By
Stuart Fischoff,
Ph.D., Ana Franco, Elaine Gram, Angela Hernendez, and James Parker
Media Psychology
Lab, Dept. of Psychology
California
State University, Los Angeles
Journal of Media Psychology, Volume 6, Number 1, Winter, 2001
The
mass media might be further worthy of concern to minority communities given
what’s been called the “out-group homogeneity effect” (Mullen & Hu,
1989), which describes how out-group minority members are not only
seen as being different from the in-group majority but also as more
similar to each other (i.e., “they’re all the same”).A
potential and undesirable ramification of a negative portrayal of a minority
member in the mass media, then, would be that it has a greater spread of
effect, such as generalizing or hardening negative stereotypes, than would
be the case for a majority group member so portrayed (Jones, 1997).
Allport
(1954), added to the lexicon of detrimental social forces on out-group
minorities when he asserted that minorities become psychologically predisposed
to being sensitized to negative media portrayals and tend to cultivate
what he calls a “collective conscience” (constant concern that how a member
of one’s group behaves might reflect on the group as a whole), as well
as an abiding sense of “representative status” (being seen not as an individual,
but incessantly as a representative of a group).Allport’s
predictions are supported by research by Dawson (1994) and Davis and Gandy
(1999), which provides evidence that African Americans tend to believe
that how they are depicted in the media negatively affects their personal
lives and what people stereotypically expect of and from them.Indeed,
according to research by Keith Harrison (1998), media portrayals influence
how African American youth decide what careers to pursue -- and not pursue
-- and how these youths, and the public at large, come to regard such controversial
matters as the sexual appetite and prowess of African American athletes.
Anecdotal
support for arguments regarding the impact of media images on a group’s
self image can be found in numerous essays on the subject (Kim, 1991; Ponterotto
& Pedersen, 1993; Yang & Ragaza, 1994).For
instance, Yang and Ragaza (1994) and Mok (1998) argue that the minority
female’s view of herself and her physical attractiveness is negatively
affected when confronted by the plethora of European American models and
movie actresses who set the standards for what is attractive and what is
not.Mok, however, is careful
to point out that there has yet to be established an empirical link between
media stereotypes and the views Asian American women have of themselves
while, in an empirical study Milkie (1999), found that African American
teenage girls were not affected by nor do they identify with White images
of beauty pervading the mass media.Interestingly,
Stoman (1986) found that TV images has a negative influence on the young
African American female self concept but not on that of the young African
American male.
While
those who predict and decry the negative impact of media portrayals of
minority groups often speak in one voice, results of actual research into
minority reaction to mass entertainment media portrayals is, as Milkie’s
(1999) results suggest, more of a mixed bag.Among
non-European Americans, research has shown that certain minority groups
are more sensitive to ethnic slurs to their own group than are other minority
groups (Allen, 1990).Many minority
groups certainly do want more exposure on television and in film (Gerbner,
1998).But there are and were exceptions.Historical
analysis of early Hollywood revealed that Jews, although they controlled
Hollywood, were reluctant to see themselves portrayed on the screen for
fear of it inciting anti-Semitism (Gabler, 1988).Still
other research indicates that some minorities have greater preferences
for and are more comfortable with viewing themselves through the eyes of
their own ethnic group rather than through those of another ethnic group.Fischoff,
Lewis, & Antonio (1997) found that African Americans exhibited a proportionately
greater preference for ethnic-congruent films (films which, in the case
of African Americans, are written and/or directed and/or star African Americans)
than European, Asian- or even Hispanic Americans.Still
other writers have anecdotally argued that negative screen images contribute
to creating or maintaining inter-ethnic prejudice (e.g., Appleford, 1995;
Bogle, 1973; Bourne, St. Clair, 1990; Bruno, 1991; El-Farra, 1996; Hadley-Garcia,
1993; Ono, 1998; Spigner, 1994).But
empirical evidence is lacking concerning exactly how minority group members
in the United States evaluate how they are portrayed in films or why such
portrayals are offensive to them.
While
a minority group’s status may lead to sensitivity to how their group is
portrayed in the media, what of the majority group?In
terms of portrayals in the entertainment media, for example, European Americans
may not register outrage if they see another European American presented
in an unflattering light on the news or in the entertainment media.Why?Perhaps
because there is no palpable ethnic (as contrasted with religious,
regional, or cultural) consequence of such an unflattering portrayal.European
Americans are the majority and therefore hold the political and economic
reins of power in society.Moreover,
European Americans are so pervasively represented in films and in such
a variety of roles that it would be difficult to argue “unrepresentativeness”
when they are portrayed negatively in any instance.
