Writing for a Real World 2004-2005: a multidisciplinary anthology by USF students

              2004-2005
Amultidisciplinary anthology by USF students
Program in Rhetoric and Composition
for a
Real World
Writing
WRW - 1
Writing for a Real World
2004 - 2005
a multidisciplinary anthology by usf students
Published by the University of San Francisco
Program in Rhetoric and Composition
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Acknowledgments 4
Honorable Mention 7
Essays
LATIN AMERICAN STREET CHILDREN: A TRAGIC RESULT OF AN AMORAL
SOCIETY
Cassidy Condit 8
SEX SELLS: A MARXIST CRITICISM OF SEX AND THE CITY
Dave Rinehart 21
WOMEN IN JOURNALISM
Crystal Roberts 28
GENDER EXPECTATIONS AND FAMILIAL ROLES WITHIN ASIAN AMERICAN
CULTURE
Amy Truong 42
THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS: A PSEUDO-HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR
WHITE SUPERIORITY
Travis Sharp 52
LIBERTY: A CLARIFICATION OF DEFINITION
Kathryn Cantrell 73
A NATION UNITED
Faye Por 80
WITH THE CLOUDS
Tran Nguyen 88
Table of Contents
Writing for a Real World
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ARGUMENT PAPER
Marisa Keller 94
A QUENCHED THIRST, A CLEAR CONSCIENCE—THE BEST PART OF
WAKING UP: THE UNITED STATES AND THE GLOBAL COFFEE CRISIS
Katy Kreitler 102
SEX-PISSED PUNKS
Miles Braten 117
FOREVER HUNGRY
John Dea 125
Science, Technical and Business Writing
MAKING WAVES: FINDING KEYS TO SUCCESS IN THE FAILURES OF THE
FISH INDUSTRY
Andrew Skogrand 137
EVALUATION MEMO
Karin Conrad 149
SINGLE MOTHERS IN MALAYSIA: THE INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS OF
DOMINATION
Puspa Melati Wan 161
University of San Francisco
Cover for WRW by David Holler and Andrew Daniel
W
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Acknowledgments
Our third annual issue of Writing for a Real World continues
to showcase excellent undergraduate writing and celebrate
outstanding undergraduate instruction at the University of
San Francisco. Our special anthology offers two distinct sections:
the first devoted to remarkable examples of the traditional
academic essay; the second provide a forum for worthy models of
scientific, business and technical report writing. Preceding these
essays and reports are introductions from the writers and their
teachers.
For the first time, the tyranny of production deadlines created
some difficult circumstances for faculty who were far from campus
or away from their emails; consequently, some teachers were
unable to respond to our requests for personal introductions.
Alternatively, we asked two of our referees to provide some reader-based
commentary. Overall, the commentaries and introductions
help elucidate the intentions behind the assignments and give
insight into the responses of the students. In last year’s issue, a
production error created a misprint of Puspa Melati Wan’s name.
To remedy this error, we happily reprint her essay in its entirety.
Continuing a project like Writing for a Real World requires the
selfless efforts of many people, and we acknowledge the
contributions of those who continue to make this publication
possible. We are deeply grateful to Jennifer Turpin, Dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences, and Dean Rader, Associate Dean of
Arts and Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences, for their
generous financial support and remarkable commitment to
reinvigorating undergraduate writing at USF. A large debt, as well,
goes to Freddie Wiant, Coordinator of the Program in Rhetoric and
Composition, for her generous support. Our gratitude extends to
David Holler for designing this year’s cover. Publication
committee members Brian Komei Dempster, Devon Christina
Holmes and Mark Meritt earn special distinctions for shepherding
another edition of this anthology by providing astute editorial
support and great and inspiring conversations related to this
Writing for a Real World
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University of San Francisco
publication. Without their support, this publication of WRW would
be unthinkable.
Choosing the winning entries is a reading-intensive, day-long
task that requires the purely voluntary efforts of already busy USF
faculty members. Our judges reviewed carefully more than 144
submissions (from which the students’ names had been removed).
Every submission was read by at least two readers, and every
winning submission had to pass the review of at least four readers.
For performing this task with unfailing grace and patience, we
humbly thank the superb efforts of our volunteer readers: Brian
Komei Dempster, Leslie Dennen, Evan Elliot, Johnnie Johnson
Hafernik, Devon Christina Holmes, Leslie King, Mark Meritt,
Maureen O’ Sullivan, Darrell g.h. Schramm, Kern Trembath, Sally
Vance-Trembath and Freddie Wiant.
Our production assistant, Kathryn Cantrell, deserves special
mention for managing our submissions and helping us in ways too
numerous to describe. Thanks, as always, to John Pinelli and
Norma Washington for balancing the budget, and to Johnnie
Johnson Hafernik, Chair of Communication Studies, for her
encouragement and for helping us get the word out to students and
faculty.
Finally, our deepest gratitude is reserved for those teachers who
encouraged their students to submit their papers and for those
many students for daring to accept their challenge. The
competition was stiff, and, as our Honorable Mention list
illustrates, we received many more commendable essays and
reports than we were able to include. Congratulations to those who
earned honorable mention—we hope to hear from you again next
year. And, of course, congratulations to this year’s winners. Our
newest authors bravely enter the realm of published authors
writing for a real world. This journal belongs to them.
—David Ryan, Editor
University of San Francisco
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Writing for a Real World
2004 - 2005
Editor
David Ryan
Publication Assistant
Kathryn Cantrell
Publication Committee
Brian Komei Dempster
Devon Christina Holmes
Mark Meritt
Cover Art
David Holler
Cover Image
Andrew Daniel
Journal Referees
Leslie Dennen
Evan Elliot
Johnnie Johnson Hafernik
Leslie King
Maureen O’Sullivan
Darrell g.h. Schramm
Kern Trembath
Sally Vance-Trembath
Freddie Wiant
on the web at www.usfca.edu/rhetcomp/journal/
Writing for a Real World
University of San Francisco
Cowell Hall, 4th Floor
2130 Fulton Street
SF, CA 94117
Writing for a Real World
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Honorable Mention
Kathryn Cantrell
Cowards or Heroes: Standing Up for Conscience
Chris Doherty
American Intervention
Irene Feliciano
Enforced Heterosexism Sells in the Gaming Market
Elizabeth Greenwood
The Human Mirror
and
Recovering an Existentialist Ethic
Amir Karimabadi
Beauty: A Western Standard
Marisa Keller
Free Will in Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife
Elizabeth Moyer
Smoke and Mirrors
Dave Rinehart
In Defense of Depravity: The Work of Director Takashi Miike
Alejandra Serret
Extreme Makeover: Promoting a Healthier, More Beautiful,
New America
Andrew Skogrand
The Electric Word
University of San Francisco
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Latin American Street Children: A Tragic
Consequence of an Amoral Society
Cassidy Condit
Writer’s comment: On the last day of Professor Darrell Schramm’s
Writing Seminar, we discussed the assignments we had completed
throughout the semester, and one by one, explained which
assignment we most enjoyed. I distinctly remember saying that I
loved writing this paper, yet hated it at the same time. This paper
marked the culmination of a semester of intensive writing.
Throughout the semester, I acquired many skills, which allowed
me not only to communicate my thoughts effectively, but also to
fine-tune and customize my style of writing. I was eager to write
this final paper, eager to show Professor Schramm all I had
learned. However, this assignment proved to be challenging in a
way I could not have anticipated. I found it very difficult to read
about the horrors, the cruelty, that Latin American street children
are forced to endure. The human rights of millions of street
children are violated daily, and very few people try to help. As
fascinated as I was with this topic, at times the information was
just too devastating for me to face. However, Professor Schramm
encouraged me to continue, and although it was difficult, I was
able to write, using not only my mind but my heart as well.
—Cassidy Condit
Instructor’s comment: When Cassidy first enrolled in my Writing
Seminar, her writing was intelligent but dense and abstract, given
to sesquipedalianism. In short, she invariably chose a multi-syllabic,
Latinate word when a one or two-syllable Anglo-Saxon
word would have been more appropriate. But because she clearly
showed herself to be open to becoming a better writer, I kept
challenging her. Like a true scholar, she met my every challenge.
This essay on street children is the crown jewel of her
accomplishments in the class. I am enormously proud of her essay
here, both in style and content. It is indeed a moving essay.
—Darrell g.h. Schramm, Rhetoric and Composition
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Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society
As I sit down to write this paper, Halloween has just passed.
Even though the day is over, the aura of the Halloween
season can still be felt. It is a time when images of ghouls
and goblins fill the air and horror films abound. Each year, it
seems, one film promises to be the scariest yet, infused with
gruesome, chilling scenes, guaranteed to give nightmares for
weeks. I too have felt my hair stand on end and chills run down
my spine. However, my terror is not the result of a frightening
movie or a spooky ghost story. My terror is caused by something
much more serious than a Hollywood blockbuster or an urban
legend. In the process of researching my topic, I read a passage
from the book, Brazil: War on Children by Gilberto Dimenstein. It
chilled me to the bones.
Patrício Hilário da Silva…was nine years old. He went
to church every day…On May 1, he failed to appear,
and his body was found on the beach soon afterwards.
He had been strangled and a note left on his body, ‘I
killed you because you didn’t go to school and had no
future.’ (31)
The more I read, the more I came to realize that Patrício’s
tragic story is not unique in Brazil and other Latin American
countries. The violation of children’s human rights, and most
specifically, the violation of street children’s human rights, is
frightening, and it is a growing problem that must be addressed.
Many children in Latin America call the streets their home. In
the past, these children were identified as “homeless, abandoned,
or runaways,” but in 1979, the year baptized by the United Nations
as the “year of the child,” the term street children came to replace
the former labels (Scanlon et al. 1596-97). It is important to clarify
that not all street children are indeed homeless. Some street
children are “home-based;” that is, they spend their days on the
street, some working odd jobs, others just loitering, but at night are
able to return home. On the other hand, many street children are
“street-based,” with no family to support them, no home to return
to at night (1597). Regardless of these technicalities, street children
identify the streets as their home, their peers family. Among their
peers, gangs and issues of territory can at times present problems
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(1598). However, there seems to be a shared sense of unity among
street children, a need to band together against the torture and
abuse brought about by the police, death squads, government
authorities, and the general public in some Latin American
countries.
Street children are often subjected to inhumane treatment at the
hands of authority. According to Paul Jeffrey, a United Methodist
missionary who traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, to report on the
social cleansing of the country’s poor, street children “have
become targets for those who seek to rid the world of the weak, the
‘degenerate,’ the surplus” (380). Street children are not seen as real
children, but rather as a nuisance, a threat; perhaps this is why so
many otherwise decent individuals allow street children’s human
rights to be blatantly violated day after day, indifferent, immune,
even hostile to their suffering.
The torture of Latin American street children by the police,
death squads, and other individuals directly violates Article Five of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states,
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment” (United Nations). In Brazil,
for example, police brutality against street children is an all-too-common
occurrence. Boys and girls are routinely beaten and
harassed by police because they live on the streets. Gilberto
Dinemstein is a journalist for Folha de São Paulo, a leading
Brazilian newspaper, and the author of numerous books about the
corruption and power struggles in Brazil, including Brazil: War on
Children. In this book, Dimenstein gives gripping firsthand
accounts of the abuses children are forced to endure. Dimenstein
writes about how policemen walk the streets at night, kick sleeping
children with their steel-tipped boots, force them to eat
cockroaches, beat them on the head with clubs, and shoot at them
if they try to escape (35-36, 58-60). One boy tells Dimenstein how
the police had shot him in the leg as he was running away. He had
managed to escape, but several weeks later, sought out their help
because the bullet wound had become infected. Rather than take
the boy to the hospital, the police beat him and kicked his wound
(Dimenstein 60). The police often subject girls to rape and other
forms of sexual harassment. If they are pregnant, the police further
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violate their bodies and their human rights by forcefully kicking
their stomachs. This not only terminates the pregnancy but also
causes severe internal bleeding and other complications (35-36).
Unfortunately, the tragedy does not end here.
Violence against street children follows a vicious, perpetuating
cycle. Children are beaten, abused, and tortured by police, so-called
authority figures; how can these children safely report their
beatings to the very people who are committing these acts?
Furthermore, the police often threaten to kill children if they
attempt to report the abuse. A boy recalls for Dimenstein a time
when “a sergeant put a gun to his head and told him he would kill
him if he mentioned anything about what happened” (59-60).
Robin Kirk, research associate for the Human Rights Watch/
Americas and author of the book, Generation Under Fire:
Children and Violence in Colombia, also reports police corruption
and brutality. According to one boy, the police “would beat him
and force a plastic bag over his head until he neared suffocation.”
