Atrium at the Ford Foundation – Outside the Black Male: Re-Imagined II conference auditorium

Black Male Re-Imagined II

This blog includes information and ideas distributed in the late morning and afternoon sessions on the second day of the conference.  I also include my own observations and comments based on the presented material as  well as the general subject matter.

Alexis McGill Johnson

‘In December 2010 American Values Institute hosted the first Black Male: Re-Imagined conference here in New York. That first conference began the discussion of the pervasive and problematic media perception of black men and boys. That conference also lay the groundwork for sustaining a narrative shift around black men and boys toward building a community dedicated to leveraging non-traditional assets towards this effort.

On March 5th and 6th of 2013 the American Values Institute, Open Society Foundations’s U.S. Programs’ Campaign for Black Male Acheivement, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ford Foundation hosted Black Male : Re-Imagined II a two day, invitation-only, closed door, summit of 200 of the most thoughtful and creative media influencers, foundation executives, and advocacy organizations to discuss what it really takes to transform authentic perceptions of black men and boys.’

This second Black Male: Re-Imagined conference produced a conversation that focused on the implications of perception, particularly as set forth and promulgated by the traditional media, for the life chances of black men and boys. An observation made by Robert Perez is particularly prescient. Our ‘common sense’ arising from our experiences seems to show that:

‘it is our nature as humans to show compassion or cruelty to others based on a person’s perceived similarity to ourselves’.

The operative word here is perceived. Perhaps the largest creator and purveyor of perception in the world today is  the modern traditional media. This traditional media has immense power. It uses a large, loud, centralized and focused voice to put forth a point of view. There are no restrictions on the points of view that a particular media outlet might take. We call this freedom of the press and it is a good thing. We call all of the press outlets collectively the media. If and when the majority of them share a cultural or political bias they can dominate the conversation and control the society’s perception of ‘reality’. It sometimes seeks to demonize and therefore ostracize an individual person or group through manipulation of our perceptions of the group. The media may label one group terrorists and another group nationalists, freedom fighters or revolutionaries solely dependent upon the perception that the media wants to create of that group. In this same context the group ‘black men and boys’ has been overtly, covertly, consciously and subconsciously  subjected to descriptions in the traditional media that lead to negative perceptions of the group and of the individual members of the group. Just as in the case of the political labels above, the pervasive perception in the absence of a counterbalancing positive narrative about black men and boys leads to a negative bias against the members of the group.

In her talk at the conference Dori Maynard eloquently states repetitively.

“My two loves don’t love each other”

“My two loves don’t love each other”

As a very successful second generation black journalist, businesswoman who follows in the groundbreaking footsteps of her journalist father, and as an educator of many successful journalists in her own right, we can reasonably infer that one of her loves is journalism and the other is black men and boys.

So the media is not the enemy…it is merely a tool…which can become a weapon for offense or defense. This seems to be one of the central focuses of this conference.

By accepting negative perceptions about black men and boys as reality, we condemn them to live in a world that frequently criminalizes them without basis. The majority of black males are fathers, brothers, uncles, and sons just like any other group in America.  Black men and boys are quintessentially american as a group.  They are however, generally not represented this way in the traditional media.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  We often claim that perception is reality. However, we forget that each individual’s perception of the world is molded by more than the actual experiences of that individual.

Perceptions are profoundly influenced by the popular visual culture and the ubiquitous messaging presented by the traditional media. As Trabian Shorters points out in his talk, this constant barrage of negative data from the traditional media also infects black men and boys directly. When this group is severely infected the members of the group start to exhibit what Trabian calls the ‘black hole’ effect. Independent sources of information and data are important to guard against this kind of infection. The majority of people in this country who are poor are not black for example. Did you know that black people create new businesses at three (3) times the national average? So what happens when producers of visual culture promote false beliefs or biased opinions that target specific communities of people? What happens when our perception creates a reality that no longer represents the truth, a reality that actually harms other people. Currently, the visual culture in our nation has created a framework that not only reinforces negative stereotypes about the black men and boys but also reduces their life opportunities.

Although there are also other sources of this negative perception, the reversal of this negative bias in the large, loud, centralized and focused voice of the traditional media, to have it become a positive bias would have a profound and immediate impact on the way that black men and boys are perceived and therefore treated, worldwide. This means changing the way that black men and boys are perceived by the media!  Now we extend the definition of media to include entertainment, sports, the arts, and generally all forms of dialogue that communicate a description of our world.

How can we change the perception in the media?                                         How can we start a new narrative in new alternative media?

In order to affect the perception that the media projects we must influence it’s voice.  We need to focus on those heros among us who have in fact dedicated their lives to being assests to the communities in which they live.We must produce product to be disseminated through video, film, music, theatre,  literature, and the various new and sundry media outlets that show black men and boys as great assets to the communities in which they live.   We must become vigilant and push back against images, and dialogue produced by others, that project perceptions that contribute to a negative bias against black men and boys.

The  discussions in the panel moderated by Orlando Bagwell of the Ford Foundation explored the impact of documentary film and filmmakers in exposing injustices that arise from wholesale adoption of misperceptions by the society at large and the consequences to the lives of individuals who become victims of the media presentation of the associated misinformation and the negative perception created.

                                                                                                                    Michelle Stephenson and Joe Brewster produced and directed “American Promise” “The film follows 2 African-American boys and their families for 12 years as they navigate the terrain of race, privilege and opportunity at a NYC private school.”

Star Jones led this panel in a discussion of the way that the choices that we make as African Americans contribute to perpetuating the negative stereographs that we dislike.  This panel also discussed the conflict between the aims in the successful business plans in the reality plan model for TV and the aims in the African American community to suppress the production of images that are deemed to be depicting negative stereotypes in the community at large.

The campaign led by President Barack Obama over the past two election cycles is more than ample proof of the viability and effectiveness of social media as a tool. The organization of a chorus of individual voices speaking the same ‘language’ and putting forth the same point of view can counteract the large, loud, centralized voice of the traditional media.  The recent impact of social media as evidenced in the Travon Martin case is a further indication of it’s potential as a new tool to begin to counterbalance the power of the traditional media.

This conversation launched a new website:www.perception.org and featured the launch of Perception 2020 – a multi-media, multi-platform campaign driving a national conversation about the experiences and challenges black men and boys face on a daily basis due to negative perceptions.

 Alexis McGill Johnson is the Executive Director of the American Values Institute, a consortium of researchers, educators, and social justice advocates focused on understanding the role of bias in our society. Previously she served as Political Director to Russell Simmons and as Executive Director of Citizen Change, a national nonprofit organization founded by Sean “P. Diddy” Combs to educate, motivate, and empower young eligible voters. Under Combs, she launched the Vote or Die! campaign, creating a new political model for reaching young people and people of color by mixing traditional grassroots mobilization with nontraditional consumer-based marketing methods. 

A video of this entire conference is available online at http://ow.ly/iH9Wz .