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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Based on an extensive study, funded by Bill Cosby himself, of audience responses to The Cosby Show , this provocative book reinforces criticism that, despite the show's great popularity and positive influences, it promotes the dangerous myth that blacks who don't "make it" have only themselves to blame. The authors, who teach in the department of communications at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, interviewed 52 focus groups, learning that viewers involve themselves deeply with the show and often see it as reality. White viewers can identify with and accept TV's Huxtable family as "nice" blacks; black viewers appreciate the show's lack of racial stereotyping. However, the authors argue, The Cosby Show 's images of the black upper class--like most images broadcast in recent years--hide and distort how most blacks live, thus relieving white viewers of responsibility for such inequalities. Neither blacks nor whites interviewed think clearly about class, the authors say; thus, our society cannot think clearly about how race and class intersect. While the authors' class analysis can be simplistic, their overall argument is convincing.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
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Based on an extensive study, funded by Bill Cosby himself, of audience responses to The Cosby Show , this provocative book reinforces criticism that, despite the show's great popularity and positive influences, it promotes the dangerous myth that blacks who don't "make it" have only themselves to blame. The authors, who teach in the department of communications at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, interviewed 52 focus groups, learning that viewers involve themselves deeply with the show and often see it as reality. White viewers can identify with and accept TV's Huxtable family as "nice" blacks; black viewers appreciate the show's lack of racial stereotyping. However, the authors argue, The Cosby Show 's images of the black upper class--like most images broadcast in recent years--hide and distort how most blacks live, thus relieving white viewers of responsibility for such inequalities. Neither blacks nor whites interviewed think clearly about class, the authors say; thus, our society cannot think clearly about how race and class intersect. While the authors' class analysis can be simplistic, their overall argument is convincing.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
The Cosby Show needs little introduction to most people familiar with American popular culture. It is a show with immense and universal appeal. Even so, most debates about the significance of the program have failed to take into account one of the more important elements of its success—its viewers. Through a major study of the audiences of The Cosby Show, the authors treat two issues of great social and political importance—how television, America’s most widespread cultural form, influences the way we think, and how our society in the post–Civil Rights era thinks about race, our most widespread cultural problem.This book offers a radical challenge to the conventional wisdom concerning racial stereotyping in the United States and demonstrates how apparently progressive programs like The Cosby Show, despite good intentions, actually help to construct “enlightened” forms of racism. The authors argue that, in the post–Civil Rights era, a new structure of racial beliefs, based on subtle contradictions between attitudes toward race and class, has brought in its wake this new form of racial thought that seems on the surface to exhibit a new tolerance. However, professors Jhally and Lewis find that because Americans cannot think clearly about class, they cannot, after all, think clearly about race.This groundbreaking book is rooted in an empirical analysis of the reactions to The Cosby Show of a range of ordinary Americans, both black and white. Professors Jhally and Lewis discussed with the different audiences their attitudes toward the program and more generally their understanding and perceptions of issues of race and social class.Enlightened Racism is a major intervention into the public debate about race and perceptions of race—a debate, in the 1990s, at the heart of American political and public life. This book is indispensable to understanding that debate.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Neither The Cosby Show nor its star, Bill Cosby, need much introduction. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
other black sitcoms, most white respondents, working class viewers, white viewers, black viewers, one female respondent, other sitcoms, middle class viewers, black respondents, middle class respondents, most black people Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Bill Cosby, African Americans, Cliff Huxtable, Clair Huxtable, North American, The Jeffersons, Lisa Bonet, Martin Luther King, New York, Phylicia Rashad, Henry Louis Gates, Mark Crispin Miller, Outward Bound New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Neither The Cosby Show nor its star, Bill Cosby, need much introduction. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
other black sitcoms, most white respondents, working class viewers, white viewers, black viewers, one female respondent, other sitcoms, middle class viewers, black respondents, middle class respondents, most black people Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Bill Cosby, African Americans, Cliff Huxtable, Clair Huxtable, North American, The Jeffersons, Lisa Bonet, Martin Luther King, New York, Phylicia Rashad, Henry Louis Gates, Mark Crispin Miller, Outward Bound New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 16
books:
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47
books
cite this book:
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- American Dream by Miller on page 7, page 73, and Back Matter
- American Dream: I Take Thee, A Stranger/Blessed Land/Promises Kept/Freedom's Ring (Inspirational Romance Collection) by Kristy Dykes on page 7, page 73, and Back Matter
- Martin Luther King (Real Lives) by Julia Holt on page 4, page 65, and page 66
- The Ideological Octopus (Studies in Culture and Communication Series) by Lewis in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Selections from the Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci in Back Matter
See all 16 books this book cites
- Immigration Diversity & Broadcasting in the U.S., 1990-2001: Ris Glo#2 (Ohio RIS Global Series) by Vibert C. Cambridge in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Am I Black Enough for You: Popular Culture from the 'Hood and Beyond by Todd Boyd in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- An Introduction to Television Studies by J. Bignell on page 227, and Back Matter
- Coming Out Jewish by Jon Stratton on page 312, and Back Matter
- Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? by Michael Eric Dyson in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 47 books citing this book
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