.2
10) Not About Race 27.8/53.9 13.3/23.5 58.9/22.5
12) Movement= Equality 26.6/33.1 33.3/40.6 40.0/26.4
13) Now Same Opportun. 22.2/35.8 42.2/42.4 35.6/21.7
14) Racism No Problem 5.5/24.5 32.3/33.1 62.2/42.4
15) Whites Done Enough 10.5/38.0 44.1/44.0 45.4/18.0
A large number of African Americans (38.5%) and far more
European Americans (64.7) had little or no problem with the
way "blacks" were depicted in the movie. Most African
Americans (61.4%) and European Americans (72.7) had little or
no problem with the depiction of whites.
On the "whites have done enough" item, 10.5% of African
Americans and 38% of European Americans thought that whites
had done more than enough or too much to ensure equal
opportunity for blacks. All of these African Americans and
most of these European American respondents (24%) fell into
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120
the former category. 44.1% of African Americans and 44.0% of
European Americans believed that whites had done either just
enough or not quite enough. Most of the African Americans
(26.7%) in this group fell into the former category, whereas
most of the European Americans (35%) fell into the latter.
45.4% of African Americans and 18% of European Americans
believed that whites had done not nearly enough or almost
nothing to ensure equal opportunity for blacks. In both
groups most of these respondents fell into the former category
(32.6% of African Americans and 15% of European Americans).
Though African Americans are significantly more résistent
on most items than European Americans, counter hegemonic
decoding of the film is generally low. The mean score for
African Americans on the resistance index, which combines the
resistance items for the major ideological themes of the film,
was 3.02 (SD= 1.78. The mean score for European Americans on
the resistance index was 2.27 (SD= 1.35. Fairly large numbers
of African Americans offered strong resistance to the
depiction of blacks (37.4%) and to ideas of strong commitment
on behalf of the FBI (32.6%) and the Federal government
(34.4%). However a slightly larger percentage of African
Americans actually acquiesced to the depiction of blacks
(38.5%), and to the idea of governmental commitment (36.7%).
The majority of African Americans displayed low to moderate
resistance on these items.
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121
Regression and Path Analyses
In order to examine the relationships between position in
the social structure, familiarity with alternative/counter-
hegemonic discourses, and ideological resistance, regression
analyses were performed. The theory of audience decoding most
often advanced in cultural studies is that the location of the
individual in the social and cultural structure will tend to
determine which discourses they have ready access to, and
"this influences in turn the range of 'readings' that they
will derive from media content" (Curran, 1990). Thus, the
theoretical rationale for step entrance in the regression
analyses is as follows. The dependent variables are
oppositional decoding of the film, and endorsement of modern
racist discourse and civil rights movement myths implied in
the film. The social structural and cultural independent
variables that I expect to be causally related to these
dependent variables are ethnicity, income, education and
political affiliation, and familiarity with alternative
discourses. The first analysis regresses familiarity with
alternative discourses on to ethnicity, income, education and
political affiliation. All three of these variables are
treated as exogenous and theorized to be causally related to
familiarity with alternative/counter-hegemonic discourses,
which is, therefore, treated as an endogenous variable. In the
second set of analyses, the resistance indexes are regressed
on to ethnicity, education, political affiliation and
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122
familiarity with alternative discourses. Income was thrown
out as an independent variable in the second set of regression
analyses because it was not significantly correlated with any
of the counter-hegemonic resistance variables (see Table 1).
The remaining exogenous variables were entered as a block in
stage one, and familiarity with alternative discourses was
then entered into the equation in stage two. The path
analysis model based on these regression equations is as
follows :
Figure 1: Path Diagram of Causal Model for Counter-Hegemonic
Resistance
Income
Education:
* Familiarity of
> Alternative —
~ Counter-
> Hegemonic
Resistance
Ethnicity
iscourse
Political*^
Affiliation
Table 5 presents the results of the regression analyses.
The dependent variables were familiarity with
alternative/counter-hegemonic discourses; the "resistance
index," which combined responses on resistance items related
to decoding of the film; the civil rights movement myth index
which contains items reflecting the construction of collective
memories of the movement in a way amenable to containing the
legitimation crisis for white domination; and the "modern
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123
racist myth” index which combines items reflecting a
conservative discourse on the state of racism and "race”
relations that is supportive of white domination.
Table 5: Statistics for the Regression of Familiarity with
Alternative Discourses on Demographics and Resistance Indexes
On Alternative Discourses and Demographics;
Alternative Resistance C.R. Movement Modern Racist
Discourses Index Mvth Index Mvth Index
Regression
Statistics
R .632 .648 .675 .759
R2 .400 .420 .455 .577
SE 2.744 4.557 7.732 4.245
DF 4/142 4/165 4/164 4/164
F 23.668 29.919 33.437 46.114
Sig F .000 .000 .000 .000
Ethnicity
-Beta -.435 -.167 -.059 -.059
-t. -6.151 -.248 -.883 -.928
-p. Beta .000 .014 .379 .355
Income
-Beta .392 — — —— -—— — — ——
-t. 4.936
— — —— — — —— — — ——
-p. Beta .000 — ~ —— — — — — — — — —
Education
-Beta .337 .140 .059 -.015
-t. 4.777 2.041 .875 -.231
-p. Beta .000 .043 .383 .818
Political
-Beta -.296 -.112 -.219 -.328
-t. -4.136 -1.767 -3.514 -5.472
-p. Beta .000 .079 .001 .000
Alt. Disc.
-Beta --- .495 .554 .597
7.003 7.959 8.951
—p. Beta — — .000 .000 .000
A diagram of the causal model for resistance to the film
Mississippi Burning is presented in Figure 2. The residual
variables for the two dependent variables are denoted by ”Rl”
and "R2” and their path coefficients are noted.
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124
Figure 2: Path Diagram for Film Resistance, with Path
Coefficients Added
R2= .76
thnicity
I
L35**
ncome
38** Familiarity with
.33Z*±kAlternative Discourses
^^ducation
17**
27* ,
^Political
Film
esistance
Index
‘ Affiliation
Ethnicity, income, education and political affiliation
explain 40% of the variance in familiarity with alternative
discourses (£= 23.67, p.< .001, df,.= 142). Of these four
variables, ethnicity had the strongest effect (beta=~.435),
meaning that being African American generally leads to greater
knowledge of and familiarity with alternative discourses on
the movement for African American equality. Ethnicity,
education, political affiliation and familiarity with
alternative discourses explained 42% of the variance in
resistance to the Mississippi Burning (£= 29.92, p.< .001,
df.= 165). Of the four predictors variables, familiarity
with alternative discourses had by far the strongest partial
effect on resistance to the film (beta= .495), followed by
ethnicity (beta= .167) and education (beta= .140). The path
coefficients for ethnicity and education indicate that these
variables have direct effects on resistance to the film beyond
familiarity with alternative discourses. Before adding the
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125
alternative discourse variable to the equation, ethnicity,
education and political affiliation all had regression
coefficients that were significant at the .001 level. These
findings indicate that much of the effect of these exogenous
variables on résistent decoding is indirect and is mediated by
familiarity with alternative discourses. The addition of the
alternative discourse variable to the equation brought the
variance explained in resistance to the film from 25% to 42%.
Familiarity with alternative discourse uniquely contributed
17% to the variance explained in resistance to the central
ideological themes of the film.
Figure 3 presents the path diagram and path coefficients
for the causal model of effects on resistance to white
supremacist myths of the civil rights movement.
Figure 3: Path Diagram for Resistance to Civil Rights Movement
Myth with Path Coefficients Added
Rl= .77 R2= .74
Resistance to
thnicity:
J^.35**
22*\
ncome— _
?38** "^Familiarity with .554** . Civil Rights
.337jjLi;>Alternative Discourses Movement Myths
ucationZ^——---------- 1 ---------^ Index
717* .059
litical
Affiliation
-.296** -.219**
As presented in Table 4, ethnicity, education, political
affiliation and familiarity with alternative discourses
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126
explain approximately 45% of the variance in resistance to
white supremacist myths of the civil rights movement (F=
33.44, p.< .001, d£.= 164). Again, familiarity with
alternative discourses has the strongest effect on resistance
to such myths, with a path coefficient of .554. Ethnicity and
education showed no significant direct effect on resistance to
civil rights movement myths, their effect being largely
mediated by familiarity with alternative discourses.
Political affiliation had a significant direct effect with a
path coefficient of -.219. When entered into the regression
equation last, political affiliation explained 8% of the
variance in resistance to civil rights movement myth. This
indicates that beyond decreasing, and/or lessening the impact
of familiarity with alternative discourse, conservative
political views decrease resistance to white supremacist myths
of the movement.
As presented in Table 4, ethnicity, education, political
affiliation and familiarity with alternative discourses
explain approximately 58% of the variance in resistance to
what I have called modern racist myth (£= 46.11, p.< .001,
df.= 164). Figure 4 presents the path diagram of the causal
model suggested to explain resistance to modern racist myths
about racism and the state of "race" relations. This diagram
indicates again that familiarity with alternative discourses
about struggles for African American equality has the
strongest direct effect on resistance to modern myths of
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127
racism and "race” relations. Whereas the effects of ethnicity
and education are mediated by the alternative discourse
variable such that no direct effect is significant, political
affiliation retains a strong and direct effect on resistance
to these racist myths. When political affiliation is entered
in the equation last, it uniquely explains 12% of the variance
in endorsement of modern racist myth. This suggests that
conservatism dampens resistance beyond its indirect effect of
decreasing familiarity with, or the impact of, alternative
discourses.
Figure 4: Path Diagram for Resistance to Modern Racist Myth
with Path Coefficients Added
Rl= .77 R2= .65
thnicity-
C
.35**
Tncom
/\38**
%l^ucation
All*
27*\
.apolitical
Affiliation
Resistance to
Familiarity with .597** Modern Racist
3 32ü>Àlternative Discourses_____^yth Index
The proposed causal model, diagramed in Figure 1 for
counter-hegemonic resistance in general, was tested through
goodness of fit indexes. This causal model was tested for
each of the three measures of counter-hegemonic resistance:
film resistance, civil rights movement myth resistance, modern
racist myth resistance. First, Akaike's (1987) information
criterion (AIC) was obtained for the proposed model and the
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128
model of independent or uncorrelated variables. AIC is
designed to take in to account both the statistical goodness
of fit of the model and the number of paprameters that have to
be estimated in order to achieve that degree of fit. The
model that produces the minimum AIC may be considered a
potentially useful model. As presented in Table 6, the
proposed causal model yeilds substantially lower AIC scores
than the independent model for each type of counter-hegemonic
resistance.
Table 6 : Goodness of Fit Measures of the Proposed Causal Model
for Each Type of Resistance: Akaike's Information Criterion,
Bentler-Bonett Normed fit Index, and Bentler's Comparative Fit
Index.
