Review, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, The Assassination of the Black Male Image (Middle Passage Press, 1994)

Columbia Missourian, May 15, 1994

In an age when corporate domination and political sycophancy increasingly mark the mass media, Earl Ofari Hutchinson represents an anomaly: a politically and economically independent journalist. His one-person newsletter, Ofari’s Bi-Monthly, which he has published since the mid-1980s, stands in the great tradition of such models of personal, radical journalism as Dwight Macdonald’s Politics and I.F. Stone’s Weekly. By using this medium to present an African-American viewpoint, Hutchinson consistently challenges the shibboleths of both left and right. Often perceptive, occasionally infuriating, Hutchinson manages to do what most journalists seek to avoid: force the reader to think critically.

This collection of articles focuses on the images of African-American men in the mass media. As Hutchinson argues, Americans have historically portrayed the black male as the “universal bogeyman.” In the late-nineteenth century, he was seen as a savage, interested primarily in seizing political power and white women. Today, he is a crack dealer and “gangsta” preoccupied with fathering children and engaging in drive-by shootings. Such views, Hutchinson points out, are grounded more firmly in irrational fears than in social realities. But they persist largely because they serve the interests of powerful forces in society. A century ago the Southern Redeemers sought to drive blacks out of power to end Reconstruction and re-establish white domination. In the 1980s, conservative politicians worked to roll back social spending and accelerate the deindustrialization of urban areas. In both cases, portrayals of black men as dangerous, indolent and unworthy of sympathy reinforced powerful political interests.

As Hutchinson says, this view of African-American men has not been confined to the lesser educated. In 1901, Woodrow Wilson, then a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, referred to blacks as a “host of dusky children . . . insolent and aggressive, sick of work, covetus of pleasure.”

This view cannot be dismissed as a remnant of a bygone era, Hutchinson says. While such blatant expressions of racism are not as prevalent today, racist thinking and mythology remain deeply embedded in the American psyche. Thus, in 1993, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that racism was no longer a significant factor in American life and that black Americans should quit blaming whites for the problems of the ghetto and stop agitating for more government programs. Instead, the Journal urged blacks to cultivate “respect for the rule of law,” “renewed reverence for hard work,” “individual responsibility,” and “stable families.” As Hutchinson comments, “Lazy, criminal, derelict and immoral (sex crazed); did the Journal miss anything? This would have warmed the hearts of the white gentlemen-scholars of the nineteenth century who used pretty much the same arguments to explain black inferiority.”

The dominant image has severe implications for black men. For instance, when Chuck Stuart, a successful white Bostonian, reported that his pregnant wife had been murdered and that he had been shot by a black male, the media and the Boston police department reacted with the irrational hysteria of a lynch mob. Few bothered to notice the holes in Stuart’s story as the police cracked down on Boston’s black population, randomly searching black men on the street and rounding up suspects. Eventually Stuart’s story unraveled. When it was discovered that he had murdered his wife, he committed suicide. But by uttering the words “black male,” Hutchinson says, Stuart brought to the surface the paranoia underlying American social and political culture.

“No one is telling the press not to cover crime stories,” Hutchinson says, “but cover other stories, too.” For instance, he says, it rarely is reported that nearly eighty percent of black Americans are high school graduates and that thirty percent go on to college, or that the vast majority of black youths are not gang members.

An ironic byproduct of “the assassination of the black male image” is that black men also have come to symbolize the “universal bogeymen” in African-American feminist thought. In the works of such black feminist scholars as bell hooks and Michele Wallace, plus such novelists as Alice Walker, black men are portrayed as vicious, irresponsible and lazy.

This view, Hutchinson says, parrots the dominant cultural vision of the black male and therefore receives a great amount of attention in the mass media. But, Hutchinson argues, it is a view that belies the real experience of many black women and thus largely explains why the women’s movement has not made greater inroads into the community of African-American women.

Hutchinson looks squarely at both the image and reality of African-American male life. He neither denies nor rationalizes the reality of black crime. But he demands that we consider why, apart from sports and entertainment, this is the primary image of black men we receive through the media. Dominant media images usually reinforce dominant power relationships, and, as Hutchinson points out, the case of African-American males is no exception.

“The Reagan-Bush administration’s slash and burn of social programs was not just mean-spirited. It tapped the huge reservoir of racial know-nothingness that has always slinked beneath the surface in American society while legitimizing and elevating racial scapegoating to national policy. In an era of scarcity and declining resources, the search for enemies is ruthless. Blacks are the oldest and most visible enemy. They are the logical target.”