However, he never filed a formal report against the police, stating,
“You don’t complain or report them, because it will be worse the
next time” (qtd. in Kirk 15). Neither of these experiences is
unique; tragically they are just two of the many examples of the
torture street children are forced to endure. Such threats are typical
and widespread, and directly defy Article Five of the UDHR.
Article Nine, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest,
detention, or exile” (United Nations), shows that Article Five is not
the only article in the UDHR that is violated. It is routinely
ignored by police and government officials in Colombia, Brazil,
and other Latin American countries. In an attempt to “clean” the
streets, state governments organize “clean-up campaigns,” in
which children are arrested and taken to jails and other correctional
facilities (Dimenstein 39-40). Rarely are there definitive charges
brought up against the children. Rather, the police, with the
preconceived notion that all street children are thieves, drug
addicts, prostitutes, and/or violent gang members, unjustly profile
these children. The police detain them under the pretense that they
are “in need of protection or discipline, which effectively makes
children’s poverty and homelessness, or status as children, a
crime” (“Promises Broken” par 2). These children are victims in a
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situation out of their control. They are arrested without sufficient
causes, and are locked up in jail where the violence continues.
The violence not only continues but often escalates as well.
Many times, children are detained with older juvenile delinquents
and even adults who physically and sexually abuse them
(“Promises Broken” par 5). Some of these children remain in
correctional facilities for days, weeks, even months at a time.
These extended stays have been suggested to turn children to a life
of crime once they are released. Deodato Rivera, a political
scientist and expert on violence among minors, asserts that “the
state is responsible for producing juvenile delinquents.” He
suggests children “become brutalised by the experience” and
“[o]nce released…are ready to turn to crime” (qtd. in Dimenstein
40). These accusations may seem a bit extreme, but given the
circumstances of the situation, the accusations begin to make
sense. Street children endure police brutality both on the street and
in jail, and once in jail, are subjected to horrendous living
conditions and even more physical and sexual abuse at the hands
of other inmates. In addition, some police force children to pay
bribes in exchange for their release; for girls, bribes may be in the
form of sexual acts (“Promises Broken” par 5). This corruption,
coupled with police brutality and torture, can have devastating
effects on children. It makes sense that upon their release, many
children turn to crime and violence. When they experience
violence every day, it becomes all they know.
It was previously stated that many street children are arrested
and locked up in jail as a result of “clean-up campaigns.” Jails are
one way to rid the streets of children; however, this is only a
temporary reprisal, and sooner or later, children are back on the
streets. Because of this, some police and government officials have
sought out a more permanent solution. This solution has taken on
the title “social cleansing” and is being carried out by “death
squads” – ruthless, relentless vigilantes who seek to exterminate
“los desechables,” the disposables (Jeffrey 380-81). Carlos Rojas,
a researcher for Bogotá’s Center for Investigation and Popular
Education, has investigated the phenomenon of social cleansing.
He believes it began in Colombia in 1979 and is “carried out by a
coalition of police and soldiers, paramilitary bands, politicians and
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civic leaders” (Jeffrey 381). Social cleansings involve a complex
network of people. Some business owners, fed up with street
children who beg outside their stores and frighten potential
customers, pay corrupt police officers to make street children
disappear. Sometimes, the police murder the children themselves.
Other times, they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear as death squads –
at times comprised of current or former members of the police and
military – dressed entirely in black, driving unmarked cars and
motorcycles, blatantly murder children in the streets (Jeffrey 380;
Kirk 6-15). These events are rarely ever challenged, and the
murderers even less frequently held accountable for their actions.
Unfortunately, it is not only business owners who bribe the
police and death squads, but also civilians who feel threatened by
the mere presence of street children in their neighborhood.
Because of the secretive nature of these briberies, these situations
are infrequently investigated and the individuals involved seldom
punished. However, in 1980, a unit of the National Police in
Colombia discovered two private security guards who required
every household in a Cali neighborhood to pay for the kidnappings
and murders of alleged juvenile delinquents (Kirk 8). Although
official reports are scarce, it seems highly probable that these are
not isolated incidents. It is reasonable to assume many households
continue to pay death squad members in exchange for street
children and juvenile delinquents in their neighborhood to be
eliminated.
However, death squads do not always need monetary
incentives to kill street children. Many death squads believe their
actions will better their city or country. Street children are often
targets simply because they inconvenience society. These beliefs
have led Hernando Gómez, psychologist and professor of urban
studies at Javeriana University, Colombia, to compare these
killings to the actions of the Nazis. According to Gómez, “A
whole industry of social cleansing has developed here, much like
what happened with the Nazis” (qtd. in Jeffrey 381). Mario
Madrid-Malo, director of the information section of the People’s
Defender, a Colombian agency that monitors human rights,
corroborates these claims. He says, “The Nazis believed some
lives just didn’t have any value. Here there are…powerful people
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who are essentially Nazis...[and would be] very happy running a
concentration camp” (qtd. in Jeffrey 380). This is not limited to
Colombia. Although Gómez and Madrid-Malo refer to the power
structure in Colombia, death squads are influential in other
countries as well. When Erasmo Dias, former head of the Justice
Department in São Paulo, campaigned for state representative, his
slogan read, “We should create concentration camps” (qtd. in
Dimenstein 47). Ironically, Dias won the election, partially
because he supported the death squads. The death squads of Latin
America wish to purify their countries by exterminating the street
children, just as the Nazis sought to purify their countries by
eliminating everyone seen as inferior to Hitler’s idealized supreme
race.
Just as the death squads in Latin America may be compared to
the Nazis in Europe, the number of people willing to challenge the
death squads is similar to the number of people willing to stand up
against the Nazis. This is true because advocates for street
children often risk their own lives as well as the lives of their
family and friends. The death squads feel threatened by those who
challenge their power. Peace Brigades International (PBI) has
been working to protect advocates from death squads and human
rights violators by accompanying individuals and serving as
nonviolent bodyguards. Having PBI volunteers present has
successfully prevented violence from being directed at advocates
(Woodbridge par 4-5). Although PBI volunteers have done work
in Colombia and other Latin American countries such as Mexico,
El Salvador, and Guatemala, at the present moment, PBI has not
expanded into countries such as Brazil, where advocates for street
children are in need of protection from death squads. PBI does its
part to protect the lives of advocates, but does not attempt to
confront death squads or solve the problems that plague street
children. Even when advocates are available and PBI volunteers
are present, the lack of government involvement makes it
extremely difficult for advocates to bring torturers and murderers
to justice (“Street Children” par 7). In order for advocates to make
a large-scale difference in street children’s lives, governments need
to accept responsibility for the actions of the corrupt police officers
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and bring to justice those who violate street children’s human
rights and endanger the lives of advocates.
Presently it is difficult to establish accountability and bring to
justice those responsible for torture and murder because the
cleansing campaigns have become widely accepted. Kirk suggests
that in order to legitimize these killings, death squads address their
victims as “human waste” and “filth;��� in essence, social cleansings
are how the “decent” members of society tidy up the trash littering
their country and tainting their society (8). Derek Summerfield,
reporter for The Lancet and author of “If Children’s Lives are
Precious, Which Children?” supports Kirk’s claim by stating,
“Language…is used to distance and debase those to whom we do
not extend our notions of humanity and fraternity. To call street
children in Brazil…‘vermin’ is to prepare the way for atrocity”
(1955). Both Summerfield and Kirk put forth the idea that
language is a very powerful tool. It is astounding that by changing
one word it is possible to change the attitude of a society. When
street children are referred to as “vermin” rather than human, it
becomes much easier for the general public to ignore the children’s
suffering and to feel their murders are justified. The general public
has been influenced by the beliefs of death squads; many
individuals have even adopted these beliefs themselves.
However, it is not only death squads who contribute to the
general public’s ideas about street children. Much of what the
general public believes about street children comes from the
media. The media plays into the fears of the public by distorting
situations and portraying street children as drug dealers,
prostitutes, gang members, thieves, and delinquents. The media
twists the truth so that the public believes street children deserve
the torture they are forced to endure. Social cleansings are often
sensationalized, giving power to the death squads and prestige to
the reporters who present the stories (Dimenstein 63). Much of the
general public does not have extensive knowledge of street
children and therefore relies on the media to inform them.
However, the press often manipulates the truth, leaving the public
with a one-sided view against street children. How can the general
public in Latin American countries such as Colombia and Brazil be
expected to speak out against the injustices street children are
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Cassidy Condit
subjected to when the available information overwhelmingly
portrays these children as having no worth?
Latin American street children are subjected to egregious
human rights violations at the hands of death squads, corrupt
police and government officials, and inadvertently, the media and
the general public. They are offered little opportunity to defend
themselves against violence and torture, at least partially because
the media in these countries manipulates the general public to
believe the children deserve to be punished, which perpetuates and
legitimizes the vicious cycle of abuse. Furthermore, because the
media distorts the truth, most people in other countries are not
aware of the severity of the problem. To begin to resolve this
tragic problem, one of the first steps which needs to be taken is to
make the issue known in the international community. One
possible way to do this is to use mass media in the United States to
educate the American public; to be more specific, allow non-government
organizations to broadcast public service
announcements regarding street children on National Public Radio.
By making the torture of street children an international concern
rather than an issue that can remain hidden, it essentially forces the
governments of countries such as Colombia and Brazil to confront
the issue or risk being embarrassed in front of the international
community. The torture, ill treatment, and murder of street
children are overwhelming problems, and unfortunately, there is
not a panacea that will resolve these problems completely in the
near future. Therefore, the solution needs to be recognized as an
ongoing process. The use of mass media in the United States is
one of the first steps in this process, which in turn will lead to more
long-term goals, including but not limited to making police, death
squads, and other human rights violators accountable for their
actions. This will only be plausible once the more immediate
solutions, such as educating people in the United States through
National Public Radio, have been established.
Mass media is very influential. Cynthia Kaufman, author of
Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change, proposes
that mass media is “one of the most powerful mechanisms for
creating consent” (252). Whether it is television, commercial and
public radio, newspapers, magazines, or the like, mass media has
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the ability to reach and influence vast numbers of people.
Therefore, it seems logical to use mass media to educate and bring
awareness to the general public about the torture and human rights
violations of street children in Latin America. Currently, powerful
death squads influence much of the mass media in Colombia and
Brazil. When this is coupled with not only the fact that the
government does not closely regulate the information given to the
public, but also that reporters can gain prestige by producing
sensationalized stories regardless of their truth, it does not seem
plausible at this time to rely on the media in these countries to
suddenly report truthful, unbiased accounts of street children.
Therefore, education about street children should commence in the
United States by reaching people through National Public Radio.
Educating people in the United States will reveal how street
children are abused, tortured, and murdered, often by people in
authority who are rarely brought to justice for their actions, and
how a vast majority of people in Latin America feel little or no
remorse for these children. Non-government organizations such as
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Save the Children,
and World Organization Against Torture are well equipped to
provide extensive information regarding street children. These
organizations can use National Public Radio to educate and make
appeals to the people in the United States through public service
announcements. In addition, they can employ CNN, a mainstream
television network, in order to reach and educate a broader
audience in the United States.
Public appeals can be very powerful, especially the sort of
appeals which involve the international community. Children,
Torture and Power: The Torture of Children by States and Armed
Opposition Groups is a special report published by Save the
Children and the World Organization Against Torture. The author,
Nathalie Man, suggests that public appeals inform countries that
the outside world is aware of the situations within their given
countries (94). Leaders of countries are aware of the negative
repercussions this can have. Most leaders are unwilling to have
their country and their administration embarrassed in front of the
international community. The international community will likely
lose respect for a country that is aware of a problem but does not
Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society
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Cassidy Condit
attempt to amend it. With respect to both Colombia and Brazil,
their governments have ignored the problems surrounding street
children and have gone so far as to cover up the actions of corrupt
police officers. At times, the governments have supported death
squads – or at the very least, have not punished them for their
intolerable treatment of street children.
While international disapproval and embarrassment are driving
forces to promote change, there exists an even greater incentive for
countries to change. If the international community becomes
aware of the extreme mistreatment and torture of street children in
Colombia and Brazil, it may prompt other countries to decrease or
completely sever the foreign aid allocated to these Latin American
countries. This is especially relevant to Colombia, a country that
receives military and other aid from the United States (Jeffrey
382). With the United States making public appeals about street
children and the loss of foreign aid from the United States a
constant threat, Colombian leaders will be more inclined to make
changes in their policies regarding street children and to more
strictly adhere to the articles established in not only the UDHR but
also the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
(UNCRC).