If
these assumptions about European Americans have merit, it might be expected,
then, that European Americans would be less sensitive to how they are portrayed
in film than would ethnic minority groups.And
given the aforementioned material on African American sensibilities regarding
media portrayals, it may be expected also that, aggregately, African Americans
would show greater sensitivity to arguably or blatantly negative portrayals
of themselves on the screen than might other minority groups and, certainly,
greater than that displayed by respondents of the European American majority
group.
The
present study intended to fill an important empirical gap in ethnic minority
concerns over offenses in filmic portrayals and explored the following
research hypotheses and questions.
H1:
Groups will differ with regard to proportion of respondents in each ethnic
group who have found portrayals
These
36 categories of offense were then collapsed into 10 offense themes (see
Table 2). Table 2 Results Because
of the paucity of respondents from five of the nine ethnic demographic
groups surveyed (Native Americans, recent immigrants from Eastern European
countries [e.g., Armenians, Russians], Arab-Muslims, East Indians/Pakistanis,
and people who classified themselves of mixed backgrounds), the bulk of
data presented, except where otherwise noted as “all respondents,” will
concentrate on responses from the four major ethnic groups: European-,
African-, Hispanic-, and Asian Americans.Respondents
from the diverse cultures of Asia as well as Mexico, Central and South
America, were initially scrutinized separately.However,
analyses of the responses patterns indicated that the offenses cited by
respondents from these diverse Hispanic- or Asian American cultures were
of sufficient similarity to justify their being collapsed into the two
major demographic classifications of Hispanic- and Asian Americans. All Respondents Offended
vs. Unoffended Proportions Of
the 1,226 respondents who participated in the survey, 579 (47%) indicated
that there were no movies to which they particularly took offense (“unoffended”).Interestingly,
offended and unoffended respondents did not differ in terms of frequency
of monthly movie attendance.For
those offended the average was 5.50 (n = 635) as compared with a average
of 5.29 (n = 514) for the unoffended.These
differences were not statistically significant, t (1147) = 0.68,
ns.Other
factors obviously account for why some people are offended and others are
not. As
Table 3 shows, and as predicted in Hypothesis 2, European Americans
were the least likely to be offended by their portrayal in Hollywood films
while African Americans were the most likely to take offense at such portrayals.
All of the four primary ethnic groups differed from each other at statistically
significant levels, in terms of ratio of offense taken to no offense taken,
with European Americans taking the least offense and African Americans
taking the most. The
fact that 22% of the respondent population was European American and fully
62% of European Americans were found in this unoffended population, no
doubt strongly contributed to that 47% of respondents who reported taking
no offense.Nonetheless, European
Americans account for only 167 of the approximately 579 unoffended respondents.Clearly
minorities made substantial contributions to this figure. Theme
2, which covered offenses concerning portrayals of groups as intellectually,
behaviorally or emotionally primitive, poverty- or welfare-prone, or being
English-language impaired, received the second most frequent citation (19%).Once
again, virtually every ethnic group examined in this study cited this as
a major offending theme. Theme
9, which concerned such matters as employment, athletic, martial arts,
and illegal alien stereotypes was the third most frequently mentioned set
of offenses (13%).The only major
ethnic group which did not have this theme in its top five offense themes
was African Americans. Theme
10, concerning promiscuous or loose sexual habits was the fourth most frequently
cited offense (9%).Only Asian Americans
did not provide enough citations to land it in their top five most frequently
mentioned offense themes. Theme
5, which addressed the issue of historical or contemporary mischaracterizations
of peoples or their cultures was the fifth most frequently cited offense
theme (8%). Ethnic
Breakdowns Table
5 provides a demographic summary of the five most frequently cited offenses
and the themes of which they are subsets.For
the four primary ethnic groups, the top five offenses compromise over 70%
of all cited offenses.The text printed
in bold and larger font size under theme description in Table 5
indicate the most frequently occurring offense categories within that theme
for a particular ethnic group.The
reader may refer to Table 1 for the precise meaning of that offense code.Breakdowns
according to ethnicity address Research Questions 1-3 which concerned what
offenses groups are most sensitive to and what particular movies they single
out as vehicles for specific offenses. Table 5 European
Americans Films
and Offenses The
film which was most frequently mentioned by European Americans as containing