Model AIC NFI CFI
Film Resistance
-independence model
-.407
276.513
.995 .998
C.R. Movement Myth
-Independence model
1.395
290.570
.989 .992
Modern Racist Myth
-Independence model
9.095
348.224
.971 .972
In addition to the AIC various goodness of fit measures
were obtained through EQS: the Bentler-Bonett (1980) normed
fit index (NFI), and the Bentler (1988) Comparative fit index
(CFI). With these measures, better model fits and worse
independent/baseline model fits yield better fit indices.
Values greater than .9 are desirable. As Table 6 shows, the
fit indices for the proposed model are greater than .9 on each
type of counter-hegemonic resistance under study. Thus, the
proposed causal model for counter-hegemonic resistance to
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129
ideological discourse appears to significantly fit with the
data gathered. The data and goodness of fit measures indicate
that it can be considered to reflect a useful theory of the
path to counter-hegemonic resistance.
The statistical analyses reveal a great deal about the
workings of ideology and the decoding of ideologically
inflected media texts. The next chapter analyses the
qualitative responses to the survey and in interviews in order
to examine more fully the various ways in which meanings were
made out of Mississippi Burning.
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130
CHAPTER 6
QUALITATIVE AUDIENCE STUDY
This chapter presents an analysis of the qualitative data
gathered through written responses on the surveys, and in-
depth interviews with viewers. The aim of this analysis is to
further explore, as Carragee (1993) puts it, "the complex
interactions between the preferred or dominant meaning in the
text, the structural and cultural positions social actors
inhabit, the discourses and codes associated with these
positions, and the influence of these codes and discourses on
audience interpretations" (p. 336). In this qualitative
analysis of audience decoding and resistance to white
supremacist discourse, an attempt will be made to follow the
suggestions of scholars such as Carragee (1993), Steiner
(1988) and Merely (1992) to move beyond description and
categorization ala preferred, negotiated and dominant readings
into the nature and character of interpretations in each
position. By moving beyond description and categorization this
analysis hopes to further illuminate the ideological struggle
and the process of collective memory construction of which
texts like Mississippi Burning are a part. At minimum I will
explore the manner in which and the reasons why some audience
members resist and others accept the hegemonic meanings and
myths embedded in this text and in society at large.
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131
Interview Respondents
Four interviews with European American viewers were
conducted, three group interviews and one individual
interview. A European American graduate student interviewed
two of the groups. The first of these groups consisted of
three younger European Americans, with upper-middle class
backgrounds, all friends. For the sake of anonymity, all
respondents names have been changed. The two men will be
called Cary and Chris, and the woman Cindy. Chris and Cindy
said they had a tendency to be liberal, and Cary said he had
a tendency to be conservative. The other group consisted of
three middle class European Americans. One retired, community
college educated moderate in his late sixties named Frank.
His wife Yvonne who was a 50 year old, college educated law
clerk, also a moderate. And the third group member was their
friend, a forty year old, college educated editor to be called
Ben, who was also a moderate. The final European American
group and the individual were interviewed by the Principle
investigator, an African and Irish/English American. This
third group consisted of three lower class European Americans
with high school educations ranging in age from 35 to 45 years
old. Two of these respondents were men, Tom and Jeff. The
woman will be called Patti. Jeff said he was a conservative
and Tom and Patti said they were moderates. The individual
interview was with a 56 year old European American woman, to
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132
be called Barbara, who was upper-middle class and identified
herself as a liberal.
Seven group and individual interviews were conducted with
African American respondents. All of these interviews were
conducted by the principle investigator. The first group
consisted of six high school girls, all sixteen years old and
of varying class backgrounds. The second group consisted of
three thirty year old college educated middle-class
respondents, two women and one man. The women will be called
Terri and Mikki. Terri said she was a moderate while Mikki
said she was a liberal. The man will be called Ken. He said he
was a moderate with some conservative tendencies. T h e
third African American group consisted of four middle and
upper-middle class respondents, two men and two women. The
men will be called James and Stan. Both had community college
educations. The women were Claudine and Paula. Paula had some
college and Claudine had a bachelors degree. They did not wish
to label themselves as liberal, moderate or conservative.
In addition to these groups, four African Americans were
interviewed individually. Two lower class women to be
referred to as May and Brenda. May, who had a high school
education, was 41. Brenda who had some community college, was
33. One of the men will be called Ellis. He was a 21 year old
lower class man with a high school education and had spent a
short time in prison. The other man will be called Dan. He
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133
was a 33 year old upper-middle class engineer with a master's
degree.
Overall Thoughts on The Film
When asked to discuss the film— what did they like or
dislike— European American respondents were far more likely
to comment on the aesthetics of the movie: the cinematography,
the acting, whether or not the storyline was engaging or
predictable, whether or not the film contained too much
violence (not in a political sense but within the conventional
discourse of "the media violence problem"). Cary, a 32 year
old engineer with a master degree, said he liked the
photography, the story line was engaging and, though it was
"disturbing," he enjoyed the film. Likewise, Frank, a retired
man in his late sixties, said he enjoyed Gene Hackman's
"portrayal of an ex-sheriff who did things the Southern way...
not political but gut level."
However, for almost all of the African American
respondents and the majority of the European American
respondents, the subject matter was to weighty to dwell on
aesthetic concerns. Of course, many respondents enjoyed the
fact that the villains were defeated in the end. Many
respondents, especially African Americans liked the fact that
'whites helped blacks' in the film:
I liked when the one white man interviewed
said, 'I think that the niggers have been treated
bad here for a long time.' He was honest. Written
response, 35 year old, lower-class A.A. woman.
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I enjoyed seeing the deputies wife taking a
stand to remain friends with the black woman who
worked for them regardless to how her husband felt.
46 year old, lower-class A.À woman.
(Q: liked) White people against other white
people, government on our side. 30 year old,
middle-class A.A. man.
I liked that the FBI agents weren't racist. 42
year old, middle-class E.A. man.
Both groups tended to express anger, grief, and disgust
at the treatment of the "blacks." Many European Americans
seemed to be unaware of this harsh reality and commented on
the need for education and on the value of the film as an
educational tool;
This is an excellent movie that can educate
most of us towards understanding each other
whatever our race. 25 year old, middle-class E.A.
man.
Its good background material for those of us
who are not familiar with this type of racism. 36
year old, upper-middle class E.A man.
So many white 30 somethings only have a clue
as to what really happened... especially those of
us who didn't live in the south or in the larger
cities. 34 year old, middle-class E.A. woman.
I think that most people are not aware of the
true situation in the south at that time. 46 year
old, middle class E.A. woman.
(Q: Overall message:) Educating those of us
who don't know the whole story— opens up questions
for more answers. 28 year old, lower-class E.A.
woman.
In an interview with three middle-class European
Americans in their mid-twenties to early thirties, Chris said
the movie was, "a somewhat typical Hollywood tough guy movie.
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135
but its important to make people more aware of what happened
in particular parts of this country... or in lots of parts."
In these comments many European Americans implied that this
type of "education" was needed in the face of a dominant
discourse that denies or minimizes what African Americans have
been through. It is not surprising then that many European
Americans and African Americans wrote their answers as if they
are in an argument with some "generalized other" that wants to
deny or diminish what happened and/or, especially for many of
the African Americans, what is happening.
(Q: Overall message): That the KKK, racist
thought and prejudice thought has led to cruel
murder, that blacks in the south at that time (at
least) were indeed treated unjustly, cruelly and
viciously. 28 year old, middle-class E.A. man.
It proved that blacks have been treated
unjustly and victimized in this country for a very
long time. 20 year old, middle-class E.A. woman.
Cindy, a twenty six year old engineer said she really
didn't like the film because of the violence but "it was a
good message that people should know" and she was "glad
someone had the guts to make it," because, "we need to know
how stupid people can be." The idea that it took "guts" to
make such a film implies that this respondent, like the others
who made similar comments, are somewhat conscious of the idea
that movies that show white racism are seen as dangerous and
reveal something that some "whites" would like to deny or
diminish.
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136
The responses gathered did contain examples of this
minimizing, denying "generalized other," all from European
Americans. These "whites" tend to emphasize that the white
oppression depicted in the movie is an exaggeration or an
extreme:
Like most movies, they took what was probably
an extreme and blew it all out of proportion. The
portrayals were realistic for maybe 5% of
whites :blacks. I don't believe this happened all
the time. There was trouble but the movie made it
look bigger than it was. 39 year old, upper-middle
class E.A. male.
As Patti, a 38 year old lower class European American
woman, put in an interview, "the movie tended to exaggerate
things a bit. In the movie I don't know how many black
churches get blown up and after I while I was kind of like...
come on. Things were bad but probably not quite that bad."
The implication of arguing against a dominant discourse
that denies and minimizes the history and impact of white
racism is even more evident in the comments by African
Americans. Many said that what they liked about the movie was
simply "...the fact that it was made,""it was on network tv"
(24 upper-mid., female), "...the fact that the nation gets to
see what racist groups do to individuals" (24 lower-class
male). Ellis, a 21 year old, lower-class African American
said that he liked "...the fact that the movie gave a good
picture of the realities of the civil rights movement. And
also how it did not try to tone down the violence and the
suppression of blacks." Ellis, like many of the other African
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137
Americans found pleasure in the mere fact that, in this movie,
"white" oppression of "blacks" appeared to not be minimized.
This thought is echoed by a 39 year old, middle-class African
American man, who wrote, "I liked the fact that most of the
facts regarding the feeling of whites toward blacks during
that time period and in that part of the country were brought
out." Thus, many African Americans felt that the experience
of their people under white domination was validated by the
film in a way that is not at all typical. As one 44 year old
lower-class African American woman put it, in ironic relief,
"these things actually happened."
However, many of the European American respondent made a
point of distinguishing between "then and now." The specter
of white domination and oppression was for many European
Americans an example of the way things "were, " not of how
things continue to be. Cary demonstrated this distancing
discourse when he said of the film, "its an attempt to do
something historical on the civil rights movement, .ah.. in the
South and it gives you a flavor for something that happened a
long time ago that you don't have any contact with., uh like
that today." Other comments that illustrate this perspective
include the following;
(Q: Disliked?): The remembering of the cruel
violence and hatred that some used to have for
others they had never met. 43 year old, middle
class E.A. woman.
The movie showed how things used to be and how
blacks used to be treated in some parts of the
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138
country. Made you appreciate how much things have
changed. 45 year old, upper-middle class E.A. man.
It showed the way some whites thought of
blacks during that period in the South, as they had
been raised with the feelings they had. 43 year old
middle-class E.A. woman.
Sad to see that could of happened in the pass,
it makes you really think an appreciate what you
have today. A lot of blacks and whites get along
good today. 16 yr old, lower-class, A.A. male.
The utility of constructing white oppression as part of
a distant past became apparent in one of the European American
group interviews. The respondents were asked, given the
film's final emphasis on guilt, whether or not white people
have anything to feel guilty about. Cindy, a twenty five year
old middle-class engineer responded as follows:
Cindy: Mo... probably not all white people,
just people who... well... no not all white
people... and I don't know why, but I don't... I
don't think so... cuz like I wasn't even alive
during then so I shouldn't have to feel guilty.