Bringing awareness to the United States and indirectly, the
international community, through National Public Radio and public
service announcements by non-government organizations is only
the first of many steps which need to be taken to end the torture
and murder of street children. In the future, only after this
proposal has been effectively put into place and only after
Colombian and Brazilian governments have begun to actively take
responsibility for the problems in their countries can more long-term
goals be implemented. Such long-term goals include
establishing police accountability, educating the general public in
Colombia and Brazil, and empowering street children by allowing
them to voice their concerns. Currently, such goals are not
plausible. In order to end the violence and torture directed toward
street children, people need to see street children not as worthless,
disposable objects that endanger society but rather as children
forced to withstand brutal torture and abuse – torture and abuse
which too often goes unnoticed and unchallenged. Street children
WRW - 19
are, in essence, a tragic result of amoral societies (Scanlon et al.
1600). It is imperative that people not only become aware of the
torture of street children but also recognize that these children are
not to be blamed for their situation, that they do not deserve to be
abused and even killed simply because they inhabit the streets.
Otherwise, street children will continue to meet fates similar to the
tragic fate of Patrício Hilário da Silva, the young boy killed by
someone who believed he did not have a future.
Works Cited
Dimenstein, Gilberto. Brazil: War on Children. London: Latin American
Bureau, 1991.
Human Rights Watch. “Promises Broken: Police Abuse and Arbitrary
Detention of Street Children.” 1999. 10 par. 23 October 2004 <http://
www.hwr.org/campaigns/crp/promises/police.html>.
Jeffrey, Paul. “Where the Poor Are ‘The Disposables:’ Social Cleansing in
Colombia.” The Christian Century. 112 April 12, 1995: 380-382.
ProQuest. U of San Francisco, Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 24
October 2004 <http://www.proquest.com>.
Kaufman, Cynthia. Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change.
Boston: South End Press, 2003.
Kirk, Robin. Generation Under Fire: Children and Violence in Colombia.
New York, NY: Human Rights Watch/Americas, 1994.
Man, Nathalie. Children, Torture and Power: The Torture of Children by
States and Armed Opposition Groups. London: Save the Children, 2000.
Scanlon, Thomas J., et al. “Street Children in Latin America.” British Medical
Journal. 316 May 23, 1998: 1596-1600. ProQuest. U of San Francisco,
Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 24 October 2004 <http://
www.proquest.com>.
Summerfield, Derek. “If Children’s Lives are Precious, Which Children?” The
Lancet. 351 June 27, 1998: 1955. ProQuest. U of San Francisco,
Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 24 October 2004 <http://
www.proquest.com>.
United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1948.
Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society
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Woodbridge, Jonathan. “Peace Brigades International: What We Do.” April
2003. 9 par. 23 November 2004 <http://www.peacebrigades.org/
workoverview.html>.
Cassidy Condit
WRW - 21
Writer’s comment: In Dr. Andrew Goodwin’s Media Theory &
Criticism class, students applied five different media theories to
five different mediums: a content analysis of radio, a semiotic
analysis of advertisements, a Marxist critique of television, a
psychoanalytic analysis of film, and an application of
postmodernism to music. The Marxist critique was easily the
biggest challenge to write, due to my shaky understanding of the
technique and difficulty in finding an appropriate TV show. Not to
mention I had a sizeable chip on my shoulder after writing two
lackluster analyses which had, as Dr. Goodwin put it, too many
“journalistic flourishes.” So I read and reread our class texts, got
to know Karl Marx, and for several nights holed away with my
girlfriend’s Sex and the City DVDs and six pints of Häagen-Dazs.
When I emerged, I was one paper and 40 pounds richer.
—Dave Rinehart
Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and
the City
Dave Rinehart
Reader’s comment: Dave Rinehart’s deliberately focused paper
uses a general kind of Marxist criticism to explicate and analyze
the highly ingrained world of a popular television show. In lesser
hands, this Marxist approach would have produced merely
surface-oriented scorn for a highly commercialized product. In
Dave’s hands, however, his critical effort helps the reader
understand the show’s explicit and implicit references to consumer
capitalism and illustrates how capitalism can, directly and
indirectly, empower women socially but also objectify them
personally by making them sartorial objects for the hippest
designers and fleshly billboards for the newest trends. Dave’s
effort illustrates a bright thinker at work: on one hand, he is a keen
observer of the material; on the other, he actively participates in
creating his criticism. His writing is lively and insightful, happily
exhibiting a tuned ear for the cadence of prose.
—David Ryan, Rhetoric and Composition
WRW - 22
Introduction
Arthur Asa Berger, in his book Media Analysis Techniques,
writes: “The bourgeoisie try to convince everyone that
capitalism is natural and therefore eternal, but this idea,
say the Marxists, is patently false, and it is the duty of Marxist
analysts to demonstrate this” (51). It will be my duty over the
course of this paper to expose and explicate the capitalist,
consumerist and classist aspects of the TV show Sex and the City
using Marxist criticism.
Sex and the City aired its final episode in spring 2004,
concluding a massively successful six-season run on the HBO
network. The series, created by Darren Star, is based on the sex
advice columns of Candace Bushnell. The fictionalized TV
version re-imagines Bushnell as Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica
Parker): a young, single New York woman who narrates the show
and serves as its primary focus. Each episode is based around her
weekly column, with the topic typically regarding relationship
dynamics between men and women. Over the course of an
episode, Carrie will write on her laptop (with accompanying
narrative voiceover), wine and dine with her group of closest
friends Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda, and carouse with her
boyfriend, who come and go in and out of her life through various
episode arcs.
I will primarily be focusing on episodes from seasons two and
six of Sex and the City, mostly because they happened to be what I
had at my disposal. This essay will analyze, using Marxist
techniques, Carrie’s role as the “bourgeois hero,” the show’s
capitalist and consumerist aspects, the ways in which its characters
and viewers may engage in commodity fetishism, and the show’s
representation of classism.
Carrie Bradshaw as the “Bourgeois Hero”
Karl Marx wrote, “The ideas of the ruling class are, in every
age, the ruling ideas; i.e., the class which is the dominant material
force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force”
(italics his) (78). Throughout history, the ruling class has been
responsible for the production of the most popular culture industry
texts. It makes sense, then, that the ruling class would utilize the
Dave Rinehart
WRW - 23
media to glorify and promote themselves, producing texts that
celebrate the bourgeoisie lifestyle. The main characters that
populate these texts, then, often function as “bourgeois heroes,”
who “maintain the status quo by ‘peddling’ capitalist ideology in
disguised form and by helping keep consumer lust at a high pitch”
(60). (To clarify, Berger separates “bourgeois heroes” and
“bourgeois heroines,” but I have made the term gender-neutral.)
As the show’s main character and narrator, Carrie functions as
Sex and the City’s bourgeois hero. The series details her many
travails through high society New York, mingling with wealthy
socialites and dating powerful investment bankers and corporate
executives – and then getting paid well to detail said interactions in
her newspaper column. In a typical episode, Carrie will shop at
upscale boutiques, dine in fancy restaurants, sip expensive wines,
and/or receive dazzling gifts. While in the first two seasons she is
seen wearing rather generic (though good-looking) clothing and
flat-soled shoes, from season three on she seemingly only wears
designer clothing and stilettos.
The show’s producers, however, do attempt to portray Carrie
as down-to-earth: she chain-smokes cigarettes, gets hangovers,
cries, and ends up in many embarrassing situations. These
situations make her relatable to the show’s majority female
viewership, while simultaneously placing her on a pedestal of
bourgeois taste and lifestyle. While many female viewers might
see themselves in Carrie’s various character nuances, they will also
be envious of her abundance of expensive possessions. To use an
example from the opposite gender: male comic book readers see a
little or a lot of themselves in gawky teen Peter Parker, but dream
of rising beyond their real-life state and taking to the skyscrapers
as Spider-Man.
Capitalism & Consumerism
In the six episodes I watched from season two of Sex and the
City, it was difficult to find scenes where characters are interacting
without simultaneously consuming. Carrie is nearly always
smoking a cigarette while writing, she talks to her friends over
meals at nice restaurants, and she goes to bars and clubs with her
beaus. Even while walking and talking, the friends will also be
Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and the City
WRW - 24
sipping lattes or have the obnoxious neon ads of Times Square as a
backdrop.
One could argue that these types of scene setup are merely a
reflection of the kind of interactions people have on a daily basis. I
would argue, however, like Berger did in his quotation that
introduced this paper, that this is just an example of the bourgeoisie
trying “to convince everyone that capitalism is natural and
therefore eternal” (51). Sex and the City is a celebration of
capitalism, as its characters drift in and out of various capitalist
outposts, finding new and exciting ways to consume. It is
amazing, then, how rarely we see them actually in the act of
spending money; but this is, again, Berger’s argument of natural
capitalism. Drinks are poured, food served, and pedicures
administered as if this was the way of the world.
This style of episode structure fosters in its audience a false
consciousness, “in leading people to believe that ‘whatever is, is
right’ (Berger, 49). After being beaten over the head with images
of the program’s characters interacting and consuming, viewers
may be led to believe that the one cannot happen without the other.
In order to talk with friends about serious, thought-provoking
matters, the characters must do it over drinks or dinner.
Commodity Fetishism
Operating at peak popularity with virtually no slowdown for
the past several years, Sex and the City has, therefore, been a
prominent trendsetter in the world of fashion. Many of the main
characters’ clothing, shoes, and various accessories have exploded
in real-life as hot commodities among upper-class women.
Specific examples include Carrie’s “Carrie” necklace, which
inspired women to get their own personalized necklace, and her
distinctive Mahnolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo stilettos. The show
has functioned as a go-to source for fashion tips among the viewers
who can afford to, both financially and physically, wear the same
items.
But the commodity fetishism Sex and the City inspires in its
audience would be nothing if not practiced by its own characters.
Indeed, characters will often spend an entire episode wanting a
particular commodity, and the majority of their dialogue will even
Dave Rinehart
WRW - 25
focus around it. As a grand example of irony, one of the last
episodes in season six had Charlotte, the naïve do-gooder of the
group, indulging a salesman’s shoe fetish in return for free high
heels, so long as she let him fit her. She returns again and again,
unwilling to let her personal shoe fetish go and simultaneously
satiating his, far more sexual one.
Regarding Samantha, the group’s vixen, it is important to bring
in the concept of hegemony. The basest definition of the word is
provided by Berger as “that which goes without saying,” and in
television it regards the different standards of conduct between the
genders, races, ages, etc. that are taken for granted. John Fiske, in
his essay “British Cultural Studies,” writes: “women, so the
hegemonic reading would go, are rewarded for their ability to use
their beauty and talents to give pleasure to men” (303).
Sex and the City can easily be typified as antithetical to typical
TV gender hegemony. While regular programming may portray
men going through a series of female partners, Sex reverses this
notion by portraying a group of independent, freethinking women
who keep men at their mercy. But ultimately, the show’s
progressive feminism is canceled out by commodity fetishism, a
condition which makes the women vulnerable and willing to lower
their typically high standards.
For example, Samantha uses sex as a way to satisfy her
expensive tastes. Until the final season, she exclusively dates
exceedingly wealthy men who pay for her every indulgence. In
season two, she even leads on a mid-70s executive-type man,
remaining in bed with him so long as he whisper fantasies of
dream vacations in her ear. Although Carrie chastises her for this
decision, Samantha remains on, dreaming of happiness based on
material wealth.
Classism
Class is an issue that is addressed on both latent and manifest
levels in Sex and the City. Latently, differences can be shown with
the four main women interacting with a dichotomy of workers:
newspaper or hot dog vendors are usually always Hispanic males
and beauty salon workers Asian females, while employees of the
upscale restaurants and shops are usually always white men and
Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and the City
WRW - 26
women. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda live life in a
vacuum, staying on a narrow track that lead them from event to
event with similar working, acting, and looking people.
Class differences are made manifest in episodes like one from
season two where Miranda, a self-made millionaire, struggles with
dating a blue-collar bartender, Steve, who in subsequent seasons
becomes her husband and the father of her child. Unlike other TV
programs, class is certainly not ignored or overlooked in Sex and
the City but, as Berger states, it acts as an apologist “for the ruling
class in an effort to avert class conflict and prevent changes in the
political order” (51). Sex and the City portrays ethnic men and
women doing the “dirty work” and white people enjoying the
comforts of the bourgeois lifestyle as the natural, unbreakable
order of the American class system.
Marxist Criticism
Marxist criticism seems to be the most heavily criticized of the
five primary media analysis techniques. Berger has qualms with
Marxists in that they are “prisoners of the categories of their
thought, and the questions they ask of a work of popular art carried
by the media are often rather limited” (66). Similarly, Theodor
Adorno writes: “[T]he very intelligentsia that pretends to float
freely is fundamentally rooted in the very being that must be
changed and which it merely pretends to criticize” (Jay, 116).