offensive portrayals was White Men Can’t Jump (19 citations,
20% of all films cited)The issue
of White athleticism (vis a vis African Americans) obviously struck
a sensitive chord.But, the most
frequently occurring class of offenses cited by European Americans fell
into Theme 4 (racial superiority and bigotry), constituting
20% of all offenses.Movies which
portrayed European Americans as criminally violent and/or bigoted or being
overdrawn as the “bad race” in history, such as Mississippi Burning
and
Rosewood,
illustrate this class of offense. It
is noteworthy that the four remaining offenses cited by European Americans
(anti-social, criminal, violent; deficiencies in motivation, language or
intellectual skills; behavioral or occupational stereotypes; and sexually
loose or promiscuous) were also in the top five of cited offenses for other
ethnic groups with the exception of Asian Americans. Hispanic
Americans Films
and Offenses The
criminally-themed drama, American Me (76 citations),
two comedies connected with Cheech Marin and/or Cheech and Chong (Born
in East L.A., and Up in Smoke - 58 citations) and the
romantic comedy, Fools Rush In (65 citations), were
the primary offense vehicles for Hispanic Americans.The
dramas Mi Familia (44 citations) and Mi Vida Loca (40 citations)
rounded out the top five offending movies.Although
it is unlikely that the intention of Hispanic American filmmakers was to
racially offend his/her audience, this study found, ironically, that it
is the Hispanic American filmmaker who creates films which tallied as the
most offensive to the Hispanic American audiences. In
terms of offenses, Hispanic Americans being portrayed as violent or criminals
(Theme 1) was the most frequently occurring offense, constituting 39 %
of all mentioned offenses.In startling
contrast to the other ethnic groups, Hispanic Americans cited this anti-social
offense theme more than twice as often as the next frequently cited theme.In
fact, almost 4 offenses in 10 were the anti-social, criminal or violent
characterizations of Hispanic Americans in film for Hispanic American respondents.These
portrayals included gang members, criminals and/or drug users. The
anti-social, criminal and violent theme was followed in frequency by the
deficiencies in motivation, language or intellectual skills theme (Theme
2), which comprised close to 20% of the offenses cited.This
theme accounted for portrayals of Hispanic Americans as being uneducated,
poor, and lazy.Again, unlike other
groups in this study, the two most frequently cited offense themes (1 and
2) accounted for more than the majority (58%) of the offenses cited by
Hispanic American respondents. Occupational
stereotypes (Theme 9), especially of Hispanic Americans being portrayed
as maids or gardeners (e.g., Fools Rush In and As Good As It
Gets) constituted the next most frequently occurring offenses.Stereotypes
of over-sexed and macho men (Desperado) and passive (MiFamilia)
or loose women (Desperado) -- Themes 4 and 10 respectively -- were
other particularly offensive screen stereotypes. African
Americans Films
and Offenses The
five films with the most frequent citations were:Boyz
n’ the Hood (14 citations); Booty Call (12 citations); The
Players Club and Amistad (11 citations each) and Friday
(8 citations).The distribution
was fairly smooth and in single digits in the gradual decline in film frequency
citations after these four films. African
Americans resented being portrayed as violent or criminal (Theme 1), and
intellectually deficient (Theme 2).Films
such as Boyz n’ the Hood or New Jack City are thematically
illustrative.Also strongly resented
is the hyper-sexed image of African American men and women (Theme 10).Films
such as Booty Call and The Player’s Club call to mind such
images.Theme 5 offenses, found in
unrelenting portrayals of African Americans as being exploited or dependent
on hand-outs or welfare, as in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing,
and
being the object of racism, even in films designed to explore the cultural
ravages of racism, as in Amistad and Rosewood, were also
found to be off-putting. Once
again, as with Hispanic Americans, an unexpected result was that four of
the five most offensive films were written, directed by and had leads who
were African American. Asian Americans Films
and Offenses The
films which engendered the most criticism from Asian Americans were, in
order of citation frequency, the comedy Rush Hour (17 citations),
followed by The Joy Luck Club (13 citations) and Mulan (11
citations).Rush Hour was
found objectionable because of the stereotypes of Asian Americans as linguistically
handicapped (Theme 1) and deployment of the martial arts stereotype (Theme
9).Offense taken at Mulan
was primarily attributable to what Asian Americans felt were both historical
inaccuracies and a lack of understanding of Asian culture(Theme 6). Films
which portray Asian Americans as linguistically handicapped (Theme 2),
e.g., Booty Call, as cruel or primitive (Theme 5), e.g.,
Red
Corner, as worker drones, exploiting the African American ghettos
(Themes 3 and 9), e.g., Do The Right Thing, or as cliché
martial arts masters (Theme 9), e.g., James Bond, Bruce Lee, and Jackie
Chan movies, or offering unflattering gender stereotypes or contemporary
