Institutional Censorship of African Americans

Definition: Americans of African descent

Significance: African Americans have systematically had their freedom of expression limited through laws and institutional practices

Freedom of speech was denied African Americans upon their arrival to the colonies and later the United States. Slave codes, which were strictly enforced as a means of social control, prohibited slaves from having any form of freedom of speech. Slave owners deprived African Americans freedom of speech because of fear that free communication among slaves would threaten the institution of slavery. Therefore, slave owners established policies and practices that prevented slaves, individually and collectively, from expressing themselves except under specific preestablished conditions.

While there were myriad constraints that limited free expression among slaves, many restrictions were more universally applied. For example, slaves were denied the right to converse in their African languages. Slave owners also prohibited slaves from using drums, which were considered a telegraph system. In addition, slaves were not permitted to meet without a white person being present. Further, slave owners denied slaves the right to be educated, which limited their ability to learn and use standard English. Moreover, severe penalties were imposed on any individual who was found to be educating slaves, especially teaching them to read. The formulation and implementation of such policies, practices, and laws that restricted the communication of slaves with others were intended to foster control of the slaves. That is, the propertied class believed that it would be able to maintain the profitable system of slavery if it could prevent slaves from fleeing the plantation and planning revolts. Among the preventive measures that slave owners took was the prohibition of communication, except under the supervision of the slave owner or his designees.

In addition, the ability of slaves to use standard English as a method of communication presented a major threat to the institution of slavery by enabling slaves to inform critics and individuals involved in the abolitionist movement with information regarding the inhumane treatment that characterized the institution of slavery in the United States. While slave owners developed rigid policies to prevent and control communication between slaves, their methods of enforcement were designed to ensure that these policies and laws were strictly followed. When slaves violated the slave codes and rules that governed plantations that prohibited communication, the common practice was whipping. Generally, whippings were administered by an overseer hired by the slave owner. State laws as well as the Constitution protected the right of the slave owner to control the behavior of slaves, as they were considered chattel or property of slave owners. Accordingly, the slave owner’s use of any means to retain his property, including censorship, was supported by the legal system.

Reconstruction

The censoring of African Americans continued after emancipation. Black Codes were enacted throughout the United States to prevent African Americans from becoming integrated into the American social, economic, and political system. These efforts became universally accepted and protected by the Constitution in the legislation that enforced what was called separate but equal treatment of African Americans in most institutions throughout the United States. In effect, African Americans were limited regarding their access to quality education, medical care, housing, employment, legal protection, and the use of public transportation and facilities. Depriving African Americans of the benefits of these important services and access to these institutions was an effective method of preventing African Americans from expressing their needs, interests, and desires. Equally important, this form of censorship precluded African Americans from correcting the distortions and omissions regarding their history that were reflected in U.S. history, science, literature, and the natural sciences. They were also prevented from expressing their views and concerns that would have enabled them to contribute to the shaping of the direction of the country and that would have strengthened their own community. Other legal actions that Southerners enacted were vagrancy laws that also restricted the ability of African Americans, particularly African American men, to acquire the freedom necessary to communicate freely. These laws required African American men to have a full-time job or business, during a period when jobs for African American men were virtually nonexistent. Newly freed African American men found themselves forced to work as sharecroppers or tenant farmers, in a system of servitude for farmers. This system was similar to the institution of slavery that had recently been abolished.

Basically African Americans were forced to work and live on the land in exchange for a substandard rented shelter, food, clothing, seed, and borrowed farm animals. They were kept in abject poverty because they were compelled to borrow, but were not permitted to generate sufficient money from the sale of their crops to rise out of poverty. This subsistence living made African Americans totally dependent upon Southern farmers for survival. African American men who were without a job or business were jailed and released to the farmer who paid their bail. When this occurred they became indentured servants, providing free labor to Southern farmers. Therefore, white Southerners were able to continue to control the behavior of African American men, women, and children.

Southern whites exerted control over African American expression by dissuading African Americans from voting and expressing their interest in various activities that would have enhanced their social and economic position. Throughout much of the United States after the Civil War, African Americans could not register to vote, obtain library cards, or use media for their purposes.