So... people of my age group... didn't have
anything to do with it. So as long as we're being
open-minded now... we shouldn't have anything to
feel guilty about what happened way, way...
(chuckle)... WAY WAY back then (general laughter).
In the process of assessing whether or not all "white"
people, including herself, are implicated in white domination
and oppression, Cindy finds the distancing tactic of defining
white oppression as a thing of the past useful in escaping
guilt. In this example, the use of distancing as a tactic
even becomes apparent to the speaker herself, at which point
she exaggerates her exaggeration and makes a joke out of it.
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139
On the other hand, for many African Americans and a few
European Americans the movie illustrated racist treatment and
realities that are on-going and very much a part of the
everyday present. For most African americans this was a movie
about the way things are, and that reality is clearly very
painful to many of the these respondents. The following
comments illustrate this perspective:
I did not like the movie at all I feel like
civil rights in this movie was bullshit but it just
like today in history with Mr. King right. We know
white is right, look at life today. 3 3 year old
lower-class AA woman.
Bigots are alive and well to this date. You
don't have to look hard in any state to find them.
AA male, no other demographic disclosed.
There is a double standard of system of
justice which we have in the past and also at the
present time. 57 year old, lower-class AA man.
I would describe the movie as a movie designed
to show how racist groups behaved back then and
still today in the south. 24 year old, upper middle
AA female, BA.
(Q: How were relations portrayed): The same
way they are today, no justice, unequal and no
peace. Blacks were constantly scared and whites
were in complete control. Relationships like that
between whites and blacks still exist today.
In the interviews, African American respondents shared
many examples of current racism on which this discourse of
"this is the way things still are" is based. Many African
Americans made reference to the police beating of Rodney King
and the trials that ensued as examples of continuing racial
oppression and bias, especially in policing and sentencing.
For example, Ken, a thirty year old middle-class college
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140
graduate said, "the scary thing about it, though, is that its
not just that time period. Because you sit here and watch
Rodney King and I feel like that could have been Rodney King,
you know? You're sitting there, getting kicked or what have
you, and you want to fight back but what resistance do you
have? Its all the same thing." Ellis, the 21 year old lower-
class man, also saw direct parallels between the Rodney King
case and the events depicted in the movie.
Ellis: I disliked the ending, cause I disliked
the movie being played now... because it has a lot
of tension on the Rodney King case. Um... them
playing this movie now shows that what happened in
the past is the same thing that's happening now,
that's why the cops got two and a half years.
Well, go back to the day when they killed for a
living, they killed just for the pleasure tip. The
burning of homes and churches and, you know, the
sheriff got off free, he got acquitted 1 And most of
them received ten years with a maximum time served,
and after that they probably only did a few years
anyway... for having murdered somebody! Now if a
gang banger were to murder an innocent person or
even another gang banger he would probably receive
15 to life. This movie shows you what's going to
happen on the Denny trial. These boys are going to
receive a much harsher sentence, you know? I don't
think they should get off scott free cause they did
something wrong, but I do think they shouldn't be
penalized as being black, white or green.
Few of the European American respondents explicitly refer
to the Rodney King incident. In one interview the King
incident came up when the subjects, having noticed that the
film showed little hatred of "whites" by "blacks," brought up
the "riot" scene.
Cary: They ran around showing some anger but
from far away.
Cindy: It wasn't directed at anything.
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141
Cary: But they never explained what they were
burning.
Cindy: We weren't allowed in... everyone had
to stay away. They were burning their own
community.
Cary: Like the riots.
Cindy: Yeah (everyone chuckles), like the
riots, right... what was that all about? Yeah.
Perhaps it is the fact that few European Americans know
what the L.A. uprising was "all about," that keeps them from
connecting the Rodney King beating by police, the subsequent
acquittal and Federal action, with the events depicted in
Mississippi Burning.
A few other European Americans implicitly raise the King
beating issue as they wonder whether or not things are much
better today:
The movie really bothers me, frustrates me- I
hate what the whites have done to the blacks- what
they are doing still today! Why can't we all just
get along???? It's very depressing. Have we
really come that much farther these last years???
yes and no I suppose. 37 year old, middle-class
female.
This was one of the only implied references to the Rodney
King beating by a European American respondent on the survey.
Apparently the police beating of Rodney King does not resonate
with most European Americans the way it does with so many
African Americans as an example of on-going racial oppression
especially on behalf of law enforcement.
In the interviews African Americans drew on personal
experiences with racism when assessing the realism, fairness
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142
and accuracy of the film's depiction. Many African Americans
had personal and familial experiences upon which they drew in
decoding the film. Many viewed the film through the prism of
personal incidents of racial violence, which made watching the
film more emotional for them. One lower-class African
American woman's brother was killed by a racist European
American neighbor when she was little. This same woman's
grandmother had been raped by a racist European American
employer for whom she worked as a servant. A high school aged
girl recounted the stories her grandfather had told her of
"extremely cruel treatment" by "whites" in the North. Another
girl told of leaving a school for the gifted after receiving
threatening notes calling her "nigger" and other slurs. Two
African American men told of being repeatedly stopped and
harassed by the police. One group of thirty year old
interviewees traded stories of being physically and verbally
assaulted by "whites" in high schools from around the country
during and after the airing of Roots. Mikki, a thirty year
old college graduate, told of being mistreated by a police
officer during a routine traffic stop and then having him lie
about the incident when she tried to fight her ticket in
court. She sums up the effect of incidents such as these on
African Americans' decoding the film when she said, "I think
overall there was an accuracy to it, because even today the
message that the law is not on their side, especially if
you're black... I think that's real, because not only in the
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143
Rodney King incident, I mean witness by the first trial, but
stuff that happens to us everyday."
The general consensus, among most African Americans
seemed to be that white oppression is still in force today,
albeit often in more subtle forms. As Mikki Went on to say,
"It's a sad feeling... people having had to have gone through
that and being a product of that, and its... they are still
doing it but not as strongly, in different ways." Other
written responses echo this sentiment;
This type of thing still goes on today all
over just in a less blatant way. 47 year old,
upper-middle-class A.A. male.
Racists are still doing this stuff, just not
as out in the open. 53 year old, lower-class A.A.
woman.
Watching the film through the prism of personal memories
of racist injuries done in both the past and the present, it
is not surprising that many African Americans had a stronger
reaction to the film. Add the fact that, as one 30 year old
middle-class woman put it, "you're watching all of this
carnage and violence and your thinking that could have been
me, or my mother, or my child," and the viewing of the film
becomes especially painful. The realization among many African
American viewers that "blacks" are being marginalized and
depicted as ignorant and passive makes the anger and
frustration even more palpable. It can be seen and felt in
the many large print one liners like "MOVIES LIKE THIS MAKE ME
VERY ANGRY," and "DID NOT LIKE MOVIE 1" Many African Americans
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144
expressed feelings of anger, anguish and despair; some
expressed deep-seated hatred;
White people are so wrong sometimes. 41 year
old lower-class A.A. woman.
(Q: Overall message): That white people don't
have any good history at all. 16 year old, lower-
class A.A. male.
I feel as though it doesn't matter what I
think, because what I think or feel won't change
anything. It happened then and its still happening
to this day. 34 year old, lower-class A.A. woman.
(Q: Overall message): That nothing has
changed. It is said the devil rules the earth. Who
rules the earth but white society? This is the
overall message. 40 year old, lower-class A.A. man.
Disliked movie! I did not like when the kkk
were killing innocent kids and mothers for trying
to receive justice and make just like the white man
and I feel the white should be punished to death.
29 year old, middle-class A.A. man.
Decoding the Depiction of "Whites"
Though the quantitative analysis indicates that overall
resistance to the depiction of "whites," as measured on six-
point scales, is not significant for European Americans or
African Americans, the interviews and written responses
captured resistance and the nature of this resistance.
Many European American and a few African American viewers
expressed resistance towards the portrayal white racism in the
written comments and in the interviews. This resistance was
not counter-hegemonic, but hegemonic in that it works to
further deny and minimize the particular role that white
racism and white domination has played in US history and in
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145
structuring US culture and society. These respondents couched
and legitimated their resistance within a discourse of
hyperbole and over-simplicity. Written comments included the
following:
The movie made it look like all whites are
evil. 42 year old middle class E.A.
(Q: Portrayal of whites) Not all whites are
racist. 38 year old upper middle-class E.A. woman.
Not all whites are racist. 52 year old E.A.
man, conservative.
Movie failed to relate that not all whites are
bigots. 59 year old, upper-middle-class A.A. man,
conservative.
Frank, a 68 year old, middle-class, retired European American,
who defines himself as a moderate, is exemplary of this
reading:
Frank: The movie was too black and white,
there were a lot of groups of whites working for
integration, Morris Dees was down there working
for...
Ben: That's a different time period, after
this
Frank: Well men like Morris Dees... they
should've shown white groups helping. I know in
history there were groups trying to get together
and whatcha call it... modify the feelings... and
there wasn't, uh... one group that was all the way
bad. They showed the whites in extremely negative
context and the blacks as victims. And they never
brought up the fact that there were groups working
for integration... even before Morris Dees, and in
his book he brings up and names that there were a
lot of groups working towards those ends and it
didn't even give them any credit. Black and white
is more dramatic, good versus evil.
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146
Chris also expressed his distress through a discourse
rejecting over-simplicity:
Chris: The bad guys, um... their portrayal of
the quote unquote bad guys, was very one
dimensional, cuz the issue is more complicated than
these people being total scumbags and just beating
everyone up, I mean these people have a lot more to
them, they have families and they have kids and
they love their kids and so um they avoid that
whole side of it.
These comments are interesting because, to say the least,
not all the "whites" in the movie are bigots. The three main
characters, the FBI agents and the deputies wife, are all
portrayed as non-racist. The Federal government, which was
"white," was portrayed as strongly anti-racist. Furthermore
in at least five scenes in the movie, "whites" are allowed to
explain, at length, why "whites" are racist. Hackman tells a
tearful story of his poor father who killed a "black"
neighbors mule because "... if you ain't better than a nigger,
son, who are you better than?" A local leader of the white
citizens council explains, and taps into, "white" fear of
"black" violence when he asks his audience of "white" men,
women and children if they want to see "their blacks" running
amuck like in the streets of Oakland and Chicago. Later in
the film the local "blacks" do indeed run amuck in a
fabricated riot. The teary eyed deputy's wife explains how
"hatred is not some thing you born with, it gets taught in
school and in church." She even gives reference "Genesis nine,
verse seven." And one of murderers explains to Hackman that
the racial violence is necessary to maintain political power:
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147
"we got thousands of niggers in this county and ain't none of
them registered to vote. We aim to keep it that way."