Since the analysts are so firmly imbedded in the culture they are
attempting to critique, their results cannot be trusted for objectivity
and truth. I think that Mimi White says it best, however, in her
essay “Ideological Analysis and Television.” She writes:
[T]he classical Marxist approach is limited by its inability to account
for the fact that…most people watch television, most of the time,
because they find it enjoyable. In this sense, classical Marxism does
not provide sufficiently subtle critical and theoretical perspectives for
dealing with the pleasures of contemporary culture, including
watching TV. (166)
My Marxist criticism of Sex and the City is perhaps marred by
my personal enjoyment of the show. It is difficult for me to
abandon my appreciation of the show’s sharp writing and clever
Dave Rinehart
WRW - 27
scenarios to systematically tear down its capitalist overtones. Like
White says, my critiques fail to take in the aforementioned ways in
which fellow viewers could also enjoy the show, even ignoring its
consumerist celebration and commodity fetishism. (For instance,
fetishisms for expensive high heels and personalized necklaces are
completely lost on me, a straight male viewer.)
Methods such as content analysis and semiotic analysis are
more conducive to studying television. A content analysis of Sex
and the City could count the frequency of scenes where characters
are interacting and simultaneously consuming, and compare it to
the amount of times they converse without the burden of
consumerism. Semioticians could have a field day with the series,
analyzing the signs and signifiers in its main titles sequence,
analyzing its characters’ evolution over the six seasons using a
diachronic perspective, and even applying Propp’s dramatis
personae to the main characters and revolving door of supporting
characters. These are merely methods of analysis, however. In my
opinion, Marxist criticism is best suited as a method for breaking
down the series’ most contemptible elements; those rooted in
capitalism and consumerism.
Works Cited
Berger, Arthur Asa. Media Analysis Techniques. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage,
2005.
Fiske, John. “British Cultural Studies.” Channels of Discourse, Reassembled.
2nd ed. Ed. Robert C. Allen. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press,
1992.
Jay, Martin. Adorno. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984.
Marx, Karl. Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. Ed. T.B.
Bottomore, M. Rubel. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
White, Mimi. “Ideological Analysis and Television.” Channels of Discourse,
Reassembled. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert C. Allen. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North
Carolina Press, 1992.
Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and the City
WRW - 28
Writer’s comment: In nearly every workplace, the men to women
ratio does not accurately reflect the population. But in journalism
particularly, where the journalists come face to face with the public
and are expected to have a fair and accurate view of the world, an
extreme gender bias exists. If the media cannot set a proper ex-ample,
is it possible for any field to have equality? As a woman
and a media studies student preparing to enter the field of journal-ism,
there was no other topic that seemed more important or more
interesting for me to research and write about for Chris Paterson’s
Introduction to Media Studies course. We were given the freedom
to write on whichever topic interested us, and I found this to be
most appealing to both men and women, journalists or not.
—Crystal Roberts
Instructor’s comment: The point of our introductory course in
Media Studies is to encourage students to forget everything they
thought they knew about media and culture (and where these
originate), and to critically dissect media messages and the media
institutions which seek to convince us of their version of truth.
Crystal rose to this challenge admirably with her original and
thorough investigation of gender imbalance in journalism. She
especially distinguished herself by consulting, and intelligently
interpreting, a good deal of scholarly writing on the topic, a rare
combination for an introductory course. Even though most media
and journalism students today are women, the balance of power in
journalism still favors men, and American news coverage
that pays scant attention to women’s issues continues to reflect
that.
—Chris Paterson, Media Studies
Women in Journalism
Crystal Roberts
WRW - 29
Women in Journalism
Throughout the late twentieth century, American women
journalists have struggled to find an equal place in the news
media industry. Although they have made some progress
over the past few decades, and despite the significant increase in
the number of women in journalism, the news continues to be
male-dominated. This has a strong impact on the way that news is
presented because news content varies depending upon the
reporters and editors of the news, and it is found that in order for
women to make a positive difference in journalism, they must be in
positions of power.
Like many other industries, the number of women entering
journalism continued to increase after World War I, and by the
1920s, women represented 25% of journalists in the country
(Beasley and Silver, 67). However, they were not equal with their
male counterparts, and almost never reported on “hard” news, with
few exceptions, because of their male editors. Nearly a century
after the First World War, situations have progressed only slightly.
Although the number of women in journalism is slowly rising,
news continues to be controlled by men. As editors, producers,
employers, and owners, men continue to hold power, giving
women very little power and only a small degree of influence on
news.
Research shows that the ratio of women to men in journalism is
much less than that of the actual population and that journalism is
not an accurate reflection of reality, although it usually claims to be
such. Julia Wood states, “Media misrepresent actual proportions of
men and women in the population. This constant distortion tempts
us to believe that there really are more men than women and,
further, that men are the cultural standard” (234). Women are very
much underrepresented in journalism, and by this
misrepresentation, it leads society to assumptions that women are
really in the minority, while this is not the case in reality.
There was, however, some growth in the number of women
journalists in the 1970s and 1980s. In their book, David H. Weaver
and G. Cleveland Wilhoit state, “From 1971 to 1983, the
proportion of women in journalism increased notably” from about
one fifth to just over one third (177). But by the 1990s, growth
seemed to come to a halt, and in 1992, American journalists were
WRW - 30
Crystal Roberts
no more likely to be male than female than ten years earlier
(Weaver and Wilhoit, 177). Weaver and Wilhoit go on to state,
“When compared with the total U.S. labor force, the percentage of
women in journalism in 1992 lagged behind by more than 11
points, and was at about the same level as the percentage of
women in the total U.S. labor force in 1971 (34%),” despite
“dramatic increases in women journalism students in U.S.
universities and an emphasis on hiring more women in journalism
in the 1980s” (177-8). While journalists’ education was found to
be equal among men and women, men were still being hired for
the majority of jobs. Men made up the majority of journalists, but
Weaver and Wilhoit’s study claims, “By 1992, there was no
significant educational gap between men and women journalists,
either at the bachelor’s- or graduate-degree level. In fact, just over
83% of the women journalists in 1992 held at least a bachelor’s
degree, compared with slightly more than 81% of men journalists”
(178). Therefore, although women had just as much formal
education in their field as men, they were receiving fewer jobs.
A similar study was reported by the United States Commission
on Civil Rights, who state, “30 per cent of the work force at
television network headquarters and also at network-owned
stations in 1977 was female” (qtd. in Gallagher, 87). This figure
included not only journalists, but women employees as a whole.
By 1994, women only made up 36.1% of TV newspeople on the
three big network affiliates ABC, CBS, and NBC (Stone),
compared to 58% in the entire workforce (Bunton). This
demonstrates that although the number of women in the entire
workforce was raising at the time, women journalists were lagging
far behind. Thus, the representation of women in journalism is not
proportional to the actual population of female workers.
WRW - 31
Proportion of Women Journalists to
Workforce Population
34% 36.10%
45%
58%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
1992 1994
Year
Percentage
Women
Journalists
Total Workforce
The stall in growth during the early 1990s is again seen in
1996. According to an article from Media Report to Women, “A
survey from the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation and
Ball State University indicates that the total percentage of women
in TV news (37%) remained the same in 1996-97 as in 1995-96.”
However, other data from RTNDA states that the percentage of
women in the local broadcast workforce grew in 2000 to 40%, but
fell again in 2004 to 39.1%. Growth has virtually stopped, and the
article goes on to state that the survey also shows “that women are
14% of news directors, down from 17%,” and by 2004, the
percentage only grew to 25.2% (RTNDA). Thus, not only has the
number of women journalists remained unchanged, but the
percentages of female news directors have also been mostly
unaffected, meaning a small percentage of women authorities.
According to Barbara Murray Eddings, in the late 1970s, it was
almost impossible to find a woman news anchor on television.
Barbara Walters says that it was inconceivable for a woman to be
“head of the program” (qtd. in Eddings, 4). Today, however, it is
much more common to see women as anchors of television news,
as well as a few reporters. Many networks have gravitated towards
placing women on-air in highly visible spots, such as CNN’s Paula
Zahn and ABC’s Barbara Walters, so that it appears that women
have a stronger voice in news. However, this is not the case as
seen in much of the research done on television news.
Television news subjects women to something that Jannette
Dates and William Barlow call a “split image,” which means that
women “are considered good enough to be seen up front and on
camera, but not to be trusted with the reigns of power” (qtd. in
Bunton). Also, Teresita Hermano and Anna Turley claim that
Women in Journalism
WRW - 32
Crystal Roberts
although women make up the majority of news anchors, it is not
the same amongst reporters; 69% of reporters are male. Further
research by Edwin Diamond, Stacey Bradford, and Jennie Amato
states, “Some of the reporters PressWatch interviewed made the
point that the increased presence of women in the campaign press
can be misleading, because the big stories still go to men.” But
ABC producer Pam Hill says that having women in “highly visible
jobs on camera” is not the problem, but rather that they are not in
“the real decision-making, producer and executive level jobs” (qtd,
in Eddings, 2). Thus, women lack any real power in editorial
influence as well as reporting despite what seems to be a greater
appearance of women in television news.
Percentage of News Directors
0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
80.00%
100.00%
1972
1982
1992
2000
2002
2004
Year
Percentage
Women
Men
Men continue to be in control of the news. Joyce Reed, news
director at KWTV in Oklahoma City says, “We have a long, long
way to go before we dominate newsrooms. But we’ve come a long
way since 1976 when I was the only girl in the newsroom” (qtd. in
Prato). Women have indeed made some progress in journalism
over the decades, and it is now much more likely to find a woman
in a position of authority than would have been found in earlier
years of television news. According to Gallagher,“[Media
Watch’s] most recent study found that women were 18% of all
newsmakers in 1990 and only 20% in 1998. In fact, there had been
no increase since 1992” (47). One of the most important positions
would be executive producers, who are the top decision makers
and determine stories others cover as well as content of news
programs. In his study, Vernon Stone found that women make up
only 32% of executive producers and only 26% of all managerial
positions. Women were and continue to be a small minority
WRW - 33
among those in control of the news. Thus, as John Hartley states,
“News is not only about and by men, it is overwhelmingly seen
through men” (qtd. in Gallagher, 47).
The roles that women play as editors and other authorities are
significant because their influence on news stories is different from
a man’s editorial influence. Even if a woman is free to write a
particular story, she is likely to be influenced by the owners and
head executives of the organization for which she works. In her
book, Margaret Gallagher explains this by stating, “Journalists’
output has been found to be conditioned by the reward system and
political preferences of their employers.” She goes on to say, “The
parameters of success are male-defined and women are not in a
position to make the rules” (111). Thus, they are not really free to
write what is important to them if their superiors are men, whom
find different issues most important and newsworthy.
Gallagher also states, “Professional beliefs may indeed
undervalue women and women’s interests- for instance, certain
topics may be defined as uninteresting and unimportant” (111).
Thus, women will conform to male beliefs and practices, and will
compromise their personal values for the sake of their jobs, or as
Gallagher says, “Allied to a real sense of powerlessness within the
decision-making structure, and a need to satisfy perceived male
attitudes, this may lead professional women deliberately to ignore
what are personally important but professionally difficult issues”
(111). Thus is shown that it is essential for women to have
decision-making power in journalism in order to be free to produce
material in which they believe is important and newsworthy.
An instance where women and men find different news stories
“newsworthy” would be a report by the Boston Globe’s Jill
Zuchman as she covered Bob Dole in a debate for the presidential
primary. She found that in a question during the debate, Dole
contradicted himself several times. However, while she thought
that it would be a key story, Diamond, Bradford, and Amato say
that men covering the same debate did not find it newsworthy, but
other women did include the story in their reports. Thus, what
women find as key stories, and “major blunders” (Diamond,
Women in Journalism
WRW - 34
Crystal Roberts
Bradford, and Amato), are tossed aside by men who do not find
such stories newsworthy.
When a woman does have power, she will have a different
influence on what is important for the public to know. The output
will be different because the individual journalists are influenced
by their female employer. Belinda Hopkins, a project consultant at
the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), claims, “It’s only when people are in
decision-making positions… that they have any influence on the
programming or orientation of the media” (qtd. in Pantin). Thus, it
is essential for women to have decision-making power in order to
make a difference in the news.
WEnews correspondent Laurence Pantin states, “When women
do have decision-making power, the news often looks different.
The obvious stories are still there, but there is more texture, more
nuance, more about women.” Since the news is predominantly
controlled by men, news stories and agendas change depending
upon who is in control of the news- men or women. When women
make the decisions, much more of the stories focus on social issues
rather than politics; more stories feature women as the subjects of
news as compared to men as the priority of news stories.
