Robert M. Entman & Andrew Rojecki,
The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.
ISBN: 0 226 21075 8.
305 pp.
US$26.00(hb)
(Review copy supplied by University of Chicago Press)

Uploaded 25 July 2002

Part of a series called “Studies in communication, media, and public opinion,” The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America is as well intentioned as any book could be. It is also a curiosity to this reviewer as the first book she has seen to be published admittedly incomplete because, well, the rest of it is “displayed on the book’s website” (24). Meanwhile, events have overtaken some of the authors’ observations (206-07). Halle Berry’s Academy Award (2002) for her starring role in a mixed-race relation portrayed in Monster’s Ball (2001) not only confirms the possibility of such a relation appearing in a successful film but also indicates the increasing significance of African-American women on the film screen.

While paying attention to cultural studies arguments about the need to combine quantitative and qualitative information in order to obtain a contextualized picture of their subject matter, authors Entman and Rojecki are firmly committed to quantitative analysis. Among other problems with quantitative analysis, it goes out of date as circumstances change. Since Entman and Rojecki want to identify a cultural phenomenon – racism – and trace its sources, they need context. In fact, they argue that racism is embedded in context, that how we read representations of non-whites in one medium is affected by such representations in other media.

The Black Image is not about the representation of non-whites in movies alone, but also in the news (delivered via local as well as national television), in television shows, and in advertising. In keeping with the sociopolitical agenda of the series in which it appears, The Black Image studies the media in order to get at the “large difference in social status, economic resources, cultural influence, and political power between White Americans as a whole and Black Americans as a whole” (xii). The importance of studying mass communication rests on “the ways that mass communication reflects and affects” “Whites’ sentiments toward Blacks” (ibid.).

Another curious aspect of the authors’ reliance on quantitative analysis as validating their argument is their unabashed partiality. White, male, and relatively privileged members of academic society, both authors feel genuine anger at the historical discrimination against non-whites. They search eagerly for reason to hope, and find it in, for example, a Gallup poll in which 75 percent of African-Americans claimed they had a close friend who was White, and 59 percent of Whites claimed similar close friendships with African-Americans. Given population proportions, this claim, if true, would mean the average Black must have three or four close White friends. Although this seems highly unlikely (by our lights, few people have more than three or four close friends in total), the overestimation seems to reflect a yearning for racial reconciliation. (55)

Yet when Entman and Rojecki incorporate “prototype theory,” derived in part from work by psychologist Eleanor Rosch and ultimately from Plato (61), they reach the pessimistic conclusion that “prototypical thinking operates to diminish racial comity, feeding a vicious cycle” (62). Still, they optimistically argue that if Whites “fully grasped that American society continues to feature [. . .] a variety of ‘preferences’ for Whites,” racism would decline (124).

Although the back jacket blurb quotes Henry Gates Jr. as saying that  The Black Image “is accessible and compelling, and [the authors’] observations startling,” it seems to be a book meant more for whites than blacks. In fact, the authors seem a little confused about their intended audience; they have written in a curious mix of clear and opaque style. They provide too much detail of their research and too much repetition generally – especially of their liberal starting points, inviting a reading in terms of opening and closing sections of their chapters.

Although there seems to be nothing original about Entman and Rojecki’s research strategy nor really about their subject matter, this does not detract from their good intentions. If their information goes into classrooms, especially those in which future media and political figures will be trained, then their work will have been useful, just as the availability for citation of its statistics and their interpretation in support of anti-racist positions is also all to the good.

Harriet Margolis