Flipping through pages of Time magazine's Sept. 12, 2005, issue on "An American Tragedy" (Hurricane Katrina), I was reminded of the battle cry I've been waging for years against how blacks are represented in the photos of secular and religious publications: consistently needy or problematic. Whites, in contrast, are pictured as movers and shakers in government and society, and are behind countless technological advances; their world is clearly different --- and better.
I cite photos because their images tend to stick in our minds even when well-written articles do not. A publication can have six news items on accomplished blacks and one on blacks with problems, but if that less-flattering article is the only one with a photo, that's the image readers walk away with!
It is not my intent to malign Time magazine. I thought its coverage of Hurricane Katrina was so thorough that I bought the issue. As I perused the pages a second and third time, the disparity leaped out at me. Then I looked at other editions of Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, diocesan newspapers and magazines and saw the same disturbing pattern.
There was a lot about that edition of Time that was outstanding. But its editors still conveyed a lot through the stories, photos and ads spliced in between the heart-wrenching accounts.
I don't believe these respectable journalists deliberately set out to present blacks in a negative light. I do, however, suspect that many aren't aware just how much their personal perceptions affect their work. In perpetuating images that fit their perceptions, they betray their own limited exposure to, for example, the multifaceted worlds of blacks in America.
The inside cover of Time's Sept. 12 issue is a collage of photos on the financial planning needs of yesterday's and today's generations. A stylish black woman is included. Four pages later Hyundai's ad shows the interior of its "all-new 2006 Sonata," but it was opposite another page showing "forgotten evacuees" --- all black --- who found "a bit of shade in a truck." No air-conditioned Sonata in their world.
Photos of blacks on other pages not related to Katrina victims (and blacks looting in New Orleans) included:
---A young black girl in an ad placed by an organization petitioning for support of its efforts to help disadvantaged students attend college.
---U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his son Kojo in a story on the son's new Mercedes bought in part with a loan from a man (no photo of him) whose company is accused of influence-peddling.
---Two black men in suits, each in a different ad; the older man has a problem with diabetes while the younger man --- either unemployed or wanting a better job --- appears pleased for having placed his resume online.
---LL Cool J acting as a dying death-row inmate.
---Black children bouncing up and down on a discarded mattress outside a New Orleans housing project; this photo accompanied an article positioned next to an ad featuring a sleek, red Toyota with a chic-looking white woman behind the driver's seat.
The rest of the photos went with articles or ads depicting mostly white adults in varying modes of success or comfort.
The same kind of thing happens a lot in publications I read, including Catholic publications. The only photos of blacks in an entire edition may be those of downtrodden men and women being helped. The articles may be worthy, but when the copy and images are taken together, they can do more than tell an isolated story, they can stereotype a race. Carole Norris Greene is associate editor for special projects and a columnist with Catholic News Service.
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