According to a study by Doris A. Graber:
Women show somewhat greater concern than men about social issues…
refer more often to economic issues, especially inflation… talk less about
foreign affairs and defense matters than men and show less concern with
energy and other resource conservation… are less concerned with
problems of national prestige and government credibility, and they talk
less about current political problems… Women are somewhat more likely
than men to express general feelings of like or dislike for the candidates
and to mention demographic characteristics like age and occupation. They
are less likely to discuss the candidates’ political philosophy. (18-20)
Thus, women and men differ in what they find is important to
convey in the news. Women focus on social issues that concern
the greater society, while men prioritize politics and government
affairs.
Peter Hart of the University of Pittsburgh argues that a
reporter’s gender does indeed make an important difference in
news. He discusses how being a woman reporter was an advantage
WRW - 35
in the 2000 senatorial campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton. In
this campaign, former Associated Press reporter Beth J. Harpaz
interviewed Clinton, and found that they had a lot in common with
each other because of their experiences as women. Harpaz states:
As more women get into the position of reporting the news, the definition
of what is news has changed. A generation ago, a story about breast
cancer would probably not have been on the front page or the subject of
editorials in all the major newspapers. I think what we might be seeing
here is that the definition of what is newsworthy has changed as women
are more prominent in the media, reporting the news and producing the
news. (qtd. in Hart)
Thus, as women become reporters and producers of news, the
news content changes and priorities shift.
Women also increase the number of positive portrayals of
women in news, according to Lee Jolliffe and Terri Catlett whom
did a study on women’s magazines and their content depending on
the presence of women editors. In this study, Jolliffe and Catlett
describe their study of gender stereotypes in women’s magazines
based on women being in control of the content. They found:
[The] presence of women editors was correlated with more positive
portrayals of women… As the proportion of women editors increased, the
number of articles describing women as active masters of their
environments, as independent, as knowledgeable, and as self-reliant
increased. (806)
However, the study also found that a rise in stories about
women may also have been due to the feminist movement during
the study period. Thus, having women editors contributed to
positive portrayals of women but was not the “sole cause of them”
(807), and the women’s movement at the time of the study was a
likely influence of the results found. Also, Julia Wood says,
“Some media analysts believe that if more women had positions of
authority at executive levels, media would offer more positive
portrayals of women” (235). It is only when women are free to
write what they believe despite executive opinions will they be
able to break professional and cultural barriers and present
women’s views more accurately.
Women in Journalism
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Crystal Roberts
Women also see news topics differently than men and present
them to the public in a different style. Karen Tumulty claims, “As
a woman, I bring certain sensitivity to certain issues” (Diamond,
Bradford, and Amato). Diamond, Bradford, and Amato also quote
Lisa Anderson by stating, “Because women process certain
information differently from men, ‘they are more likely to burrow
through the rhetoric’ and find the human dimension—‘what it
means to ordinary people.’ Female reporters… ‘are less romanced
by the political b.s.’” Thus, women convey a meaningful message
to their audience; not to say that men do not, but women make the
material less complicated by putting the information in simple
terms, so that the audience can grasp and understand what they are
trying to say.
Many of the obstacles that women have faced in journalism
(and still face today) were the same as the rest of the women’s
struggle in breaking the barriers of traditionally male professions.
Journalism is no exception for this struggle. Judith Gelfman says
that “traditionally, television news broadcasting has been a male
occupation. The major news of the world, events that concern men
and women equally, has long been assumed to be a masculine
perogative” (1). In an interview with Gelfman on March 12, 1973,
Virginia Sherwood of ABC-TV said, “Women are new in this
field… women are new in a lot of fields” (87). Three decades
later, women are no longer new, and few things have changed. As
Hermano and Turley state, “While women are more present in the
newsroom, they continue to be victims of harassment and
discrimination.��� They still face discrimination based on gender,
such as stereotypes, unequal pay, and suppression under male
authority.
Gender plays a significant role in television news. Despite the
majority of gender differences resulting in discrimination, some
women have found that being a woman in journalism has a few
advantages. For instance, many stations will hire women just
because they are looking to “increase the number of on-air women
in their ranks at [that] time” (Gelfman, 82), so being a woman is a
plus. There are also some instances where women have an
advantage because they are not seen as “a threat,” says Gelfman.
Gelfman goes on to state, “These people tend to be more open and
WRW - 37
trusting than they would be with a male reporter” (83). Thus,
gender has a few advantages in television news.
On the other hand, the majority of women in television news
find that being female is a definite disadvantage in their profession.
One newswoman says, “I don’t think men respect women… I don’t
think they really respect their opinions” (qtd. in Gelfman, 85).
Besides being disrespected as reporters, women are taken less
seriously. Hermano and Turley state that “women journalists are
often confined to reporting local news rather than national or
foreign news and ‘soft’ topics such as entertainment or health more
often than politics or crime.” This idea of women reporting on
“soft topics” is frequently mentioned by other research studies. A
counter argument is sometimes made, saying that the stories are
assigned because the subject matter is appropriate for the gender of
the reporter. However, Teresa Brown on WPIX-TV explains that
she often gets food stories despite the fact that she does not know a
thing about cooking (Gelfman, 89).
Former CBS White House correspondent Deborah Potter says,
“Women journalists often think they must avoid being perceived
by their male colleagues in the newsroom as ‘soft,’ so they may
resist raising ethical questions about invasion of privacy” (qtd. in
Bunton). Women run the risk of being labeled “aggressive,” so
they may back down because they feel the “constant need to fight
preconceived notions of what a women can do and what she looks
right doing” (Gelfman, 84). Gelfman also states that women in
news are finding that they have to prove themselves to show that
they are worthy of their jobs as reporters (87). Because they are
being assigned to report on “soft” issues, they are taken less
seriously, and therefore must struggle to be seen as equals.
However, as they rise to the challenge of becoming an equal, they
must face the obstacle of finding the balance of being taken
seriously but not discriminated against as aggressive,
unprofessional, or inappropriate.
An instance of such discrimination and women being assigned
to certain roles is WNEW-TV’s Ted Kavenau’s statements on sex-role
distinctions. He says that women will “perform well” if they
are put “into a role which is suitable for [their] sex” (qtd. in
Women in Journalism
WRW - 38
Crystal Roberts
Gelfman, 93). This demonstrates the stereotypes into which
women are labeled as having a distinct role apart from men. But
top television news correspondent Al Primo opposes this belief,
stating, “A good reporter can cover any story” (qtd. in Gelfman,
93). Thus, there are many contrary beliefs about women’s role in
journalism.
Women also face a double standard on television news based
on appearances. Marlene Sanders and Marcia Rock state, “It is
undeniable that television is an entertainment medium and that
one’s appearance does affect one’s reception by an audience…
There is no doubt that women face more pressure than men do on
television in terms of appearance, age, and demeanor” (147). The
same criterion is not applied equally to men and women. Bernard
Shaw of CNN says, “There are men, over age 50, on television,
reporting news. They are gray, some are wrinkled, some are
balding, but their graying hair is ‘distinguished’… I defy anyone to
name one woman in television news who has been allowed to
wrinkle and gray and lose hair on-camera” (qtd. in Bunton). And
so, women, unlike men, are pressured to remain young-looking and
attractive in a society that “glorifies youth” (qtd. in Wood, 251),
for the sake of their jobs, while men can look old and gray and still
be considered wise because of their old age. As Shaw says, “They
are ‘experienced’” (qtd. in Bunton).
Although not very substantial, there is also discrimination in
equal pay for women journalists, just as in most other industries in
which men dominate. Weaver and Wilhoit’s study found, “The
salary gap [in 1982-1983] between men and women had decreased
somewhat from 1970. From 1981 to 1991, that gap decreased even
more… Overall median salaries in 1981 were 81% of those for
men, compared with 64% in 1970” (181). They go on to say that
“the strongest predictors of U.S. journalists’ income in 1992 were
number of years of experience, size of news organization, type of
news organization, and holding managerial positions” (181). This
shows that incomes are primarily based on levels of experience and
power. However, being that the majority of those holding such
positions are men, it indicates that women must receive lower
incomes.
WRW - 39
And so, women have made some progress in journalism over
the past few decades. They started out as a small minority, and
now have a greater representation than in the past. However, their
increased presence in news has not overcome the continuing
dominance of men. Men continue to be in control of news content
as editors, producers, managers, and directors, thus making the
majority of decisions. Women have somewhat advanced in this
area, becoming more present in the decision-making process, but
they are only a small portion of a larger whole. It is shown that
when women are in control of the news, the news is different
because definitions of what is “newsworthy” changes. As women
become more in control of the news, the news focuses more
heavily on social issues with less emphasis on politics and foreign
affairs. But in order for women to make these changes in news
content, they must be in positions of authority. As they continue to
struggle for a more powerful voice in news, women face obstacles
of gender discrimination. They must overcome traditional
stereotypes of women’s roles and fight to be respected as equals in
the field of journalism. In time, women will become more
powerful and more in control of the news, and the news will more
accurately reflect the proportions of the population in terms of
gender, as well as views of society. But until then, as Jinx Melia
says, “Men [will continue to] control the media, and therefore, our
views of the world” (27).
Works Cited
Beasley, Maurine and Sheila Silver. Women in Media: A Documentary Source
Book. Washington, D.C.: Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press,
1977.
Bunton, Kristie. ��A Case Study: Gender and Media in the US.” Common
Concern Magazine. Sept. 1997. World YWCA. 1 Nov. 2004. <http://
www.worldywca.org/common_concern/sept1997/media_gender.html>.
Diamond, Edwin, Stacey Bradford, and Jennie D Amato. “As reporters, women
have come a long way, but is it far enough?” National Journal. 25 May
1996. ProQuest. Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 31 Oct. 2004. <http://
www.proquest.com>.
Women in Journalism
WRW - 40
Crystal Roberts
Eddings, Barbara Murray. “Women in Broadcasting.” Women and the Media.
Ed. Helen Baehr. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980.
Gallagher, Margaret. Gender Setting: New Agendas for Media Monitoring and
Advocacy. London: Zed Books, 2001.
Gallagher, Margaret. Unequal Opportunities: The case of women and the
media. Paris: The Unesco Press, 1981.
Gelfman, Judith S. Women in Television News. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1976.
Graber, Doris A. “Agenda-Setting: Are There Women’s Perspectives?” Women
and the News. Ed. Laurily Keir Epstein. New York: Communication Arts
Books, 1978.
“Growth of women in TV appears stalled, study suggests.” Media Report to
Women. Winter 1998. ProQuest. Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 31 Oct.
2004. <http://www.proquest.com>.
Hart, Peter. “There are some differences when women are covering the
campaign.” University Times. 21 Feb. 2002.
Hermano, Teresita and Anna Turley. “‘Who makes the news?’ The Global
Media Monitoring Project 2000 finds great disparities in news coverage of
men and women.” Nieman Reports. Winter 2001. Gale Group Databases.
InfoTrac. Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 31 Oct. 2004. <http://
www.infotrac.galegroup.com>.
Jolliffe, Lee and Terri Catlett. “Women Editors at the ‘Seven Sisters’
Magazines, 1965-1985: Did They Make a Difference.” Journalism
Quarterly 71 (1994): 800-8.
Pantin, Laurence. “When Women Run Newsrooms, Women Are in the News.”
Women’s eNews. 6 Apr. 2001. 1 Nov. 2004. <http://
www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=504>.
Prato, Lou. “Women Move Up in TV Newsrooms.” American Journalism
Review. Nov. 1996. Gale Group Databases. InfoTrac. Gleeson Lib., San
Francisco, CA. 3 Nov. 2004. <http://www.infotrac.galegroup.com>.
Radio-Television News Directors Association and Foundation. RTNDA/F
Research. 18 Nov. 2004 <http://www.rtnda.org/research/research.shtml>.
Sanders, Marlene and Marcia Rock. Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of
Television News. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
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Stone, Vernon. “Minorities and Women in Television News.” Television and
Radio News Research. Missouri School of Journalism. 1 Nov. 2004. <http:/
/www.missouri.edu/~jourvs/gtvminw.html>.
Stone, Vernon. “Who Does What in TV News?.” Television and Radio News
Research. Missouri School of Journalism. 1 Nov. 2004. <http://
www.missouri.edu/~jourvs/tvwho.html>.
Weaver, David H. and G. Cleveland Wilhoit. The American Journalist in the
1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era. New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1996.
Wood, Julia. Gendered Lives, Communication, Gender, and Culture. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1994.