The Black Media

The mainstream media have not been vehicles through which African Americans views, opinions, and interests have been expressed. Consequently, African Americans have founded their own journals, newspapers, and publishing companies to transmit their ideas, points of view, and information. Freedom’s Journal, founded in 1863, was the first African American publication. Two publications that have provided the African American community with critical news and information for fifty years are Jet and Ebony, a weekly and monthly magazine respectively, both founded by John H. Johnson in 1945. In addition to numerous publications, African Americans have sought freedom of expression through black-owned and -oriented radio stations and television programs. The Black Entertainment Network is an African American-oriented network that offers news, sports, and entertainment.

The Twentieth Century

There are myriad ways in which constraints have been placed on African Americans relative to the freedom of expression. The electronic media have excluded African American voices from radio, television, and film. During the 1920’s, when African Americans were portrayed in movies and on radio, it was usually the case that they were portrayed by white actors and that the roles reinforced stereotypes. These actors spoke in Southern dialect and engaged in dialogue that contained broken English. For example, the Amos ’n’ Andy radio program of the 1940’s employed white actors whose speech perpetuated stereotypes of African American men as ignorant, lazy, and untrustworthy. In addition, African American women remained speechless in radio.

Historically, American films that have included African American casts have restricted their roles. Films have generally portrayed African Americans using stereotypical imagery. Until the 1970’s speaking films that represented African Americans at all generally portrayed them as slaves and domestic servants. In the 1970’s, in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, the U.S. film industry began to market movies with African American casts. However, the actors were compelled to portray characters that continued to conform to racial stereotypes and to perpetuate the themes of the African American male as hypersexed, a criminal, or a shady detective. The African American writer, actor, and producer Robert Townsend, in his Hollywood Shuffle (1987), satirizes the Hollywood film industry’s systematic efforts to distort and silence the actual voices of African Americans. He depicts the behind-the-scenes activities of white directors who insist that African American actors speak and use mannerisms, gestures, and behaviors that are consistent with stereotypical beliefs. A comical scene in the film shows a television commercial for a black acting school, run by whites, that teaches students the completely unrealistic and stereotypical black English of the film and television industry and that shows how to perform such roles as slaves, butlers, street hoods, and dope addicts.

Another common practice on the part of the U.S. film industry is the refusal of major filmmakers to finance movies that accurately portray the positive qualities of African American culture.

The print media is also a vehicle thorough which African Americans have not had the opportunity to freely express their views. News reports of African American events and community concerns have not historically been presented in mainstream newspapers in the United States. Aside from the established pattern of omitting African American’s voices, another factor that contributes to the failure of U.S. newspapers to provide a medium for African Americans to express their views is the mainstream newspapers’ underrepresentation of African American journalists, editors, and executives.

Education

Throughout the educational system in the United States, textbooks covering a variety of subjects have historically prevented African Americans an opportunity to express their perspectives, values, beliefs, and experiences. To a large extent, when multicultural curricula have been adopted the experiences of African Americans in the United States are generally presented by white Americans rather than African Americans.

There are many practices within the United States that result in the censorship of African Americans as individuals and as a cultural group. While these practices vary depending on the societal institution in which these restrictions occur, the mass media are responsible for the most pervasive and comprehensive efforts to constrain the free expression of African Americans. For the most part, the mass media have either submerged the voices of African Americans through omission or distorted the expressions of African Americans through stereotypical imagery. Nevertheless, African Americans have continued to challenge the mass media and various institutional policies and practices that limit the free expression of African Americans.

Bibliography

John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (6th ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988) examines the harsh social and economic conditions and the deprivation of rights and liberties that African Americans have experienced in the United States. Bell Hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (New York: Routledge, 1994), describes how white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy distort and omit images and information based on race, ethnicity, and gender. Peter McLaren, Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995), examines how those in power have constructed structures of domination that are eroding American culture and education. He proposes methods of educating contemporary youth. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994), explores the diverse approaches employed by the mass media to prevent African Americans and other people of color from being accurately represented.