Perhaps the respondents who felt discomfort at seeing
such a blatantly negative display of racist white domination
felt that they could only legitimately express this distress
by rhetorically exaggerating it into a biased portrayal
through the erasure of both the main characters and the
complexity of the depiction of white racism. People seem to
have to ignore the diversity of the portrayal to legitimately
express distress at seeing whiteness portrayed at all
negatively.
In the politics of whiteness played out in the decoding
of the film, racism is often constructed as the exclusive
provence of fanatical group like the klan. Tom, a lower class
European American with little education states, "it kinda made
it look like you know 'all whites are evil' you know and they
should've shown more whites helping and caring cuz they
weren't all KKK." Other comments that echoed this discourse
include the following:
The good guys (FBI) were realistic. The bad
guys were a bit extreme. It made the majority of
the white towns people look like they didn't care.
I'm sure that was not the case. Most were not
members of the klan. 47 year old, upper-middle
class E.A. man
Many of the survey respondents who made such comments did
not give responses on the six-point scales indicating that
they strongly disagreed with the portrayal of "whites."
Interview discussions suggest that discomfort with the
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148
portrayal white racism appears to have been dampened by the
diversity and depth of the portrayal. For example, when asked
whether or not the movie was a fair, accurate and/or realistic
depiction of the events that took place, the thirty something
group of European Americans had the following conversation:
Cary: Stereotypes, all the southern people
were kinda fat, white, really pale.
Cindy: Yeah they're all fat, white and with
crooked teeth.
Cary: With crooked teeth portraying the
typically... uh, well I did think., well they
actually they did, they balanced it out. I mean
they did put in the one old guy who said that they
were treated poorly.
Cindy:- Yeah, and I noticed all the people
were not beautiful and that's more realistic.
Later, when asked about the portrayal of "whites" they
returned to this discussion:
Cary:(whites were portrayed as) stupid.
Cindy: Except for that one main woman. In the
swamps is where they were fat and had crooked
teeth, the rest were wealthier.
Chris: In general I thought it was pretty one
dimensional, but they did had a few people who were
slightly open-minded...um...
Cary: I guess I mean there were enough
different types of people that they touched upon
every possible categorization.
A similar exchange occurred among the African American
respondents in which discomfort at seeing "whites" portrayed
as racist is negotiated through a criteria demanding a
portrayal of "whites" as diversely human:
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149
Terri: I would say the majority or many white
people did feel that way particularly in a small
town, but I... again, when the civil rights
movement got started there were a lot of whites who
kind of got on the band wagon, who didn't believe
in the injustices taking place. So I don't know
that there only would have been one... it seemed
like she was the only one in that whole town that
had some compassion towards black people... And
then, when they had that little parade, you did see
a few white people marching along too. And there
was that one old guy they interviewed, and the
people at the end... so yeah, all in all I guess it
was fair.
As many of the preceding examples demonstrate, the people
who had accepted the portrayal of "whites" often understood,
made sense of, and accepted the depiction through various
discourses of containment. Many used a discourse of "white"
diversity that says a depiction of blatant and vulgar white
racism is alright as long as we are very specific about who we
are referring to: people from a particular region (southern),
and a particular state (Mississippi), and a particular class
(euphemistically known as "uneducated"), and a particular type
of community (small town) and a particular fanaticism (the
klan), at a particular time period ("long ago"). That is who
can unproblematicly be ascribed pejorative, pathological
whiteness, people with up to six degrees of separation from
the viewer. Thus, many respondents who felt that the
portrayals of "white" people were fair accurate and/or
realistic gave their endorsement under the condition that the
movie met certain criteria for the depiction of whiteness:
that the human diversity of "white" people was shown and that
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150
white racism is depicted as a localized, fanatic group
problem.
Interviewer: What did you think about the
depiction of white people? Was it fair, accurate
and/or realistic?
Cindy: It was fair, realistic and accurate to
my stereotype of southerners.. yes ha ha sad but
true.
Many of the written comments illustrated this same set of
containment strategies :
(Q; Depiction of whites): Probably true for
uneducated southern whites in small town
Mississippi at that time. 55 year old middle-class
E.A. woman.
(Q: Overall message): It showed the way blacks
were treated by ignorant and uneducated Southerners
a while back in history. 38 year old upper-middle
class E.A. man.
A number of the European American respondents thought so
deeply about and were so concerned with the "accuracy" of the
portrayal of "whites" that they expressed themselves through
the discourse of statistical representation and validity:
I'm sure the number of racist out numbered the
non-racists in the south in the sixties, but is
this true? I'm not sure. 34 year old lower-class
E.A. woman.
They were justly portray per ratio sympathetic
to unsympathetic. 43 year old Upper-middle class
E.A. man.
Like any group some were prejudiced and some
were not. It was probably fair and realistic in the
proportion of prejudiced to non-prejudiced people.
40 year old middle-class E.A. woman.
Again these responses seem to say more about the general
feeling that seeing whiteness portrayed as negative/racist is
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151
problematic— since many then go on to talk about "white"
characters who were sympathetic and actively helping. The
discourse about over-simplicity seems disingenuous when they
then go on to cite and use the discourse presented in the film
for why the racist "whites" were racist— fear, loss of
control, socialization through school and in religion, poverty
and low self-esteem.
Most African Americans seemed to think it was fair and
realistic because it did indeed show that not all "whites"
were racist, but most were:
The movie made sure to portray white people who were
racist and non-racist. It portrayed most as racist which
I think was fair. 39 year old upper-middle class A.A.
man.
Other European Americans and African Americans read the
depiction of racist "whites" as credible because they see such
racism in their everyday experiences:
(Q: depiction of whites realistic?): There are
enough idiots today (unfortunately) that act the same
exact way. 34 year old middle-class E.A. female.
It was totally believable. I hear people making the
same kinds of comments 'behind closed doors' today just
usually not quite as extreme. 22 year old lower-class
E.A. woman.
A handful of respondents criticized the depiction of
"whites" from a very oppositional counter-hegemonic framework.
These people were all highly familiar with counter-hegemonic
knowledge and discourse. One 50 year old African American
manager with a bachelor's degree had read a few books on
African American history. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. and
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152
had spoken to and heard speeches from people within the
movement. He said he disliked the movie because it was
"another white fairy-tale about how white people rode in on
their white horses and saved all of the poor little darkies.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Just another example
of people rewriting history to make white people look better."
A 53 year old European American male teacher wrote, "I
hate movies like this, its a big white guilt fest. We're
supposed to applaud the FBI for allegedly saving the day and
relate to the poor white racists who have a lot of "good"
reasons for why they can't help beating up and killing black
people. Meanwhile the black people in the movie aren't even
portrayed as human."
In the interview with four middle-aged, middle-class
African Americans, three of whom have a great deal of
knowledge about the movement from actual experience and
readings, all four agreed that the movie was a "white-washed
fairy tale." As for the depiction of "whites," James argued
that "the movie made it seem like whites and the government
cared, but we who were there know that's bullshit!" Stan said
that "there were a few white her os of the movement but a very
few, uh... few and far between. And they certainly weren't
associated with the FBI, unless, if they were what, uh...
under surveillance!"
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153
Decoding the Depiction of "Blacks"
After being very particular and demanding of diversity
and even statistical representation in the depiction of
"whites" many European Americans and some African Americans
had no problem with the exceedingly narrow portrayal of
"blacks." This was especially true for both European and
African Americans with little familiarity with counter-
hegemonic discourses on African American movement history and
political discourse. These respondents were far more likely
to accept the film's built in rationalization for "black"
marginality and objectification. Mississippi Burning contains
a built in rationalization for marginalizing its African
American subjects: they were too scared and too oppressed to
do or say anything. People who know little about the
political organizing and activities of the movement do not
miss a depiction of African American agency. It is hard to
imagine the downtrodden, scared and passive "blacks" portrayed
in the movie having enough agency, intelligence, or courage to
effectively challenge white domination. In any case, 38.5% of
African Americans and 64.7% of European Americans surveyed
fully accepted the film's depiction of defenseless, and
passive, childlike blackness. Here is how some of these
respondents explained their reasoning:
The blacks were too afraid to do anything to rock
the boat. 36 year old middle-class E.A. man,
conservative.
They learned after years of rule by the Klan that
you can't fight it. 23 year old lower-class E.A. woman.
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154
It was realistic, black people acted the way they
had to act. 37 year old middle-class A.A. man
Barbara, a 56 year old European American woman who
described herself as a "soft-hearted liberal," felt that the
depiction of "blacks" was "real, oh yes very real." She
argued that "being passive was just common sense, it was their
only weapon."
Some respondents seemed to interpret the question of
accuracy, fairness and realisticness in the depiction of
"blacks" as meaning 'did blacks do anything wrong to deserve
their treatment.' From within a dominant cultural framework
that minimizes the oppression of African Americans, blames
African Americans for their own victimization within white
supremacist domination, and deems aggressiveness as a
peculiarly "black" racial pathology, the film's depiction of
"blacks" as hapless childlike victims was problematic.
Whether this portrayal was, therefore, something to be
rejected or defended depended on whether these respondents
were inclined to accept or reject the dominant discourse.
Either way these respondents stay within the overall dominant
framework.
For example, many respondents, especially European
Americans rejected the depiction of "blacks" as innocent and
passive victims because of the way this portrayal positioned
"whites" by contrast and because within the dominant framework
"blacks" are the ones who are aggressive and violent. These
respondents wanted to know, not where is the "black" agency.
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155
human subjectivity and/or movement, but where is the "black"
hatred and violence. They seem to long for a depiction of
"black" hatred and violence in order to mystify and diffuse
the critique of white domination, hatred and violence. For
example, Frank was disturbed by the fact that "blacks" were
presented as "victims, frightened and good, no bad, it was too
simplistic."
Tom, a lower-class European American man echoes Frank's
sentiment, arguing that, "they showed the blacks as if they
were all little angels and... I don't... I mean I'm sure that
the blacks had done a lot of stuff too that made the
whites...uh, you know, through out the years. I'm sure both
sides hated each other." A written comment by a European
American respondent sums up the objection emphasizing that the
movies depiction of "blacks" was objectionable mainly because
of the way it defined "whites" by contrast:
(Q: Blacks?) They seemed too simple and good, the
movie showed lots of bad whites but no bad blacks.
Cary, a 32 year old engineer, had a similar response as
he wondered where the black hatred and violence was:
Cary: I didn't really feel any... there must have
been quite a bit of hatred among the black people towards
the whites... I would expect that in their own
environment that there would be a fair amount of...you'd
be able to sense the violence ...somehow, yeah whereas
whites you get the violence from them right away. There
was probably like a lot of...most... it seemed like a
pretty healthy black community and with all the violence
going on I mean there would be violence, problems
Interviewer: like?
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156
Cary: Well, like if, I mean... i bet there was
plenty of violence in the black community, right,
even on to itself... I mean as a result of...all
the other violence, right, you spend the day
working with you know... that beat upon.. and you
go home and get drunk and beat your wife.
Interviewer: kick the dog?
