Race awareness

This study analyzes various forms of visual and textual rhetoric found in popular
black-owned print media from 1900-1970, including: beauty product advertisements,
magazine cover photography and feature articles in order to contribute to a rhetorical
history of color bias within the African-American community. The imagery included here
validated and encouraged the transformation and lightening of African-American bodies
through what I call embodied mimicry in order to achieve dominance within the racial
group and a semblance of acceptance outside of it. Mimicry of white societal standards
by African-Americans including: formatting of print media, circulation of beauty ads and
physical embodiment of white physical features ultimately re-inscribed the tenets of
racism into the black public sphere in the form of colorism. The intention of this research
is to analyze the rhetorical history of colorism in order to better understand the current
state of colorism in American society.

This thesis focuses on the continuous misrepresentations that appear throughout different
outlets of popular culture and the negative impacts of these misrepresentations. In the
first chapter, the focus will be on the films The Last of the Mohicans and The Mission and
the origins and implications of the misrepresentation of Indians in film. The second
chapter uses rap music videos such as 50 Cent’s In Da Club, Nelly’s Tip Drill, LMFAO
and Lil John’s Shots, Where Da Hood At, Tupac’s Hit ‘Em up, and N.W.A.’s Straight
Outta Compton as primary texts to demonstrate the one dimensional and problematic
representations of African American Identity in the rap music industry. The third and
final chapter uses the video games Grand Theft Auto III and Gun as examples of the
negative representations that occur and are repeated quickly in the rapidly improving
world of video games. While the misrepresentations are achieved and perpetuated
differently in each medium, their ubiquitous presence in popular culture calls for
discussion.