It's A Family Affair: Evaluating Social Policy and Popular Representations of Black Families in the Media and their Effects on the Structure of Black Marriages and Families

Abstract

The Black family is an institution that has been subjected to excessive analysis and criticism for more than a century. Many scholars hunt for an answer to explain the differences between marriages and families in the African American community while using Caucasian families as a standard of measure. Relying on the media as a highly effective method of presenting the standards or norms accepted by American society, many people attempt to model their everyday lives by media representations. Considering this idea, one might ask how popular television programs relate to social policies that affect family structures within a given community. This project is designed to compare various black television shows over increments of time, along with the social policies established for family and child welfare, in order to draw conclusions about how they influenced family structure among African American families. Projected outcomes of this research are to be able to explain how the media has affected changes in the perceptions of black families and how both media and social policy help explain those perceptions. These correlations are important because they will indicate how perceptions of black families influenced social policy and they will provide understanding of the progression of black families to better inform future policies. Limitations of this study might include the fact that it concentrates solely on television shows and does not include literature or film. Some suggestions to enhance this study are to expand the study to include perceptions presented in other forms of media or to study all shows that present family values in order to obtain a more comprehensive study.