Cary: kick your kid, you know so you didn't
see any of that you know all you saw was them going
to church.. and then they interview whites and get
all the hatred.
Patti, a 38 year old lower class woman with a high school
education pulls together this reading, and the effect of the
dominant discourse on "blacks" that is brought to bear, when
she says later in the interview that part of the reason
"blacks" are still not doing well is "there s... they've got
so much violence in their..culture I mean I guess that's why
the way the movie showed them seemed... not right cause there
so much violence in real life... yet here they are being shown
as so...uh innocent and ...not aggressive and there it's the
white people being all violent and stuff. Not that there
weren't a lot of violent rednecks in the south, especially
back then but, uh...I guess, I don't know... That didn't
really seem really fair or realistic to me, you know?"
For others working from within and yet against the
dominant discourse of minimizing oppression of "blacks" within
white supremacy and positioning "blacks" as "problem people,"
with peculiar pathologies, especially aggressiveness, the
depiction of "blacks" as defenseless, childlike and passive is
something positive to be defended:
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157
(Q: Blacks?) I believe the majority were
honest and hard working people who were not
responsible for what was taking place. 38 year old
middle-class E.A. man.
I feel they were fairly portrayed as victims.
I believe they were victims for the most part. 28
male lower class E.A. man.
The portrayal was fair and realistic. It
showed that black people had done nothing wrong to
deserve that treatment except be black. 24 year old
middle-class A.A. woman.
These people were not causing any trouble,
they were just trying to live their lives and they
were brutalizing them without provocation. 20 year
old upper-middle class A.A. male.
Though in some ways counter-hegemonic relative to the
dominant discourse on African Americans as aggressive "problem
people," these respondents do not break out of the framework
of the dominant discourse and from within that discourse the
only oppositional stance is to defend a depiction of "blacks"
as not aggressive and not "causing trouble."
Other respondents, especially African Americans resisted
the film's construction of "blacks" as passive fearful objects
through more counter-hegemonic discourses.
It could have showed black people who didn't
except the low standards that they were under.
Except for the little kid, the movie just showed
blacks who accepted all of their negative
surroundings. 39 year old, middle-class A.A. man.
Black people in my opinion were unfairly
portrayed because they were being depicted as not
being intelligent or having a voice. 29 year old,
lower-class A.A. woman.
(Q: Disliked?); The lack of power blacks had
in this movie in helping themselves. 17 year old,
lower-class A.A. male.
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158
For these subjects, the objection to the passivity was
tied to an objection to the way in which "black" lives and
perspectives are absent in the movie. These issues created
arguments in a few of the African American group interviews.
In an interview with six high school age AA girls, Ramona
immediately objected to the fact that the film "didn't have
any black viewpoints." As for the movies depiction of African
Americans, she joked that the "blacks" in the movie were
portrayed as "track stars":
Ramona: All the blacks were on a track team,
they were always running away from the klan,
running from the FBI... I mean there must have been
a few radicals in that town and there should have
been more on those people— they got the facts
right but not the perspectives.
Most of the other girls argued against Ramona using the
film's rationalization for the lack of "black" agency and
perspectives in comments like "that's how they had to act",
and "they couldn't do or say anything or they'd be killed."
As stated before, many respondents, both African American and
European American (but especially Euro-American) accept this
built in movie explanation, and here African American
respondents even explicitly argue for it in the face of
counter-hegemonic resistance. Ramona goes beyond the frame of
the built in movie explanation for "black" marginality:
Ramona: Even if they couldn't be all out in
public saying things, it didn't show parents
teaching kids lessons like 'you are equal,' 'you
should be able to vote, ' I mean they did have
common sense and lives beyond when they were in
front of white people.
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159
Later Ramona divulges the kind of everyday experience on
which resistance by African Americans to the objectification
of the "black" characters is likely to be at least partially
based. She told of how she dropped out of an almost all
"white" school for the gifted after receiving threatening
notes and verbal comments filled with racial slurs. Her
parents counseled her not to give in to the intimidation
because she was "at least equal to the other kids," and had a
right to go to school anywhere she wanted. In the end she
chose to drop out, a choice that she now regrets. Ramona has,
through her experience with overt white supremacist
oppression, an idea of how people react in such a situation.
It includes a great deal of familial deliberation, and
parental concern, counseling and support. Therefore, the lack
of this kind of basic human perspective in the film is
conspicuous and suspect. The other girls argue that her
reaction may not be the same as "black" people's in the South,
who, according to Shacura, "are... or at least were a lot more
ignorant and they just accepted things like that, especially
back then." Ramona and Tiffany, the only other résistent
viewer in this group, are able to counter this definition of
docile Southern African Americans because both have family
from the South, and because these two have the most knowledge
of civil rights movement history:
Ramona: Of course some were like that, but we
have relatives in South Carolina and they were
aren't like that. There had to be some radicals in
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160
all those places in the South or there wouldn't
have been a movement.
Tiffany: I have family down South and I've
heard stories about times when they fought back and
how they didn't put up with any shit., excuse me
(laughter) with any stuff. They'd been trying to
fight back since way back.
Ramona finds the complacency and lack of African American
perspective suspect from the level of common sense, a common
sense that resists the objectification of African Americans,
seeing them as human beings with thoughts feeling and lives
beyond their interaction with "whites." Her common sense is
in this way informed by the history she says she read on her
own and her father taught her, her familiarity with Southern
African American people and her own family's reaction to
experiencing overt racism.
The same exchange occurred in an interview with three
thirty year old, middle class, college educated African
Americans. Terri, who works as a publicist in the television
industry and did her masters research on Malcolm X, said, "I
don't have any, uh, historic background on the actual
incidents that happened in this movie... but I did question if
the blacks were that complacent even in a small town. Because,
you know, once the civil rights movement got going it was
these small towns that were really the fire under that
movement, and so I... I don't know if they were truly that
complacent and they only really showed that one kid, a young
kid at that, who was kind of a rebel rouser or kind of the
only one who had the courage to get his people to talk and I
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161
would just bet that if the civil rights movement had already
been down there and probably others before them there should
have been um a little more tenacity in some of them but they
wouldn't have been just sitting back you know waiting for all
of this just to happen and they wake up one day and it will be
all over.”
Ken, who admits that he knows very little about the whole
time period, argued from within the frame of the movie:
Ken: Yeah, but I thought the way the movie
showed them was realistic because you saw what
happened when they talked like in the diner, the
black guy didn't even do anything and he got the
stupid beat out of him.
Terri: Even if they weren't out preaching in the
street doing something what about amongst
themselves they would have been more open and they
didn't even show that side. Even in the privacy of
their own talk they would have different views they
would be angry they would wish they could do
something or want to do something but all it would
show was when a white person talked to the black
person the black person would say I don't want to
talk to you.
Ken: But remember that all that guy in the
diner said was I don't want to talk and he got the
stupid beat out of him and that's why these
people...
Terri: But why.. why wouldn't they talk among
themselves
Ken: Because they...
Terri: You know they talked among themselves.
Ken: But if you look at the movie the movie
didn't focus of the way the blacks were off by
themselves
Terri : Why not?
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162
Ken: Cause that wasn't the focus of the movie
the focus of the movie...
Terri: The focus of the movie was racism.
Ken: No, yes but, not to that extent, I mean
you... you the
focus of the movie was solely about racism and the way the
klan road the town and the FBI solved the murders
Terri: So then on the large scale what you're
saying about this movie is that the perspective of
white people was more important than the
perspective of black people.
Ken: No they couldn't go off an show... uh the
focus...
Terri: Why couldn't that have been shown, it
depends on who made the movie and what they wanted
to emphasize
Ken: See I think that... you're going off...
Terri: I don't care I don't think they were
concerned about depicting black people accurately
or they wouldn't...
Ken: (interrupting) They did depict them
accurately.
Terri: they wouldn't have had all those aunt
jemimas in there.
Ken: Your asking for that they show a better
side of black people...
Terri: Better and more realistic
Ken: and your asking for something that wasn't
even part of the movie
Terri: Why wasn't it?
Ken: I don't think it fit
Mikki: The lack of a black perspective makes
you feel less compassion I mean if you look at it
that could make you feel detached...
Ken: But it didn't fit with this movie
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163
Terri: Well I'm asking why not, that means
there is something wrong with this movie because it
should have fit. Is it supposed to be what really
happened or what?
Ken: But see I not really familiar with this
case but it all seemed realistic in this movie to
me.
Like Ramona, Terri takes the same common sense ideas
about the basic human subjectivity of African Americans and
adds to it her greater knowledge of the movement and her
knowledge of media production- the fact that choices are made
and therefore other choices could have been made. Ken and the
most of the other high school girls stay within the frame of
the discourse offered them by the film, perhaps not having
enough exposure to counter-hegemonic discourses to resist it,
and seeing it therefore as an authoritative structure that you
"cant" go beyond.
The more familiar the respondents were with counter-
hegemonic knowledge and discourses the more critical they were
about the depiction of "black" people and all other aspects of
the text. Ellis, a 21 year old lower-class African American
had read a few books on African American history on his own
and while in prison. Like many other African American
respondents he is uneasy about relying on mainstream white
media for knowledge. When asked about the movie's portrayal of
"blacks" he responds:
Uhm, well, I only know from what I
watched on TV because these schools out
here don't really teach you too much on
African American history so urn every...
basically unless I read a book by urn
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164
Frederick Douglass, you know, he got a
few good books I read and a couple of
other ones, unless it comes from
something like that its hard for me to
say what's the truth and what really
happened or if it was portrayed
correctly."
However, given the reading he has done Ellis resists some
aspects of the way African American are encoded. For example,
he noticed the way in which African Americans are stereotyped,
saying that the movie "picked the characters to describe them
in that... that nature as being big eyed, big lipped, big
nose, round fat face, uh, you know, speaking broken english
like they were illiterate..." Ellis notices and rejects this
way in which blackness is encoded because he has read a few
books on his own in high school and in prison that, he says,
"gave me different perspectives of a black culture because I
didn't know that there were a lot of black people who were not
ignorant and who were not broken english and fat lipped... but
they were very high knowledged people who probably had better
schooling than what some of the average Caucasian people had
got in school. " Therefore he feels that the makers of the
movie "should have started first of all with people in their
own city in that Mississippians who wanted to help themselves
to try to do it because there were a lot of educated black
people back then and writing books and things like that and
pulling people out of racism and helping them get more
educated."
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165
And yet, later Ellis says he felt "depressed and
"ashamed" that "black" people didn't stand up for themselves
and then instead of doing anything constructive "burned their
own city and offended their own because they were not treated
right." Having only and oppositional tendency but little real
knowledge of what occurred in this era of history he is left
feeling ashamed and even thinking that the movie was too kind
to African Americans "making it seem like we as black people
are always innocent and we just get treated wrong by the white
person" when in fact "black people chose to live like that
because if we would have been doing right for each other and
united to fight it so many white people could not run over
another group of people without their being a war." Later
Ellis even contradicts this tendency to believe that the movie
failed to show the real "black" heros and capitulates to the
films discourse "I guess as black people was down and so down
trodden in Mississippi they needed these [FBI] heros to come
through and pull them out of the mud they was in." Here he
accepts the movie's construction of "blacks" as defenseless
and passive and of the "white" FBI as heroic saviors.