mischaracterizations (Theme 6) e.g., The Joy Luck Club, were also
found offensive.Of particular annoyance
to Asian Americans is the pervasive invisibility of Asian Americans in
so many American movies, the casting of non-Asian Americans in Asian American
roles, or racial generalization where a Chinese actor is cast in the role
of a character designated as Korean or Japanese (Theme 7). Discussion Results
indicate that certain portrayals of ethnic groups are perceived as offensive
to a little over half of the respondent population.But
almost as many others found little offensive in films.Beyond
the factor of age, which was regrettably confounded by ethnicity, no other
data was available which would account for the reasons for these differences
beyond the fact that Whites were the least likely group to take offense.But,
it must be recalled, a substantial number of minority respondents also
reported being unoffended.It may
be that the unoffended simply have a different take on what can be expected
from movies.Many of these unoffended
wrote comments such as, “Why take offense when it’s only a movie” or “Nothing
really offends me.” This
minority reaction can be interpreted in at least one of two ways: either
movies are simply given artistic license by some minority members in the
audience and/or such allegedly offensive portrayals, although often exaggerated,
may nonetheless reflect this audience’s in-group perceptions as well; alternatively,
it may be that, as many vocal critics of such portrayals have argued (e.g.,
Wilson II & Gutierrez, 1995), some minority film viewers may view such
film portrayals too benignly.“Too
benignly” may be interpreted to mean that minority viewers don’t see or
appreciate the social consequences of such portrayals to minority groups
in terms of stereotype creation or reinforcement in the minds of majority
or other minority group members; nor do they see the consequences for minority
group members’ individual and collective ethnic self-concept. For
those who were offended, offense varied as a function of ethnicity of the
perceiver with African Americans taking the most offense and European Americans
taking the least.Hispanic Americans
fell closer to African Americans and Asian Americans closer to European
Americans in terms of frequency of offense taken. In
terms of research questions posed earlier, results clearly indicate that
for each ethnic group, certain films stand out as containing the most offensive
portrayals.Furthermore, while there
are overlaps across groups as to general classes of offenses, groups also
differ as to particular classes of offense to which they are sensitive
or to offenses to which they are frequently exposed in Hollywood films.For
example, Asian Americans were less likely than African Americans to find
portrayal of lower intelligence as offensive, but that may be attributable
to the fact that Asian Americans are less likely to be stereotypically
portrayed that way.By the same token,
African Americans were less likely than Asian Americans s to find offensive
the portrayal of their ethnic group as linguistically handicapped, probably
because they are less likely to be portrayed that way in film.In
other words, people were offended by cliched portrayals of their own group,
but the content of the cliches varied across ethnic groups. Present
results indicate that, as a group, European Americans do take less offense
at film portrayals of themselves than ethnic minority groups.On
the other hand, cultural or religious sub-groups of European Americans
can and do take umbrage at media characterizations. An interesting finding
occurred with the European American respondents in this study.Although
offenses that cited the bigotry theme were most common for European Americans,
offenses that cited criminal activity, deficiencies in intellectual skill
and occupational stereotypes were also frequently cited.A
closer inspection of the data revealed that the majority of these Theme
1 objections came from those handful of Euro-American respondents who identified
them selves as coming from Italian (n = 7) or Irish (n = 5) ancestry and
who were tired of Mafia and IRA images endlessly portrayed on the screen.Films
such as Goodfellas, Casino, The Godfather,
Showgirls,
andThe
Devil’s Ownwere cited as commercing in these images..Indeed,
The
Godfather was the third most offensive film for the European American
respondents. Endless
newspaper and magazine articles and Italian Anti-Defamation leagues have
explored, expressed or protested popular culture’s romantic obsession with
the Italian Mafia and the assumption that every Italian-American is suspected
of having some “mob” connection.The
recent success of the television series “The Sopranos” has placed an even
finer point on this concern.But
it is the cultural (Yuppies), economic (e.g. poor white trash), regional
(e.g., southern rednecks) or religious (e.g., bible-thumping Baptists )affiliations
which may be the lightening rod for these European Americans, rather than,
in most cases, their ethnicity per se. What
a viewer finds particularly offensive varies also as a function of ethnicity.Hispanic
Americans and African Americans were the most likely to be offended by
