1970’s African American Situation Shows Reinforced Stereotypes

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Americans in mind while writing and producing shows, but “…attempts to understand those tasks have frequently been incomplete, inadequate, or halfhearted” (Globalizing Blackness pg. 40). Networks and producers attempts seem to come up short because they attempt to attract a portion of White viewers without “alienating” African Americans.
When portrayals of a demographic or any social group are over exaggerated, simplified, or defined, room for stereotyping is left open. Stereotype: a conventional, formulaic, oversimplified conception opinion, or belief (AAV pg. 78). Stereotypes promote an unvarying pattern of a group that has come to be associated with negative portrayals aspects “inaccurate popular concepts that are applied indiscriminately to individuals without regard to individuals’ actual characteristics (AAV pg. 78). In most of the 1970’s shows African Americans and Whites hardly interact. The two worlds were either different or parallel to each other, reinforcing separate but equal societies.


Assimilationist Era
Assimilationist discourse: a rejection of Blackness to the extent that there is no reference to the Black culture, there is no sociopolitical conflicts, and difference yields to mainstream conformity (AAV pg. 88).
The Assimilationist era consisted of two television shows from 1968-1971: Julia (1968-1971) and The Bill Cosby Show (1969-1971). Both main characters in these two television shows started a trend of Assimilated Hybrid minstrels. Assimilated Hybrid minstrels: negotiates all of the situations Whites do, yet separately and with overt references to their blackness and differences (AAV pg. 85). Writer/producer Hal Kanter, who wrote on The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show, got his television script of Julia in the door to NBC because he left out the fact that Julia and her son were African American. NBC did not discover that Julia and her son were African American until page twelve of the script. ...