Dan, a 34 year old African American engineer had read a
few books on African American History and seen Eyes On The
Prize, the acclaimed documentary series on the civil rights
movement. With a common sense feel for African American
subjectivity he rejects the film's objectification of
"blacks";
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166
Dan: It made the blacks look like zombies,
they never talked about anything ... it never even
showed them by themselves reacting to what
happened. Basically it didn't have any black
perspectives what so ever.
In Addition his greater knowledge of the movement is a
source of counter hegemonic resistance:
Dan: I didn't like the fact that the black
people seemed to be incompetent and passive. In the
movie they didn't want to stand up for their rights
so the FBI had to come in and try to convince them.
I don't think... that's not what happened in real
l^e, in real life I think it was the FBI that had
to^be convinced or pressured by the movement to do
something. And it looked like they assumed the
white northerners came down to get them the vote
and that probably wasn't the case seeing that the
civil rights movement seems like the black
southerners started it and the northerners came
down to help but they didn't... they weren't the
drivers of the thing cuz most like the southern
conference are... those are southern black people.
In an interview with four middle aged African American,
three of who have a great deal of knowledge of the movement
from actual experience, reading and activism the discourse and
framework of the film is fully rejected:
James: the irony of the film is that its about
the black movement and yet blacks are marginalized.
Its typical Hollywood, typical America.
James: The portrayal of blacks just shows that
white people don't take black people seriously.
That's who black people are to America : not
instrumental.
Paula: Whites know nothing about blacks but we
know all about whites. This movie just continues
that. But for our younger people it keeps them
from knowing about themselves, I fear what my
children think when they see stuff like this.
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167
Resistance to Ideas of FBI and Federal Government Commitment
Many respondents, especially European Americans and
especially those with little familiarity with counter-
hegemonic discourses fully accepted the contention, suggested
in the movie, that in reality "the FBI was a positive force in
terms of being helping and being committed to the movement,"
and/or that "the Federal government was strongly committed to
bringing about the aims of the civil rights movement." Four
out of the six African American girls believed that Congress
or the government, had sent the civil rights workers in to
Mississippi. Written comments from those who strongly agreed
that "the FBI was a positive force in terms of helping and
being committed to the movement," included:
They were very committed, as the movie showed.
I believe they effectively turn the tide of the
blacks from being beaten down to being able to beat
down others.28 white male middle-class conservative
(Q: FBI): They didn't have to go in there and
go to all that trouble so they must have been
committed. 40 year old, lower-class E.A. woman.
(Q: FBI): They was committed. 16 year old
lower-class A.A. male.
(Q: Federal Gov.): I believe this was a
committed force. 58 year old E.A. upper-middle
class woman.
JFK was a big friend of the movement,
extremely committed. 37 year old lower-class E.A.
man.
If the government hadn't been committed they
wouldn't have fought so hard for black equality. 26
year old middle-class E.A. woman.
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168
May, a 41 year old, lower-class African American woman
with a High School education, illustrates the fact that the
cynical view that many African Americans have of the media
does not necessarily lead to oppositional or counter-hegemonic
decoding. First she says that she would like to read
something on the actual event that Mississippi Burning
depicts, because "... to watch something like this on TV...TV
can change things. They don't put the whole thing... they put
a lot of things in there that make you think, you know? See
certain, well, I don't put all my belief in TV shows, they
gonna make that picture according to them that made it. I
don't build my things up in it. It has to be from official
books that I learned from my bishop at church or something
like that... then cool, you know?" Yet later, with little
other information to go on she accepts the ideological account
offered by the movie. She says that in the movie the 'heros of
black peoples' justice in the case are "the ones who helped
us, the two FBI agents, the white ladies." When asked if she
thought this was "fair, accurate, and/or realistic," she says,
"yeah, I think the FBI, those two FBI and the white lady, yeah
those are real, yeah." With regard to the government being
strongly committed in real life she had the following
comments :
May: As far as I'm concerned Kennedy was a
great man, I don't know that much about him, but
what I read about him in school, he was good. As
far as he's concerned he was on our side, you know
what I'm saying? At that time we had a lot of
people backing us up, to put myself in that
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169
predicament, if it wasn't for Martin Luther King
and Kennedy sending the FBI's down there and all
that stuff, civil rights was nothing for blacks,
nothing, we didn't have nothing.
Interviewer: In terms of..?
May: without the government being on our side,
the government helping and the FBI... He didn't
have to send it, he didn't dig up nothing to help
the blacks for him, he did it because he was on our
side. Sure, I think they was with us.
Having accepted the film's "white" government
appropriation of most of the agency and responsibility for
movement. May then blames "blacks" and especially "black" men
for not doing more:
May: In those days they was cowards you know,
I don't, I don't, I didn't see a true man, um , you
know anybody that I .. I don't I don't... I'm...
I'm sorry. I believe the strongest race on this
earth is black, and if we had put our minds to it
we didn't have to live like that, you know?
Especially our black men that can beat his wife and
beat his kids but can't stand up against some stuff
like that? That's just a shame... its shameful.
Many who wrote comments on the surveys were unsure but
hopeful about the commitment and the roles played by the FBI
and the Federal government in general:
They were very committed to equality for
blacks. They wouldn't lie about a thing like that
would they? 27 year old middle-class E.A. woman.
(Q: FBI): It would seem so from the movie-
although are they active today in civil rights i
don't think so, maybe a little. 37 year old, lower-
class E.A. woman.
(Q: FBI): I would hope this to be a true
statement. 35 year old, middle-class E.A. woman.
Then there were those who offered a more negotiated
response :
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(Q: FBI): Most of the time. The FBI and other
law enforcements easily turn their heads to
overlook things. 57 year old, lower class A.A. man.
(Q: FBI): They were a positive force and
committed as an institution , but I'm sure they
weren't all truly committed to the movement as
individuals. 54 year old middle class AA woman.
(Q: FBI): Probably because they were ordered
to, if they were ordered to be a negative force
they would of been. But they represented the
governments belief. 39 year old upper-middle class
E.A. man.
(Q: Gov): I think their intentions were good
but they just didn't know how to go about it. 46
year old, middle class E.A. woman.
I believe in the right places they were (ie
president). 39 year old upper-middle class E.A.
man.
(Q: Gov.): Yes, but they weren't willing to
rock the boat at first, and this was necessary or
wise because a large federal govt action is
tantamount to communism not nationalism. 28 year
old middle class E.A. man.
Then there were those, often with a greater amount of
familiarity with counter-hegemonic discourse and knowledge,
that saw the movies portrayal of strong governmental
commitment, especially on behalf of the FBI, as "a farce." In
part this more oppositional response reveals a widespread
discourse of cynicism for government and politicians in the
US. Many African Americans and especially European Americans
resisted the idea of governmental commitment because of this
discourse, arguing that the government and the FBI simply did,
and do, what they have to do in order to "look good" or to be
"politically correct" :
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171
(Q: FBI): I think their commitment was a
farce. 48 year old, upper-middle class E.A. man.
(Q: Gov): Once things of this nature get into
the public, newspaper and TV, someone must act. 37
year old middle-class E.A. woman.
I feel the gov't only got involved because it
was forced to take notice, and it was politically
correct to do something. 21 year old E.A. upper-
middle class man.
Others, offer a more counter-hegemonic resistance. This
counter-hegemonic response sometimes appears to be derived
from everyday experience with racism without much knowledge of
the movement:
( Q : FBI ) : Only because of the two white men
killed. 40 year old lower class woman.
Rodney King is a perfect example of how much
your civil rights get you and how the government
only gets "concerned" when they have to. 38 year
old lower-class E.A. man.
(Q:Gov.): The movement was there. The
movement was occurring with or without their
involvement. Politically correct to be involved.
50 year old middle class E.A. woman.
(Q: Gov.): I don't think they much cared. If
blacks had "stayed down" nothing much would have
changed. 35 year old lower-class E.A. woman.
For other respondents this counter-hegemonic resistance
is often explicitly informed by knowledge of governmental
racism and African American/movement activism, agency and
pressure :
I believe the FBI saw many activists as
communists and subversives. 28 year old upper-
middle class E.A. man.
I believe Hoover was a racist. 49 year old
upper-middle-class E.A. man.
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172
There were too many strong senators and
Congressmen with strong racist constituents, who
played the game of racial separation and bigotry—
Racism is endemic to USA its in government,
education, etc. 56 year old lower-class A.A. man.
I feel that the FBI was not instrumental in
the civil rights movement. I feel that they could
have played a much better and involved role. I
believe that they were forced to react, and to get
involved. 24 year old middle-class A.A. man.
The head of the FBI (Hoover) was a racist and
hated the most accepted leaders of the civil rights
movement including King & Malcolm X, therefore
commitment was very limited. 56 year old lower
class A.A. man.
I didn't feel that the portrayal of the FBI
was realistic because of other event like the death
of Malcolm X where FBI agents as well as other
authoritative figures has shown that they don't
really care about black people and show no remorse
for the work they've done. Events such as these
are still in effect and the FBI has a dirty hand in
it. 24 year old lower-class E.A. woman.
One European American man who was highly oppositional to
the ideas of FBI and general Federal government commitment to
the movement grasped the fundamental irony of this
construction of history;
I don't believe the federal government really
cared. Otherwise there would not have been a need
for a civil rights movement. 28 year old upper-
middle class E.A. man.
This same fundamental irony of containing the
legitimation crisis for white domination through a
paternalistic revisioning of collective memories of the
movement was concisely articulated by African American
respondents in two of the group interviews. When asked if
"whites" had played a major role in the movement, Mikki said
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173
"definitely, if it wasn't for them we wouldn't have even
needed a movement."
Some of the more counter-hegemonic decoders resist
because they have knowledge of the actual events that took
place. Others, without much specific historical knowledge
seem to have an intuitive feel, given what they have seen,
read and experienced, about how white domination works. When
asked if the government was helpful and really committed to
the movement Ellis, demonstrated a grassroots understanding of
the workings of white hegemony:
Ellis: No, I don't think they were helpful, I
think that the government, um... still when you say
government you say white, that's all that's in the
government, there's white people. So you take them
and you don't know who's in the KKK, who is even
racist, there is racists in the government, so I
think they still did the same thing. I think the
government played no role into helping the civil
rights movement. Only by, you know, little tricks
like... um, give this dude an award to show that we
are the government but we can keep our hands clean.
We're not doing nothing to kill or take this man or
tell him we want him to stop, we're letting him
know by law we can do this we're going to give him
the nobel peace prize we're going to give him the
keys we're going to give him that but they're not
giving him the knowledge he needs to get him out of
that community.