portrayals of themselves as criminal or intellectually inept while Asian
Americans resented most the obsession in American (and Asian American)
films with martial arts, the pervasive absence of Asian Americans in American
films, and the tendency to find Asian American cultures as interchangeable.They
also found ignorance and/or wanton disregard of historical or cultural
Asian American practices and traditions particularly offensive.As
expected, European Americans evidenced the least likelihood to take offense
at filmic portrayals.The instances
where they took offense were generally in the arena of stereotypic historic
or contemporary abuse of majority power rather than of being the object
of abuse or filmic under-representation or invisibility. Minorities
Offended by Minority-Made Films A
question arising from one result of the present study bears particular
exploration, namely, why were minority group respondents, most notably
African- and Hispanic Americans, so offended by films often directed by,
and/or written by, and/or starring ethnically-congruent creative elements?On
the surface, one might expect that it would be films made by Euro-American
filmmakers which would garner the lion’s share of citations.And
in terms of the sheer number of individual films cited as containing offensive
portrayals, this is true.But, in
terms of the films which rank highest in containing offenses, the reality
is otherwise, and would seem to derive from a confluence of special forces. The
first author has worked as a screenwriter and script analyst in Hollywood
for the past 15 years and was a script judge for the Minority Access Program
of the Writers Guild of America for five years.It
is well known within the film industry that past the age of 30, the rate
of unemployment of screenwriters increases with age and as late as 1997,
73% of all employed screen and television writers were under age 31 (Bielby
& Bielby, 1998).Comparable data
for actors reported by Gerbner (1988) indicated that 61% of actors employed
in 1997 were under 40.Furthermore,
research by Fischoff (1997) revealed that between 1984 and 1987, most African
American films, especially the most successful African American films not
vehicles for Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington, and the most successful
Latino films, dealt with storylines centered around characters under age
30. In
part, these data reflect the preference for studios to produce and distribute
films targeted to audiences under age 30 as they are the biggest source
of box office revenue (Austin, 1989).But
this also necessitates, in the studios’ minds, that the writers, and actors
obviously, should also be attuned to this youth market.Youths
prefer edgy storylines involving the downtrodden rebelling against authority,
and an abundance of violence and sex.Young,
minority writers tend to write what they know, can relate to, or that with
which they are most familiar.Oftentimes,
(with no little prompting from producers) this ends up being stories about
what is thematically “edgy,” such as stories laden with gangs, drugs, explicit
sex, and violence.Unfortunately,
softer storylines, such as in the film Love Jones, tend not to do
that well at the box office (Fischoff, 1997).Thus,
for every Eve’s Bayou, there are 20 Juice’s, for every Mi
Familia, there are 5 Desperado’s.Consequently,
minority audiences seeking films that are ethnically-congruent, are more
likely to be exposed to films which have a high probability of trading
in tired violence or sex stereotypes and tired and violent, cliché
storylines. Conclusions Present
research clearly documents that all ethnic groups represented in the study
found much by which to be offended in Hollywood movies.Future
research might explore, through a more age-representative sample. It
is clear from the results that there is a time-honored tendency for movies
to commerce in stereotypes or overgeneralizations about culture and personality.It
is also just as clear that some groups which have traditionally occupied
the lower tier of the socioeconomic ladder, such as African- and Hispanic
Americans, find themselves targets of different stereotypes than other
groups, such as Asian- or Native Americans.But
it is also apparent that there are no surprises in these results.Research
on decade-spanning, commonly held prejudices toward minority groups (e.g.,
Davis & Smith, 1996) shows a clear correspondence with what respondents
in this study reacted to in films.So
the oft-heard remark that Hollywood trades in tired and cliched stereotypes
would seem to have merit. At
the same time, new or recent immigration trends and traditional geo-political
conflicts have bestowed a new set of occupants in Hollywood’s house of
stereotypes.Immigrants from former
Soviet Block countries find themselves branded as violent mafia-types in
movies.The time-honored Christian-Muslim
conflict has generated for Hollywood a never-ending supply of evil or buffoonish
terrorists, hapless pawns of dictators, or fundamentalists with brutal
agendas toward the enemy and toward women.This
stereotype of the Muslim brute was most clearly denounced by Muslims in
our sample by the film Not Without My Daughter.Clearly,
as Allport’s (1954) classic tome on the social psychology of racism and