Women in Journalism
WRW - 42
Writer’s comment: Growing up in a predominantly African
American neighborhood, I often had trouble identifying with other
Asian Americans and sometimes felt ostracized from them. Those
within the Asian American community assumed that my isolation
from our culture and our people was due to a lack of pride—as if I
were “ashamed” of my origins. Upon coming to USF, I found
myself surrounded by Asian Americans. The university and civic
environments aroused a curiosity in me that never existed before: I
wanted to become more aware of the culture and society to which I
belonged. As a result, I decided to pursue a minor in Asian
American Studies so that I may better understand myself and
address the concerns of my community. These courses—including
Professor Dempster’s Asian American Literature Survey, English
211class—have offered me so much insight that I was able to form
ties between myself and other Asian Americans. These connections
have made me more passionate about my writing by allowing my
audience to look into my private life. Writing has also given —me
the opportunity to do something that other women in my culture
have not been allowed to do: speak.
—Amy Truong
Instructor’s comment: In this essay, Amy makes a strong statement
not only about Asian American womanhood and the restrictions of
female cultural and gender roles but also about the clash between
the older generation’s traditional values and the younger
generation’s individual desires. I admire the synthesis of literary
analysis and family history in this piece, how well the layers
resonate with one another. Breaking through social codes that
enforce silence, Amy’s piece articulates—with courage and hon-esty—
the tensions between familial responsibility and personal
freedom, the challenges to the Asian American female who is
compelled to speak.
—Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition
Gender Expectations and Familial Roles
within Asian American Culture
Amy Truong
WRW - 43
Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture
In Mercy Lake he started his new job as a photocopy machine
repairman . . . He maintained the new Chevrolet sedan—changed the
oil, followed the tune-up dates, and kept good records of all repairs. . .
He labored on the yard. (Chang, 135-136, 140)
She laundered Ming’s new work clothes: permanent-press shirts with
plastic tabs inserted in the stiff, pointed collars; bright, wide ties . . .
In the kitchen, Sansan learned to cook with canned and frozen foods.
She made cream of tomato soup for lunch, and stored envelopes of
onion soup mix for meat loaf or quick onion dip. More often . . .
Sansan consulted the Betty Crocker cookbook. (138-139)
Are these from an episode of Leave It to Beaver? No.
These are excerpts from Lan Samantha Chang’s, “The
Unforgetting.” Ask yourself what these excerpts mean to
you. They may just simply remind some of you of an episode of
Leave It to Beaver because these were the characteristic roles of
men and women some decades ago when television sets only came
in black and white—men were the breadmakers while women were
the caretakers. For others, including myself, they are reminders of
the life that still exists . . . a life that is representative of many
Asian American families today.
In many Asian cultures, gender plays a role in dictating what
you do. Certain members of the family are designated specific
responsibilities that compliment their respective gender roles much
like the characters in Leave It to Beaver. The males support the
family financially and control the household, and the women take
care of the family and household chores. Lan Samantha Chang’s
novella, “Hunger,” parallels the events in my life and shows how
gender roles are still very apparent in today’s Asian American
families.
Within Asian culture, women are raised and taught to be
silent and obedient. I am a first generation Vietnamese American
and growing up, I was told, “Do not comment or speak up,”
whenever I wanted to voice my opinion. My opinion was
considered unimportant. And for many years of my life I believed
that this was true. I never spoke a word unless I was asked to
speak or spoken to . . . until I finally became tired of being mute.
As a young teenager, my parents were going through difficult
WRW - 44
Amy Truong
times with their marriage. One night, my mother, father,
grandmother, brother and I sat down to have a family meeting
about the issues between my parents. My dad did all the talking
while my mom sat in silence like she always did. “Your mother
has committed terrible sins and has destroyed our family,” he said
to us sternly in our native language. Not once during the entire
family meeting did anyone in the family speak other than my
father. Before the meeting ended, I finally worked up the nerve to
defend my mother since she refused to defend herself. “Daddy,
you shouldn’t speak about Mommy like that in front of us,” I
declared. As soon as I said it, my father slapped me hard on the
back of my head and told me, “Do not ever speak unless you have
been instructed to.” I immediately received a scolding from my
mother and grandmother as well. Ironically, it was my mind that
they thought was poisoned, and they blamed America for my
“rebellious” breaking of silence.
The characters in Lan Samantha Chang’s “Hunger” also suffer
from silence. Min, the wife, very rarely speaks a word when she
does not agree with her husband. Instead, she lets him do as he
pleases and remains quiet as a good Asian wife. For instance, her
husband treats their youngest daughter in ways that she does not
particularly agree with. Her husband places a lot of pressure on
their daughter and that is not how she wants their children to grow
up. Yet she remains silent, because she believes that it is her place
to let her husband control their family and their daughter in the
way that he wants. For example, the mother’s silence is
demonstrated on one occasion when her daughter and husband are
screaming:
Baba, let me stop!
You go ahead and cry! . . . You cry all you want! . . . You cry! But—play!
. . . As I ironed I watched Anna fiddle with the frayed towels that had once
been pink but now were faded to a creamy white . . . I opened my mouth
but my throat was dry. (59)
She wishes to protect her daughter and attempts to speak, but
chooses to refrain from doing so due to her respective role as a
woman and wife. Ironically, it is only after her death that she is
able to voice her thoughts. In essence, the novella’s point-of-view
WRW - 45
is symbolic and emphasizes how a woman’s voice can be silenced
due to her gender role.
Ruth, the youngest daughter, is also silenced and lets her father
live vicariously through her. Though she hates it, she does not
speak against his wishes. For example, her father makes her play
the violin and has her practice for hours on end. She practices so
much everyday that it brings her to tears and causes her to resent
her father, because she cannot do or say anything that will prevent
him from forcing her to play. For instance, when she and her
father are locked in the practice room, he tells her,
Do you understand? From now on, you work. You practice everyday . . .
No no no no—Her voice rose to a shriek. There was a slam as he closed
the door, and they were trapped inside the room together.
. . . He clapped and counted. She played and cried. (60)
Though she cries and screams, she continues to play because this is
her father’s desire. Irony once again occurs. Just as Tian leaves
his family to pursue his passion for music, Ruth’s passionate hate
for that same music drives her to leave her family as well. As a
woman, she is put in an impossible position: her breaking of
silence and fighting back is a form of defiance and shows a lack of
respect towards the male figure, causing the destruction of this
family.
In Vietnamese culture, the oldest daughter is also expected to
play a major role in the house—she is expected to handle
household chores and responsibilities in the absence of a mother.
My mother is the oldest daughter and was only fourteen when she
arrived in the United States after the Vietnam War. My mother
came to this country with her older brother, Nihn (age 18), her two
younger brothers, Can (10) and Toan (4), and her younger sister,
Ngoc (5). “Life was very hard and unbearable sometimes,” she
said. My mother had to take on the difficult responsibility of
taking care of all her siblings. At the tender age of fourteen, she
assisted her siblings with their schoolwork, put food on the table
and clothes on their backs, attended school, worked a part-time
job, and attempted to learn the English language. My grandparents
finally arrived in the United States (along with two more children)
when my mother was 22 years old. “I thought it was over,” she
Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture
WRW - 46
Amy Truong
told me. But this was not the case. My grandparents expected
more from my mother because after eight years in the United
States she spoke the English language, understood how the system
worked, and already seemed to have things under control. My
grandparents soon developed a bad gambling habit and left my
mother to take on the burden of caring for her six siblings. I ask
my mother why she continued to put up with it. She responded
only by saying, “I am obligated, Amy.” Till this day my mother is
the one who holds her family together, and one day she expects me
(the oldest and only daughter) to do the same for my siblings and
our family.
In “Hunger,” Anna is the oldest daughter who, like my mother,
has the responsibility of taking care of the home in the absence of
her mother. She hires men to work on the home, decorates it so
that it will be more presentable, and even gives tours to interested
buyers. Strangely, she denies bids on the house and does not move
out into a beautiful loft, a comfy townhouse or spacious
condominium. As much as Anna longs to sell the house in order to
rid of all their unhappy memories, a part of her feels obligated to
stay there. For instance, Anna’s mother watches her as she lays in
bed and notices, “through all this, Anna sleeps; but on some nights,
as the melodies fade away, she shudders and sits up in bed . . .
Perhaps she has been dreaming of her greatest hope and fear—that
the house is gone, that it is destroyed, and nothing more remains of
it” ( 114). Anna’s personal desire to forget her family’s past
conflicts with her duty to her family to keep their home. Anna
stays loyal to her gender and familial role by remaining in that
home, resulting in restless nights due to her split conscience.
On the other hand, men play a very different role in an Asian
family. They are the primary (and often only) breadmaker in the
family. My father came to the United States when he was 23.
Because of his limited knowledge of English, he found it difficult
to obtain good work or even go back to school. “No one would
hire me because my English was very hard to understand,” he
explains. This affected him ten years later when he and my mother
married. Because my father did not know the language well, my
mother was the breadwinner in their relationship. This made my
father “lose face.” Not being able to contribute to the household as
WRW - 47
much as your wife was a shameful thing and made him lose a lot of
his pride. “I was very embarrassed that your mother made more
than me. I was too ashamed to even go out because I worried that
others would see me and speak badly of me,” my father states, no
longer embarrassed. Not being able to provide for the family
financially, my father expressed his “manliness” in other ways.
Though my mother made most of the money, he decided where
that money would go and how it would be distributed. He was also
very strict, held strongly to Vietnamese traditions, and made sure
we knew that he still wore the pants. He made sure that I was
never out late, because traditionally it was not appropriate for a
young lady to be out past dark. Even to this day, I am expected to
be home and in bed at 10 p.m. He made sure that we never spoke
English in the house so that we would remember where we came
from and so that others would know that we were still very
Vietnamese even though we were born American. When we spoke
English, he either ignored what we said or scorned us for doing so.
“You must remember your origins. This house is not a white
man’s house,” he droned in our native language. He also made
sure of this by having my mother cook traditional Vietnamese
meals everyday and restricted us from having things such as
burgers, fries and sodas. He told us, “Vietnamese food is healthier
than American food . . . tastes better too. All Americans know how
to do is fry their food. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, are real
chefs.” My father is now trying to regain his respect and honor by
taking night courses and practicing his English with my mother
and his children. He hopes that by doing this he will earn a better
job with better money so that he can fulfill his duty as a man and
father.
Tian, the father in “Hunger,” is the breadwinner and the head
of his household, much like my father. He provides the only
source of income and does so by first working as a music
professor, then in a restaurant. He also calls all the shots and
makes all the decisions for each member of his family. For
example, he decides that Ruth is going to play the violin and that
she is going to play it well by forcing her to practice whenever she
has free time. According to the novella, “All morning during
summer vacations, plus two evenings a week, he sat in the tiny
Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture
WRW - 48
Amy Truong
room for hours and helped her practice” (62). Though the text
indicates that he is helping Ruth, no normal teenager wants to be
locked in a room practicing a craft that he/she has no interest in.
Therefore, force is used on Tian’s part to get her to do so. He also
decides that she is not going to attend the university where he once
taught even after they offer her a scholarship. They have an
argument and he demands,
You’re staying here.
Let go of my arm! You’re hurting me!
You are not leaving this house as long as you are still a child. Do you hear
me?
I’m not a child!
You’re my daughter and I’m your father! (72)
It is not traditional among Asian families for a child to leave the
home to attend school. His refusal to succumb to this American
tradition represents his need to control the family.
Tian also tells his wife Min what to do. One such incident
occurs after his recital. Tian’s colleagues want him to stay and
have some drinks. He tells them that Min is tired, but it is she who
insists that they stay. He hushes her quickly and tells her that they
are going to go home. Min urges him,
It is okay. My [Min’s] voice cracked against the words . . . Come on, said
Tian. He took my arm and pulled me around the corner, to the coatrack.
I’m not that tired; I could have gone out with them . . . Why did you want
to leave so much?
. . . I want to go home. (22)
Though Min is persistent that her husband mingle with his
American friends, his desire is apparently more important than
hers, displaying both his power and her silence. Tian, like many
other Asian men, including my father, is the money-earner and
controller of the family. They both support the family financially
and make all the decisions pertaining to each member of the family
whether or not protest occurs.
Male sons also have a respected role in the Asian family. They
are expected to bring in income and help with the household
expenses as well. My younger brother, Tim (19), lives with my
WRW - 49
parents and has paid rent every month since he was seventeen and
received his first job. My parents do not like to call it rent. They
prefer to term it “duty” or “obligation.” Tim is still young and
would prefer to spend his money to go out and have fun with his
friends. He and my parents constantly argue about this topic but
my parents do not budge. “Tim, it is your responsibility to
contribute to the needs of the family. This is only preparing you so
that one day you can handle the responsibility of being a father, the
man of the house, when it is your time,” they continually insist to
him in Vietnamese. Likewise, they tell Tim that American
traditions have made him ungrateful and lazy. In due time, they
will be lecturing the same thing to my other younger brother, Will
(5), as well.
In “Hunger,” all of the characters, like my brother, struggle
between achieving their individual desires and observing their
respective gender and familial roles. Min wishes to speak her
thoughts, but her role as a wife prevents her from doing so. Min
has other desires and yet after “Twenty-one years . . . I had never
admitted my disappointment with him. I had not complained about
a lack of money or time together. I had taken what he brought
home and made it into our daily lives” (94). Min is very unhappy
and though she yearns to express her disappointment and opinion,
she can not because she has to maintain her role as dutiful wife.
Tian decides to pursue his love for music but at the cost of
abandoning his family and his responsibilities to them. According
to Tian,
‘Everyone . . . has things they want to do in their lives. But sometimes
there is only one thing—one thing that a person must do. More than what
he is told to do, more than what he is trained to do. Even more than what
his family wants him to do. It is what he hungers for’. (28)
Unlike some members of his family, Tian chooses his own
personal longing over his obligation to his respective gender and
familial role, claiming that it is something that he must do, as
though he has no choice.
Ruth challenges her prescribed role as a daughter so that she
can live the life that she always wanted to, also at the cost of her
family. She searches for freedom from her duties, saying, “ ‘I’m
Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture
WRW - 50
Amy Truong
quitting! I’m never going to pick up a violin again for as long as I
live.’ And without a pause, he cried, ‘Then I don’t want you! You
are not my daughter! You are nothing!’ ” (88). After this heated
exchange, Ruth “walked to the door, opened it, and stepped
outside” (90). Ruth and Tian have their differences, but they are
very much alike. As stated earlier, they both leave their families to
pursue their dreams, disregarding their responsibilities to their
family.
Anna wishes to forget all her memories by selling their home.
Instead, she is true to her respected role and remains in that home
even against her own wishes. For example, “One day she opened
the door to a brisk young couple full of plans, the woman’s belly
swollen with hope like freshly risen dough . . . They bid, and Anna
refused to sell” (107). Anna has invested much money into fixing
the house so that she can begin to forget the past it holds, but her
obligation to stay in that house so that her family’s story can be
saved keeps her from doing so.
Like my brother, the characters of “Hunger” make sacrifices in
order to fulfill their roles. Likewise, those who follow their desires
make huge sacrifices as well. Their personal longings and
respected gender and familial roles create internal conflicts that are
a part of their everyday lives just as is so with members of today’s
Asian American families.
It has been 30 years since my parents first arrived in the
United States. Most people would expect them to assimilate to the
American culture by now but they are deep-rooted in their Asian
traditions and way of thinking, just as Min and Tian from the
novella “Hunger” are. They raised my brothers and me by
attempting to pass on their way of thinking, hoping that we honor
our roots. We are Vietnamese and were raised to understand and
adhere to Vietnamese values, meaning that we are to accept our
gender and familial roles as many of Chang’s characters do. What
my parents fail to understand is that we are also American and
have been greatly immersed in and influenced by the American
culture as well. My siblings and I believe that gender roles are a
thing of the past . . . a thing that belongs to the generation, time,
and country in which my parents grew up.
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In essence, my siblings and I are Anna and Ruth in “Hunger”
while my parents are Min and Tian. We are a great representation
of an Asian American family torn apart by our prescribed gender
and familial roles. Reminiscent of the family in “Hunger,” my
family is one of many Asian American families conflicted with
such issues. These issues tear apart the family in Chang’s story,
but many Asian American families are learning to cope with these
problems by finding a balance between familial responsibilities
and personal desires instead of letting one or the other dictate their
lives completely. For us, these issues have become an everyday
part of our lives and our struggles seem to be far from over. There
is much that my siblings and I need to understand about the
immigrant generation and vice versa. Whether or not these
conflicts will ever disappear is still a mystery and has yet to stand
the test of time.
Works Cited
Chang, Lan Samantha. Hunger: A Novella and Stories. New York: Penguin
Books, 1998.
Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture
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The Hamitic Hypothesis: A Pseudo-
Historical Justification for White
Superiority
Travis Sharp
Writer’s comment: European colonizers consolidated their power
over Africa in the late 19th century by erasing the history of “Black
Africa”—the Africa that flourished prior to European infiltration.
Prominent Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper expressed the
typical European sentiment in 1958, writing that pre-colonial
African history was merely “the unrewarding gyrations of
barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe.”
The Hamitic Hypothesis was central to this attempt to deny black
Africans any role in their own history by postulating that migratory
white tribes, known as Hamites, were wholly responsible for
spreading civilized practices throughout Africa. As we discovered
in Professor Hoag’s course, however, this hypothesis was an overt
manifestation of racist ideology, not a legitimate ethnological
theory. My essay endeavors to trace the history of this hypothesis
and explain how African historians repudiated it during the
decolonization movement of the 1960’s.
—Travis Sharp
Instructor’s comments: In my Pre-Colonial Africa course, students
learn about the political, economic, and social complexities and
successes of African societies prior to the onset of European rule in
the late 19th century. Students also write a historiographical essay
in which they analyze the state of the historical literature on a
given subject. Through a discussion of the Hamitic Hypothesis,
Travis Sharp shows how our understanding of social and political
development in Africa has changed. As African scholars took a
prominent role in the writing of African history in the post-colonial
period, the achievements of pre-colonial African societies were
recognized. Sharp draws upon a wide range of sources—from the
Bible to 19th century European intellectuals to modern African
historians—to illustrate the ways in which racial and political
beliefs have influenced the writing of Africa’s history.
—Heather Hoag, Department of History
WRW - 53
At the beginning of the 20th century, “civilized” nations saw
it as their Christian duty to spread modernity to the
“uncivilized” regions of the world. Foremost among these
uncivilized regions was Africa. As the “Scramble for Africa”
unfolded and European powers struggled to assert their supremacy
over the African continent, anthropologists, historians, and
sociologists sought to explain the apparent backwardness of
African societies. Drawing upon racist assumptions of inherent
black inferiority, European scholars gradually came to accept the
validity of the Hamitic hypothesis.
The Hamitic hypothesis transformed hundreds of years of
pseudo-historical research into the most widely accepted
ethnological theory of its day. As colonies proliferated throughout
the African continent, Europeans were shocked to find that many
African societies already exuded vestiges of civilization. The
discovery of advanced African architecture, art, and political
organizations “contradicted the low rankings that the racial
classification schemes of the time accorded dark-skinned people.”1
In order to rationalize such a clear demonstration of black
intellectual ability, Europeans claimed that these achievements
were the result of a cultural exchange between Africa’s indigenous
black tribes and a superior white migrant tribe known as the
Hamites. The white Hamite thus became directly responsible for
everything black Africans had accomplished throughout their
entire history. According to African historian Joseph C. Miller,
proponents of the Hamitic hypothesis believed that “Only a ‘white’
residue in Africans’ cultures could explain so unanticipated a
suggestion of competence among Negroes.”2
This essay will seek to trace the origins and development of the
Hamitic hypothesis. Specifically, it will prove that the Hamitic
hypothesis was a manifestation of racist ideology, not a legitimate
ethnological theory. Finally, it will consider the role of African
nationalism in the refutation and reformulation of the Hamitic
hypothesis after 1960.
Origins of the Hamitic hypothesis
The words of the Bible have been periodically misconstrued by
Christians trying to legitimize their unjust actions. The Hamitic
The Hamitic Hypothesis
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Travis Sharp
hypothesis is a perfect example because its biblical origins
ultimately led to the belief that black inferiority was divinely
sanctioned by God. The term “Hamitic” comes from the biblical
figure Ham. In the Book of Genesis, Noah exited the ark with
three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. One day, Noah became
drunk and fell asleep naked inside his tent. Ham mistakenly
discovered his father’s nakedness, and then ran to tell his brothers
about it. Shem and Japheth quickly ran inside the tent and covered
their father but made sure not to look at his unclothed body. Upon
awakening, Noah became furious at Ham, who was the father of
Canaan, for gazing upon his nakedness. Noah swore:
Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem!
Let Canaan be his slave.
May God expand Japheth,
so that he dwells among the tents of Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave.3
This seemingly innocuous conflict effectively sentenced Ham’s
descendants to perpetual servitude. Nowhere in Genesis, however,
do we see evidence that Ham was black. In fact, race is mentioned
in neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament. The
traditional belief that Ham was a black man developed much later,
not being explicitly formulated until the Babylonian Talmud of 500
C.E.4
Europeans readily accepted the curse on Canaan as a
denunciation of the black race despite the absence of racial
identification in the original biblical account. Part of this
acquiescent approval was related to suggestions of inherent black
inferiority elsewhere in Western literature, particularly in the works
of classical Graeco-Roman writers. For example, when
introducing a discussion of certain Ethiopian primitives, the
Sicilian historian Diodorus wrote:
The majority of them…are black in colour and have flat noses
and woolly hair. As for their spirit, they are entirely savage
and display the nature of a wild beast…and are as far
removed as possible from human kindness to one another;
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and speaking as they do with a shrill voice and cultivating
none of the practices of civilized life as these are found
among the rest of mankind, they present a striking contrast
when considered in the light of our own customs.5
This account by Diodorus is markedly negative, portraying the
Ethiopians as a sub-human species incapable of replicating
civilized practices. Classical accounts, however, were not always
so explicit in their degradation. Herodotus, the most noted of
classical geographers, exhibits a more subtle ethnocentrism in his
description of western Libya: “Huge serpents are found, and the
lions…and the creatures without heads whom the Libyans declare
to have their eyes in their breasts, and also the wild men, and the
wild women.”6 Although Herodotus is not as pejorative as
Diodorus, his comments still make Africa seem like a dangerous
place where civilization cannot possibly flourish.
The condescending attitudes of classical writers had a
significant impact on later works by modern thinkers. As the
Enlightenment revolutionized academia, white scholars struggled
to explain the allegedly vast disparity in ability between
themselves and black Africans. There were two primary theses:
the black African was either condemned as incorrigibly inferior, or
lauded as a victimized “noble savage.” Georg Friedrich Hegel’s
The Philosophy of History (1832) perhaps most vividly illustrates
the view that black Africa was hopelessly incapable of reformation.
Hegel postulated that Africa was “the land of
childhood…enveloped in the dark mantle of night” and had neither
“political constitution” nor “moral sentiments.”7 He concluded
that “the character of the Negroes…is capable of no development
or culture.”8 Hegel is one of the giants of modern Western
philosophy, but his outright denial of African efficacy forces us to
acknowledge the fact that for many Europeans of the 19th century,
Africa had become “the antithesis of Western civilization.”9
Contrasting with Hegel’s view was the idea that uncivilized
natives were actually much better off than civilized peoples. This
ideology extolled the virtues of the noble savage and became
increasingly popular during the late 19th century. African historians
Paul Bohannan and Philip Curtin explain the appeal of the noble
savage in their classic Africa and Africans (1988):
The Hamitic Hypothesis
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Travis Sharp
As the Europeans struggled with the problems of a complex
and increasingly technical society, it was useful to imagine
other people who were free to practice the simple virtues born
of innocence, closer to nature, and somehow free of the
incessant struggle for power and domination that marked
European class and international relations.10
The noble savage theory was clearly expressed in Jean Jacques
Rousseau’s Emile (1762), the story of a peaceful “savage” who is
uprooted from his family and ultimately corrupted by the
trivialities of modern society. Another poignant example,
particularly for Americans, is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s
Cabin (1852). The moral resiliency and Christian piety
demonstrated by black slaves Tom and Eliza contrasts sharply with
the unscrupulous greed of the white slave-trader Haley. Emile and
Uncle Tom’s Cabin were both enormously popular in their day and
serve as lasting testaments to the unspoiled virtuousness of the
noble savage.
The Hamitic hypothesis rises to primacy
Having addressed the intellectual origins of the Hamitic
hypothesis, it is now time to discuss its ascension to primacy. As
was already mentioned above, Europeans traditionally believed
that Ham and Canaan were black. Thus, “The Negro was seen by
Europeans as a descendant of Ham, bearing the stigma of Noah’s
curse to be, forever, the white man’s drawer of water and hewer of
wood.”11 This view conveniently justified slavery as a biblical
mandate. One of the most astonishing things about the Hamitic
hypothesis, however, was its adaptability. The Hamites, or
descendants of Ham, were quite malleable, and could be cited to
support any European assertion of inherent black inferiority.
The Hamitic paradigm shifted drastically after Napoleon’s
expedition to Egypt in the early 19th century. French
archaeologists uncovered the forgotten grandeur of an Egyptian
civilization that had flourished more than a thousand years before
Greece and Rome. After exhaustive research, Napoleon’s
scientists concluded that the ancient Egyptians were indeed
“Negroid.”12 This conclusion, however, was totally unacceptable
to the European intellectual community. It not only meant that
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Africans were capable of building advanced civilizations, but also
implied that they had done so a thousand years before white
Graeco-Romans. To combat this theory of black intellectual
equality, European theologians and ethnographers reformulated the
premises of the Hamitic hypothesis. They postulated that in the
Bible, Noah had only explicitly cursed Canaan; thus, Ham and his
other sons were technically not condemned to a life of servitude.