In the interview with the four middle-aged, middle-class
African American respondents with the most knowledge and
familiarity with counter hegemonic discourses, the discourses
of the film are fully rejected. These respondents spend very
little time dwelling on the specific constructions and
depictions of the film. Given their oppositional stance which
causes them to see the film as a manipulation, the specific
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174
constructions and depictions are not worth discussing. With
regard to the fairness and accuracy of the film, Stan, an
assignment editor for a major newspaper, said, "What pisses me
off is that if it had been three blacks who were murdered
nothing would have happened, no FBI, no investigation, no
media attention... no movie. But its like in the news world,
news is what the editor sees on his way to work each day. Its
his perspective, what matters to him, what he thinks might
effect him. And most editors, like most screenwriter,
directors and producers, are white men." When asked about the
role of the government and the FBI in real life, James told a
story about his brother who was a black panther in Milwaukee
and was continually harassed by the FBI. They summed up the
film this way:
James: The attitudes, the setting and the feel
are realistic but the enolization of the FBI and
the government is nonsense.
Stan: The FBI gave blacks hell and this makes
em look like heros, its just another white washed
fairy tale.
James: The movie makes it seem like whites and
the government cared, but we who were there know
that's BULLSHIT.
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CHAPTER 7
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Analyses of the quantitative data suggest that African
American respondents were significantly more résistent to the
ideologies embedded in Mississippi Burning than European
Americans on most items. African Americans were most
résistent towards the idea of Federal Government and FBI
commitment to the movement, and the depiction of "blacks" in
the film. However, most African American respondents were
found to have only low to moderate opposition in their
decoding of the film. Contrary to the speculation by the
"new revisionists" in cultural studies, these findings
indicate that counter-hegemonic resistance is not necessarily
more widespread among members of subordinated groups than
negotiation or acceptance/acquiescence to ideological
meanings. Even with a movie as controversial, and according
to my textual analysis, paternalistically racist and
historically distorting as Mississippi Burning, a "preferred"
reading is the norm for the dominant group and preferred to
negotiated readings are generally the norm for the
subordinated group.
Especially low is counter-hegemonic resistance to the way
"whiteness" is constructed in the movie. In the quantitative
analysis resistance to the depiction of whiteness was low for
both African Americans and European Americans. In the
interviews, only those viewers with the most knowledge of the
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176
movement and exposure to counter-hegemonic discourses for
interpreting "racial" politics were able to "see" the white
supremacist way in which whiteness was constructed in the
film. Far more viewers could see and resist the movies
construction of blackness. This finding reinforces the idea
that whiteness is a hegemonic construct. Dyer (1988) said
that whiteness is presented as everything and yet nothing and
that this is the power and the mask of hegemonic whiteness.
The fact that most viewers, African American and European
American, saw no problem with the paternalistic, white
supremacist way in which whiteness is depicted (even though
many African Americans were able to "see" the other side of
this same racist discourse at work in the depiction of
blackness), lends credence to Dyer's assertion. It indicates
that at present the critique of white supremacist discourses
of blackness are far more culturally pervasive and readily
accessed than critiques of white supremacist discourses of
whiteness. As was argued in Chapter 3, people are only likely
to resist ideological discourse that have been the subject of
widespread counter-hegemonic critique within popular cultural
politics. The counter-hegemonic critique of whiteness has
barely begun and that seems to be reflected in the low levels
of viewer resistance.
Resistance seemed to grow as respondents progressed
through the survey. Resistance to the initial item— the
overall depiction was fair and realistic— was low for both
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177
African Americans and European Americans. Both African
Americans and European Americans expressed far more opposition
to explicit statements of white supremacist revisioning of
movement history and modern racist myths of racism and "race"
relations. This might suggest that when the ideological
discourse is laid out in an explicit form both African
Americans and European Americans are more aware of its white
supremacist implications, as opposed to when this same
discourse is more subtly imbedded in a media text.
The regression and path analyses lend support for the
theory of ideological resistance/decoding used by many
cultural studies scholars. This theory states that one's
position in the social and cultural structure determines which
discourses are readily accessed, and these discourse
influence, in turn, the types of readings that can be made and
the level of resistance offered.
The regression and path analyses suggest that resistance to
white supremacist discourse is significantly explained by
ethnicity, education, political affiliation and familiarity
with alternative discourse about struggles for African
peoples' equality. These variables explained approximately
42% of the variance in resistance to the central ideological
themes of the film, 45% of the variance is resistance to white
supremacist myths about the civil rights movement, and 58% of
resistance to modern conservative myths about racism and
"race" relations. The path analysis indicates that, indeed.
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178
familiarity with counter-hegemonic/alternative discourses
mediates the relationship between social structural variables
and resistance. In addition, social structural variables like
ethnicity and political affiliation often have a direct effect
on counter-hegemonic resistance, beyond familiarity with
alternative discourses. In the case of ethnicity and
political affiliation, this effect is likely to be the product
of a heightened resistance to that which threatens self-
concept and beliefs about the way the world either does or
should work.
In almost every interview with African Americans,
respondents expressed a deep cynicism for the mass media and
especially the mass media's representation of "blacks." It is
through a contradictory mix of counter-hegemonic
oppositionality and hegemonic acquiescence that many of the
African American respondents appear to make meaning out of
both media products and the world at large. Like many others,
what Ellis (the 21 year old, high school educated ex-convict
who now works for the social security office) liked about the
movie was "that it showed trueness to what really happened,
although other movies when they portray the history they don't
show in detail how one race is treated against another race."
At the same time Ellis embodies the general oppositional
stance that many African Americans have towards the media "the
heros could not have been "black" because 'hollywood' wasn't
allowing it." Many of the African Americans interviewed
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expressed this cynicism with regard to "hollywood" and its
representation of African American people, in a group
interview with six African American high school aged girls,
Tiffany asked, before the movie was viewed, if the film makers
were "black" or "white." "It makes a big difference you know,
especially if its about... considering what its about."
Later, when most of the other girls seemed to be buying into
the movies construction of "blacks," Tiffany responded with a
story about how her step-father told her that Roots was a
watered down version of what actually happened. The point of
her story was 'don't believe everything that the white media
claims is true.' This African American skepticism of
"hollywood" is a strong discursive under current in much of
the conversation among the African American viewers. It is
the same discourse that Bobo (1988) tapped into in her study
of African American female viewers of The Color Purple. In
that study Bobo argued that.
We understand that mainstream media has never
rendered our segment of the population faithfully.
We have as evidence our years of watching film and
TV programmes and reading plays and books. Out of
habit, as readers of mainstream texts, we have
learnt to ferret out the beneficial and put up
blinders to the rest. (p. 96)
The question is, does this general oppositional stance
translate as Fiske (1987) and Bobo (1988) would have it, into
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180
the cultural capital necessary to resist the more subtle ways
in which white supremacist ideology is encoded in media texts,
and discourse in general? Sometimes, in order to truly know
that you are not being "rendered faithfully," and to able to
effectively defend against such a rendering, it takes more
than just a general cynicism of "hollywood." It takes
historical and political knowledge that counters the hegemonic
definitions of both subordinated and dominating groups.
Where are subordinated group members likely to encounter
such knowledge? Many of the African American respondents know
that they cannot trust "hollywood," and worry also about other
mainstream white sources of knowledge, such as public schools.
All of the African American high school girls agreed with
Ellis (quoted above) that "these schools out here don't really
teach you too much on African American history." The girls
said that they had learned "nothing really" about "black
history" or the civil rights movement in school:
Tiffany: They sure don't teach it in school! (general
snickering). They taught about slavery and not much about
that.
Shacura: Sometimes we learn little things during black
history month, but if blacks didn't bring it up they'd pass
right over it.
Ramona: And when they do do something they don't teach
you anything you don't already know. It's just Martin Luther
King and 'I had a dream', not how it all came up and why.
For the most part, African Americans cannot count on most
mainstream sources for truly counter-hegemonic information.
These mainstream sources are the most readily accessed
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purveyors of information, knowledge and interpretation. In
order to be résistent, African Americans in this study had to
have accessed counter-hegemonic discourses from a variety of
more unconventional sources, such as family histories,
personal experiences with racism, non-commercial television,
learning from church and while in prison, speaking to people
who were active in the movement or there at the time. This is
a difficult, highly constrained, piecemeal and non-systematic
process of gathering counter-hegemonic knowledge. The
interview data seem to indicate that gaps in knowledge and
interpretation obtained in this way are manifested in
contradictory flashes of counter-hegemonic defiance and
grudging acceptance of white supremacist interpretations.
Bobo (1988) had argued that,
A black audience, through a history of theatre-
going and film-watching, knows that at some point
an expression of the exotic primitive is going to
be offered to us. Since this is the case, we have
one of two options... One is never to indulge in
media products, an impossibility in an age of media
blitz. Another option, and I think this is more an
unconscious reaction to and defense against racist
definitions of Black people, is to filter out that
which is negative and select from the work,
elements we can relate to.
This research seems to indicate that these are not the only
two options. Some African Americans were able to "filter
out" that which was negative, but, all in all, there seems to
be a contradictory mix of counter-hegemonic resistance and
hegemonic acquiescence through which this group experiences
texts and discourses in general that are inscribed by white
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182
supremacist thinking. As was shown above, many of the African
American respondents knew that the source could not be
trusted, but, without information to the contrary, tended to
accept some of the more ideological aspects of the film and
the white supremacist construction of collective memory of
which the film is a part.
One thing that is clear from the quantitative analysis
and the qualitative analysis is that familiarity with counter
hegemonic discourse does indeed play a central role in shaping
the ability of audience members to contest hegemonic meanings
and values.
Conclusion: Reconstituting the Past for Aims of the Present
Films like Mississippi Burning and the other discussed in
Chapter 2 are not simply about how we remember the past, they
effect how we interpret the present. As Zelizer (1995) argues
with regard to conclusions being drawn by theorists of
collective memory, "much of how we act in the present has...
come to be seen in accordance with our constructions and
memories of past experience" (p.217). Paternalistic white
supremacist narratives of African peoples' struggles for
equality ultimately contribute to and underscore the new
variants of white supremacist discourse so prevalent since the
mid-eighties. According to this discourse "white" people have
done more than their fair share to aid "blacks." In fact,
according to this discourse the attempt to help "blacks" has
become so extreme that today "whites" are the group that
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183
suffers from discrimination and oppression. "Whites," and
especially "white" males, are the new victims of "racist"
practices and policies; a view that is usually defended by co
opting movement discourse on equality and using it to defend
the unequal status quo.
This discourse is premised on at least five assumptions :
1) a definition of "racism" as hatred based on race, rather
than as systems of belief that construct the relative
superiority and inferiority of "racial" groups; 2) a
definition of white supremacy as the extreme and thus really
only applicable to extremist groups like the neo-nazi
skinheads and ku klux klan; 3) the construction of a great era
of "white" paternalism in the recent past; 4) the construction
of the idea that "racism," as narrowly defined, is a problem
of the past; and 5) a rejection of white supremacy as
institutional and fundamental in U.S. social structure, and a
concomitant espousal of individualist ideology as applied to
"racial" matters.