prejudice elucidated, unless and until there is a fairer and broader representation
of ethnic minority groups in the mass media, concern over inaccurate or
unrepresentative portrayals will continue to draw concern and disapproval
from implicated, interested, and concerned citizens.From
what we can observe over the course of film history, some groups cycle
out of being unfairly portrayed in film, others cycle in, and still others
continue to remain the object of such offensive portrayals, regardless
of objections and alarm-raising research. As
minorities increasingly find their social-political voices, the chorus
of objections to stereotypically unflattering screen portrayals is likely
to rattle the chambers of Congress and Hollywood studios with increasing
intensity.This chorus of disapproval
should result in increasing sensitivity to minority concerns.But,
as the diversity wars presently being fought across the landscape of television
reveal, sensitivity does not always translate into needed changes in casting,
story development and character structure.In
the end, entertainment is a bottom line industry and unless the aggrieved
parties make it profitable to dispense with unrepresentative stereotypes
and make it punitive to perpetuate them, little is likely to change in
the commerce in stereotypes. In
fact, little was evidenced in the present study by comments made by respondents
to indicate that, at least for the foreseeable future, offensive portrayals
will deter most from patronizing films that are well-publicized or receive
good word-of-mouth.It is unfortunate
that many of the smaller and independent films which actually provide far
more positive portrayals of minorities are rarely seen by most minority
filmgoers.Research by Fischoff
et al. (1997), showed quite unmistakably that these films (e.g., Love
Jones, To Sleep With Anger, Eve’s
Bayou, Chan Is Missing, The Wedding Banquet,
Romero)
are rarely if ever mentioned in favorite films lists of minority respondents.Wider
distribution and promotion of such films would help bring their positive
images to these filmgoers.But profits
drive production and marketing decisions.Filmgoers,
(and minority filmgoers are no exception) do not go to see films they do
not know about and rush to see films that are well advertised (Tsui, 1998).These
smaller films get poor promotion and distribution, resulting in less awareness
of these films by the younger and less educated minority moviegoing audiences,
while the bigger budget, more widely distributed studio supported films,
which garner huge minority group box office revenues, more often trade
in convenient stereotypes. If
minority audiences who are offended by screen portrayals and characterizations
come to realize that deciding what movies to patronize is not only an entertainment
choice but is also a political action at the ticket booth, if they proactively
spread the word about what movies deserve quick and better patronage and
what movies should be boycotted, as his been done by an African American
activist group in Texas called “The First Friday Club,” they can begin
to dismantle, the triad of stereotype-engorged, offense-laden, and box
office-successful Hollywood products. To
complicate matters, though, it is clear that, even within minority group
filmgoers, what is accurate portrayal for some is stereotypic and negative
for others.Jason Johansen, for
example, a former professor of Latino film and media, noted in a recent
article (Johansen, 1999) that films depicting the immigrant experience,
such as
La Ciudad (1999), were found to be offensive by Latinos
because they present an image of Latinos as “being only that way.”Moreover,
Johansen cites several films which he felt were positive expressions of
the Latino community and box office successes, films which were, ironically,
high on the list in our sample as very offensive, especially the Cheech
Marin film, Born in East L.A. Finally,
it would seem that, while minority (and some majority) filmmakers consider
it important to remind each generation of viewers about past mistreatment
of ethnic groups, a substantial number of African Americans are tired of
such films because the films reiterate an oppressed (and oppressible?)
view of their ethnicity, an image they are seeking to put behind them.Presumably,
the adage that people who forget their past are destined to repeat it may
be seen as a double-edged sword. References Allen,
I. (1990).Unkind words: Ethnic
labeling from redskin to WASP. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Allport,
G. (1954).The nature of prejudice.Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley. Appleford,
R. (1995). Coming out from behind the rocks: Constructs of the Indian in
recent U.S. and
Sample Population
Survey Instrument
and Offense Coding
Codification of Cited Offenses Taken at Film Portrayals
Offense Code Categories Collapsed in Themes
Gender
Chi-Square
Analyses of Differences Between Principal Ethnic Groups in Terms of Number
of Respondents Who Took Offense and Mean Offense Citation Rate
Age
Top Five Most
Frequently Cited Offense Themes - All Respondents
Rank Ordering Of Frequency of Citation of Offense Themes
Offense Summaries of Ethnic Groups