Ham’s son Mizraim was subsequently identified as the patriarch of
Egypt, leaving Canaan and his progeny alone to assume the
malediction of perpetual slavery.13 Freed from the curse of Noah,
it was agreed that Ham must have been white. E.R. Sanders, who
published a pioneering critique of the Hamitic hypothesis in 1969,
concludes that “The Egyptians emerged as Hamites, Caucasoid,
uncursed and capable of high civilization.”14
Having secured the legacy of ancient Egypt as a white
civilization, the Hamitic hypothesis became a salient feature in the
rapidly developing ethnology of the late 19th century. At this time,
two theories emerged regarding the origins of modern humans:
evolution and diffusion. Evolution, also known as polygenism or
the Candelabra hypothesis, maintained that human societies
developed through similar, protracted stages of development.15
There was no single cradle of civilization from whence our earliest
human ancestors emerged; instead, Homo sapiens sapiens evolved
independently and in parallel (like the branches of a candelabra)
throughout different parts of the world. Although this theory
would appear to refute the Hamitic hypothesis, European scholars
interpreted it to mean that in terms of development, “Western
Europe represented one of the highest stages, black Africa one of
the lowest.”16 It naturally followed that the only reason under-evolved
black Africa exhibited semblances of civilization was
because it had usurped them from white Hamitic northern tribes.
Notice the Hamitic hypothesis’ ability to adapt to seemingly
contradictory evidence. This malleability illustrates the pseudo-historical
racial motivations perpetuating the Hamitic myth.
The second theory proposed to explain human origins was
diffusion. Also known as monogenism or the Noah’s Ark
hypothesis, diffusion clearly corroborated the Hamitic
hypothesis.17 Diffusion held that there was a unity to mankind, and
The Hamitic Hypothesis
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Travis Sharp
that all the races had originally emerged from a single parental
stock.18 Although it has since been unequivocally refuted,
ethnologists of the 19th century believed that humans first evolved
in Mesopotamia, subsequently migrating away from there to
colonize the rest of the globe.19 No one dared to suggest that these
earliest Mesopotamians were anything but white. The diffusionist
model was critical because it not only reinforced the Hamitic
hypothesis, but also transformed the European approach to Africa,
as historian Philip Zachernuk explains:
The diffusionist approach to early human history posited a
single invention of most elements of civilization, rather than
their repeated discovery by separate cultures. Primitive
cultures advanced less by their own agency than by acquiring
the tools or ideas for improvement from superior foreigners.
[…]Diffusion could explain exceptions to African stagnation
as the traces of foreign invaders. Further, it set precedents
for colonial occupation: just as Africa had once needed
Hamites to be improved, so now it needed Britons.20
Instead of acknowledging Africa’s unique and independent
history, the theories of evolution and diffusion corroborated the
Hamitic hypothesis by whitewashing African development. The
famous African historian W.E.B Du Bois observed that “All
history, all science was changed to fit this new condition. Africa
had no history. Wherever there was history in Africa or
civilization, it was of white origin; and the fact that it was
civilization proved that it was white.”21 Deprived of their history,
Africans were seen as impotent pawns waiting to be manipulated
by their European superiors. This negative stereotype resulted in
the conception that African history was non-existent before
European intervention. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of
History at Oxford University, wrote in 1958:
Undergraduates, seduced as always, by the changing breath
of journalistic fashion, demand that they should be taught
the history of black Africa. Perhaps in the future there will
be some African history to teach. But at the present there is
none, or very little: there is only the history of Europeans in
Africa. The rest is darkness…Men existed even in dark
countries and dark centuries, but to study their history would
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be to amuse ourselves with the unrewarding gyrations of
barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the
globe.22
Though they sound abhorrent, Dr. Trevor-Roper’s words were not
unusual in Eurpoean academia. The Hamitic hypothesis pillaged
the history of Africa, subordinating it to small minded conceptions
of European superiority.
Along with evolution and diffusion, comparative anthropology
was another development of the late 19th century that endeavored
to scientifically substantiate the intrinsic inferiority of black
people. Phrenology, the study of the shape and protuberances of
the human skull, was especially important to proponents of the
Hamitic hypothesis because it linked physical traits to mental
ability.23 Phrenology divided the human race into four
distinguishable sub-species: the Australoid, the Negro, the
Caucasian or European, and the Mongolic or Asiamerican.24 The
craniums of the four sub-species were then compared to see which
were the largest. Not surprisingly, Caucasians were found to have
the largest skulls, while Negroes exhibited the smallest skulls.25
Although most anthropologists thought that phrenology constituted
cutting-edge science, hindsight demonstrates that their supposedly
irrefutable “scientific” evidence reinforced many gross
miscalculations about inherent racial abilities.
The most influential racial anthropologist of the late 19th
century was Sir Harry Johnston. Utilizing phrenology, Johnston
asserted that “The Negro, more than any other human type, has
been marked out by his mental and physical characteristics as the
servant of other races.”26 The “White Man,” by contrast, is the
prime cause of all “upward evolution.”27 Johnston’s pseudo-scientific
racism became even more pronounced as his career
progressed. For example, consider his thoughts on the physical
appearance of the “Negro Sub-Species”:
Dark skin, squash nose, woolly hair, “blubber” lips, and “lark
heel”—these are the principal taunts flung at the Negro. The
dark skin affects not the sculptor’s eye, but the other four
points are the Negro’s handicap in the competition for the
Beauty Prize at some future Interracial Olympiad. Greater
refinement of life will no doubt tend—is slowly tending—to
The Hamitic Hypothesis
WRW - 60
Travis Sharp
modify or eliminate the elements of facial ugliness; but the
most effective method of doing so is crossing with the
Caucasian.28
Quite frankly, it is hard to imagine a more prejudiced perspective.
Physical appearance, however, was not the only thing Johnston
found lacking in Africans. With regards to their sexual practices,
Johnston wrote:
The Negro has been so busy eating, drinking, marrying and
begetting, that he has devoted little attention to the arts and
industries […] The savage negro type is essentially unmoral.
Men and women of this race are probably more inherently
lustful, more eagerly addicted to sexual pleasures, than are
the mass of Asiatics, Europeans, white Americans, and black
Australians.29
Johnston clearly does not consider black Africans to be human
beings. In highlighting their deficiencies, however, Johnston also
highlights his own. Racial bigotry ultimately tarnished his
anthropological legacy, exacting revenge on a man devoted to
“scientifically” proving the inferiority of black Africans.
Comparative anthropology would have a lasting effect on the
Hamitic hypothesis. Until Johnston’s work, the inferiority of
blacks had been assumed, but not substantiated. Phrenology
provided the evidence scholars needed to present the Hamitic
origin of African civilizations as an indubitable fact. Although it
has been disproved by our relatively recently gained knowledge of
human brain activity, phrenology enjoyed decades of success as the
leading explanation of white superiority. Unfortunately, the
popularity of phrenology “Left a residue of prejudice from which
anthropology was long in freeing itself: the idea that head shape
was meaningful did not disappear until well into the twentieth
century.”30
Utilizing phrenology as concrete scientific proof, proponents of
the Hamitic hypothesis sought to justify the European “Scramble
for Africa” in the late 19th and early 20th century. Wyatt Macgaffey,
who specializes in African racial history, points out that “From the
European point of view, the classification of races and specifica-
WRW - 61
tion of their attributes served, directly or indirectly, to sanction the
colonial enterprise.”31 During this period, European powers irrev-erently
divided the African continent in order to establish profit-able
colonial settlements. As they became more familiar with the
accomplishments of indigenous African societies, the Hamitic
hypothesis cogently reassured Europeans of their innate superior-ity.
For example, Europeans were awestruck when they first
encountered the Great Zimbabwe Ruins in southern Africa. The
highly advanced architecture defied the popular expectation that
“darkest Africa” would consist of nothing more than savage semi-nomadic
tribes. European scholars, however, rapidly discredited
anyone who dared to propose that black Africans were responsible
for Zimbabwe’s magnificent ruins. Allister Macmillan, a compiler
of various commercial guides to the British Empire, wrote in 1912:
There are unenlightened persons who assert complacently
that these unexampled structures are of Bantu artistry. Pitiful
their limitations and their childish theories. They can never
see the forest for the multitude of trees. Bantu peoples are
unchanging; they are as they used to be, farmers, herdsmen,
elemental, of small brain capacity.32
Macmillan’s words clearly indicate the authoritative position
the Hamitic hypothesis had assumed by the beginning of the 20th
century. Even the daunting physical evidence provided by the
Great Zimbabwe Ruins was not enough to convince European
scholars that Africa was capable of civilization. The rehabilitation
of the biblical Ham, the theories of evolution and diffusion, com-parative
anthropology, and the “Scramble for Africa” combined to
elevate the Hamitic hypothesis to primacy. Utilizing the theories
of his predecessors, Charles G. Seligman would soon pilot the
Hamitic hypothesis to its climatic zenith.
The Hamitic hypothesis reaches its apex
The Hamitic hypothesis emerged from a long-standing
tradition of European ethnocentrism, and developments of the 19th
century further enhanced its reputation as a viable explanation for
African backwardness and inferiority. Up to this point, however,
there had not been a lucid scholarly work that explicitly formulated
The Hamitic Hypothesis
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Travis Sharp
all the important principles of the Hamitic hypothesis. That all
changed in 1930 when C.G. Seligman published his famous Races
of Africa.
Seligman was a British ethnographer who had worked
extensively in Africa. Affectionately known as “Sligs” to his
contemporaries, Seligman attained “massive respect and prestige”
among colonial-era British scholars and anthropologists.33 The
contributors’ list to Seligman’s festschrift read like a “Who’s Who”
of the European ivory tower, with every major figure in the field
paying obeisance to his legacy: from Bronislaw Malinowski to
Melville Herskovits, Louis Leakey to Marcel Mauss, Audrey
Richards to George Pitt-Rivers.34 As Saul Dubow has remarked,
Sligs was “a key intellectual broker in the world of inter-war
British anthropology.”35
In Races of Africa, Seligman argues that Africa can be divided
into two separate racial regions: the people of the northern division
are essentially white or light-skinned Hamites of “European” type,
while the southern division is populated by dark-skinned Negroes
with “spiraled hair.”36 The Hamites, “who belong to the same great
branch of mankind as the whites,” entered Africa from
Mesopotamia and gradually intermixed with indigenous black
Negroes.37 In so doing, the Hamites unknowingly spread their own
advanced civilization to their less fortunate Negro counterparts:
The mechanism of the origin of the Negro-Hamitic peoples
will be understood when it is realized that the incoming
Hamites were pastoral ‘Europeans’—arriving wave after
wave—better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark
agricultural Negroes, for it must be remembered that there
was no Bronze Age in Africa, and we may believe that the
Negro, who is now an excellent iron-worker, learnt this art
from the Hamite.38
Seligman goes on to assert that iron-working was not the only
thing introduced to blacks by pastoral Hamites. He claims that
drystone walling, rock-cut wells, irrigation systems, complex
political organizations, and age-grade systems are all Hamitic in
origin.39 To dispel any ambiguity, Seligman openly denies black
Africans any role in the impressive developments on their
continent:
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Indeed it would not be very wide of the mark to say that the
history of Africa south of the Sahara is no more than the
story of the permeation through the ages, in different degrees
and at various times, of the Negroes and the Bushmen by
Hamitic blood and culture. The Hamites were, in fact, the
great civilizing force behind black Africa.40
It is worth mentioning that Seligman did not even consider the
Hamites to be completely competent members of the white race.
In fact, the Hamites were originally forced to migrate out of
Mesopotamia and into Africa because they were the dregs of white
society. In light of this revelation, Seligman’s condemnation of
black Africa becomes that much more disparaging. As Ole Bjorn
Rekdal articulates, “Even the cursed among the Euro-Asians were
able to completely outshine the original inhabitants of Africa.”41
Races of Africa was undoubtedly Seligman’s magnum opus and
represented the final evolution of the Hamitic hypothesis. After its
publication, E.R. Sanders writes that “In the eyes of the world the
Negro stood stripped of any intellectual or artistic genius and of
any ability at all which would allow him, now, in the past, or in the
future, to be the master of his life and country.”42 Although it
would be malicious to suggest that Seligman was responsible for
the racial purification programs of Nazi Germany, his endorsement
of inherent “scientific” white superiority did corroborate Hitler’s
racial ideology. The truly amazing thing is that even after