The movies discussed here are part of a process of
constructing collective memories of struggles for African
peoples' equality that provide a basis for this discourse.
Film's like Mississippi Burning participated in the rise of
this discourse to prominence and contribute to the
reproduction of it by constructing a mythic past for "race"
relations that highlights "white" paternalism and "black"
dependency. It constructs "white supremacy" as only the
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184
extremes of social policy, violence, and hatred, in addition
to containing it as a localized (in the US South or in South
Africa) pathology that is part of the unfortunate past, not
the present. To the extent that people have constrained
access to counter-hegemonic discourses that challenge this
construction of collective memory, these films contribute to
the masking of everyday white supremacy in the material social
structure and in the structure of US culture, allowing it to
reproduce and maintain its hegemonic status by coopting and
accommodating the very movements that sought to abolish white
oppression.
Policy Implications
In a commercial media system embedded within a white
supremacist society, true critiques of whiteness and white
supremacy are not likely to be given voice. In rare cases when
such critiques do manage to emerge, they are not likely to be
granted widespread dissemination. As Robert Altman, director
of Mississippi Burning indicated (see Chapter 2 ),
paternalistic white supremacist versions of movements for
African peoples' equality are overdetermined by
institutionalized white domination in the media system and in
the cultural system at large. Within the media industry
decision makers tend to be conservative, avoiding narratives
and discourses that run the risk of making the European
American audience feel uncomfortable or guilty. And, more
than that, the legitimation crisis created by movements for
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185
African peoples' equality has bolstered the market for
paternalistic white supremacist narratives that reinforce and
flatter "white” subjectivities, soothing feelings of guilt and
illegitimate privilege. Thus, a better strategy of resistance
may be for concerned educators and activists to cultivate
media and general cultural literacy with regard to ideological
constructions of whiteness. More research and analysis of the
workings of whiteness is needed, as well as counter-hegemonic
pedagogy designed to provide people with analytical tools with
which to understand and resist all facets and manifestations
of white supremacist discourse.
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186
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APPENDIX
MISSISSIPPI miRMIMS SUKVBI:
RESEARCH CM MOVIE IMRRPMBCAXIGMS AMD
RBLAnD BELIEFS AMD APTITUDES
This research is being conducted by
Kelly Madison- Doctoral Candidate
Annenberg School For Communication
University Of Southern California
DIRECTXGHS
The following survey contains 29 questions about your
interpretation of the film Mississippi Burning and about
related beliefs and attitudes followed by a few questions on
demographic characteristics. Please use an ink pen if
possible. We understand that most people taking this survey
are not experts on some of the topics discussed. Even though
you may not be sure of your answers on some questions we ask
that you simply give your impressions.
This survey is not a test emd there are no right or «nrong
answers.
Maintaining your privacy is as important to us as it is
to you. All of your emswers to this survey are strictly
confidential and anonymous. We ask that you do not put your
name anywhere on the survey. We also ask that you do not
share your answers with anyone else while taking the survey,
though you may discuss them if you wish once the survey is
completed. Once completed your survey will be placed amongst
the other hundreds of anonymous surveys and your responses
will not be reviewed until all the surveys are gather together
at a later date.
We ask that you please do not look over the survey until
after you have completed watching the movie. This is very
important because we don't want your viewing of the movie to
be tainted by knowledge of the questions that will be asked.
We ask that you answer the questions in the order they
are placed in the survey. Please do not go back and change
your answers to any of the questions even if you feel you have
changed your mind as you progress through the survey.
Thank you very much for both your participation in this
research and your cooperation! I
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193
1) Had you ever seen Mississippi Burning before? yes____
no___
If so did you where did you see it (check the answer that
applies)
At the movie theater___
At home on TV video___
2) What other movies have you see that have dealt with civil
rights movements? Please check which if any of the following
movies you have seen:
The Long Walk Home (about the Montgomery bus boycott from
the point of view of one maid and her employer; starring
Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek)____
Heart of Dixie (a young white woman in college in the
South during the beginning of integration; Ally Sheedy,
Virginia Madson)____
Crv Freedom (about black South African leader Steven Biko
and a white South African newspaper editor; Denzel Washington
and Kevin Kline)____
Dry White Season (about a white South African teacher who
becomes involved in the anti-apartheid movement after his
black gardener and his gardener's son are murdered; Donald
Sutherland, Susan Sarandon, Marlon Brando)____
A World Apart (about a white South African woman jailed
for her anti-apartheid activism told from the perspective of
her young daughter; Barbara Hershey, Jeroen Kebbe)____
Any other movies you can think of on the subject that you
h a v e s e e n ( p l e a s e
list):_____________________________________________
3) Give a brief summary of Mississippi Burning, the kind you
might give to a friend who asked you what it was about and
what happened in it. (Use the other side of this page if you
need more room)
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194
4) What, if anything, did you enjoy or like about the movie?
5) What, if anything, did you not enjoy or dislike about the
movie?
6) What were the most important overall messages that a person
might get out of the movie? (For example, about the civil
rights movement, about that period in history, about relations
between blacks and whites, etc.)
7) Which characters in the movie did you most identify with in
terms of their views and attitudes (on civil rights and on
the events that took place in this particular story), and in
terms of their actions? Please explain why you chose this
character.
8) How was the relationship between black people and white
people portrayed or presented in the movie?
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195
The following questions ask you to circle your overall level
of agreement or disagreement with a number of statements and
then to explain your answers in more depth. Feel free to give
specific examples when explaining your answers.
9) Overall Mississippi Burning was a fair and realistic
portrayal of the events that took place.
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
What (if any) aspects or parts of the movie do you feel
were fair and/or realistic?
What (if any) aspects do you feel were not right and/or
unrealistic?
10) White people in general were fairly and realistically
portrayed in the movie.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
How (if at all) do you feel that white people were fairly
and/or realistically portrayed?
How (if at all) do you feel that white people were
unfairly and/or unrealistically portrayed
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196
11) Black people in general were fairly and realistically
portrayed in the movie.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
How (if at all) do you feel that black people were fairly
or realistically portrayed?
How (if at all) do you feel that black people were
unfairly or unrealistically portrayed?
12) In the Movie, FBI Agent Anderson, seems to think that one
of the main reasons why racial conflict and violence had
broken out in Mississippi was because of outsiders (like
government officials and agents and Northern civil rights
activists) stirring up trouble between the races. To what
extent do you agree with this part of Agent Anderson's view on
things?
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
Please explain or comment on your answer:
13) The black people in Mississippi Burning tend to be passive
(not very active, willing or effective in fighting for their
rights, etc.) and have to be talked into standing up for
themselves by the FBI agents.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
Please explain and/or comment on your answer:
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197
To the extent that you agree with statement 13) above,
how realistic do you think this part of the portrayal of the
black people is, and why?
14) If the roles were reversed and white people had been in
the middle of a civil rights movement and getting beaten,
terrorized, intimidated, etc., how do you think they would
tend to react? (please explain your answer)
The following statements and questions have to do not just
with the movie but with the actual civil rights movement and
race relations in general. Comments under each answer are
optional, give a comment if you feel the need to clarify your
answer.
15)The FBI was strongly committed to helping the civil rights
movement.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
Comment:
16) The Federal government was strongly committed to bringing
about the aims of the civil rights movement.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment:
17) Racism and white supremacy was really only a problem in
the South.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment :
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198
IB) White people played a major role in the civil rights
movement (as activists, leaders, etc.).
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment;
19) There were probably as many white people committed to
fighting for equal rights for black people as there were
fighting against equal rights for black people.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment:
20) The real conflict was not between blacks and whites but
between bad people who wanted to deprive others of their
rights and good people who wanted to ensure that everyone had
the same rights.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment;
21) The civil rights movement was a success in terms of
creating a society in which black people are normally treated
fairly and equally.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment:
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199
22) Today black people have about the same opportunity to do
well as whites.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment;
23) Racism or white supremacy is not a very big problem in our
country today.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment:
24) Black people are just as racist against white people as
white people are against blacks.
1 2 3 4 5 6
disagree somewhat somewhat agree
disagree agree
comment;
25) How do you define "racism?"
26) How much, would you say, have white people done to ensure
that black people have an equal opportunity in this country?
Too much____
More than enough_
Just enough____
Not quite enough_
Not nearly enough.
Almost nothing___
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200
27) To the extent that you believe that black people are still
not doing very well in this country as compared to whites (for
example, in terms of more poverty, higher crime rates,
unemployment, etc) what do you think the reason is?
28) How often do you discuss race, racism or racial problems
with your friends and/or family ?
very often/all the time____
often/ a lot____
sometimes/occasionally____
not very often/hardly ever.
29) Where, if at all, did you learn about the civil rights
movement? (please check all that apply):
-In elementary and/or High School.
-In College classes_____ please
specify________________________
-From mainstream news reports at the time.
-From mainstream news reports looking back on that time.
-From fictionalized television shows ___
-From movies on the subject or related subjects.
-From black newspapers or magazines at the time
-From black newspapers or magazines looking back at that
time___
-From documentaries on the subject Please
specify_____________
-From books on the subject Please
specify____________________
-From talking to friends and family members.
-From actual experience with participation in the movement___
P l e a s e
specify___________________________________________
-From speeches by leaders in the movement___
P l e a s e
specify___________________________________________
Other___________________________________________________
The information you give for the following questions is
strictly confidential and anonymous (know one including the
researchers will know that this information is about you in
particular, no attempt will be made to match your name with
this or any other information from this survey).
Your age___
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201
Female Male___
Are you: employed unemployed___
Your occupation ( including working in the home as a mother or
father, or student or retired):
Your monthly household income (after taxes):
Under 500$___ 1500$-2000$____ 3000$-4000$___
500$-1000$___ 2000$-2500$____ 4000$-5000$___
1000-1500$___ 2500$-3000$____ 5000$-up ___
Your highest level of formal education:
K- 8th grade Bachelors degree,
9-12th grade Masters degree.
AA or vocational degree Doctorate degree.
Your ethnicity/race:
Asian American_
Black/African American____
White/European American____
Hispanic American____
Native Indian/Native American,
Other (non- American and/or combination), please
specify_______________
General political affiliation:
Liberal___
Conservative___
Moderate___
Other__________
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Madison, Kelly Jennetta (author)

Core Title Constructing collective memories of movements for African peoples' equality: Containing the legitimation crisis for white domination

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American studies,Black studies,cinema,mass communications,OAI-PMH Harvest,sociology, ethnic and racial studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Ball-Rokeach, Sandra (committee chair), Hunt, Darnel (committee member), Murphy, Sheila (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-240829

Unique identifier UC11352901

Identifier 9720261.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-240829 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 9720261-0.pdf

Dmrecord 240829

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Madison, Kelly Jennetta

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA