Black Culture, Media Stereotypes, and Domestic Violence

Culture theory is one framework that can be used to explain domestic violence. As Serrat (2017) notes, culture is the set of "distinctive ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge" that define the way people behave and think (p. 31). This theory suggests that the way people act is based on the inputs they receive from their environment; peers, groups, and media all shape their perception of themselves and those around them (Bandura, 2018). If the culture in which they grow up signals that treating people inhumanely is acceptable, then those individuals are likely to engage in domestic violence because they believe it is a mode of behavior sanctioned by their cultural environment. The culture of media, friends, family, schools, churches, and other organizations may all play a part in explaining domestic violence situations.

The African American community has been affected by a number of different issues, including low socioeconomic status, stereotypical media representations that reinforce negative images, and a problematic criminal justice system that appears to target this population unfairly, given that the number of people in prison is disproportionately Black (Davis, 2012). Culture in this sense helps to explain why and how domestic violence festers in the African American community and why nearly half of all Black women will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives (Institute for Women's Policy Research, 2017). This paper discusses the impact of culture on domestic violence in the Black community and the implications of this issue for policy, practice, and research.

Every minute in America, approximately 20 people experience a domestic violence situation (NCADV, 2017). The majority of those who experience this type of violence are, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (2017), Black women: the Institute reports that 40% of Black women experience domestic violence, defined as abusive behavior toward another person in one's household. This behavior can be physical, mental, financial, emotional, or social. Domestic violence is a serious problem because it destroys the stability of what should be a comforting and safe space—the home. As Candace Owens and Angela Davis have both pointed out, Black communities with broken homes are broken communities.

Culture plays a large part in how Black people view themselves and treat one another. The culture that Black communities have been exposed to for years, however, has been one that promotes the degradation of women and the irresponsible and violent behavior of Black men. A stereotype of Blackness as synonymous with criminality has been perpetuated to the extent that even within the Black community this association has taken hold. It is therefore unsurprising that almost half of all Black women are victims of domestic violence.

Stereotypes exist because of preconceived ideas that are formed for a variety of reasons and then propagated through groups and individuals. People tend to view their own groups more favorably than they do others, partly because of a sense of pride in group membership (Hilton & Von Hippel, 1996). Social Identity Theory (SIT) posits that individuals develop a sense of who they are based on their group membership. If a person belongs to a counter-culture group such as the Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter, they are going to be perceived differently by those who hold social power. That perception generates a cycle of anger and resentment, which is compounded by media depictions of Black life—particularly in hip hop, rap, and music videos by artists such as 50 Cent or Lil Wayne, who are portrayed as womanizing, drug-addicted hoodlums. Kanye West has confessed that he too once played up these kinds of Black stereotypes without realizing how hurtful they were to Black communities, how degrading they were to women, and how harmful they were to Black men (Schmidt, 2019).

The research of Breger (2017), Cramer, Choi, and Ross (2017), and Klingspohn (2018) describes the ways in which culture impacts domestic violence. Culture determines the extent to which one has a developed support network to turn to in a domestic violence situation. Culture can also cause someone to remain in a domestic violence environment because it is what they were taught to accept growing up, or because their own culture differs from the mainstream and they risk isolation if they were to leave (Cramer et al., 2017). As Breger (2017) shows, however, the law plays a major role in shaping cultures, and if anything is to be done to address the cultural impact on domestic violence, reform should begin with the law, making it "a positive agent of change" (p. 170). In sum, culture can prevent victims from seeking help, create environments in which domestic violence is normalized, and is shaped fundamentally by those who write the laws.

Culture is also taught by media (Bandura, 2018). This is especially problematic in the Black community because of the way Black culture has been portrayed for decades, going back to Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven (Coleman, 1974). When strong cultural values are not established or enforced, domestic violence increases, particularly among minorities and marginalized groups who are not valued by mainstream culture (Klingspohn, 2018). To reverse the rise of domestic violence among minority and marginalized groups, the broader mainstream culture must become more humane in how it regards others. Yet with so many negative Black stereotypes circulating in media, this remains difficult. More positive images of Blackness in popular media are needed, because media has a significant impact on culture and on how people think about themselves and act toward others (Bandura, 2018).

As Cashmore (2006) notes, "images of blackness are power; the power to frame and affect. The images of Simpson and Jackson presented in the mid-1990s were not just images of black people: they were whites' images, representations created and recreated anew over a period of several hundred years" (p. 5). O. J. Simpson—accused of murdering his white wife; Michael Jackson, accused of molesting white boys: these were the images of Blackness pushed upon the American public by mass media, endlessly, throughout the 1990s. But they were not the only images. At the same time, hip hop artists were doing their part to perpetuate a negative stereotype of Black people as aggressive, thuggish, and immoral (Guy, 2004). As Heaggans (2003) states, "hip-hop artists have taken on the tools of oppression and become the oppressor by perpetuating historically negative images and messages that many whites and others still hold true about black people" (p. 77).

The hip hop and gangsta rap artists of the following generation embraced this ugliness: they essentially announced that if the racist system was going to treat Black people so abysmally, Black artists would use thuggishness to elevate themselves above the system that whites had constructed. The hip hop street "edge" found an audience of millions and in turn gave mass media a vehicle through which the controlling ideas described in the Willie Lynch letter (Lynch, 2011) could be driven into the public consciousness. Some supporters justified the raw content of the music by casting hip hop artists as the spiritual descendants of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.—people who celebrated Blackness. But as Heaggans (2003) shows, they were selling hoodlumism to young people across America and further alienating Black communities from themselves and from others.

The entire purpose of mass media—the Culture Industry—as theorized by Adorno and Horkheimer (2007), was always to propagate ideas that would influence the public in ways that allowed the ruling class to maintain control, much as Willie Lynch recommended that white slave owners maintain control over their enslaved people. Adorno and Horkheimer believed the Culture Industry was focused fundamentally on preventing the working class from rising up and taking power from the owners of the means of production. This analysis translates directly to the issue of racism and the problem Lynch addressed in his 18th-century letter: how to keep Black people subjugated and oppressed without their realizing it. Lynch's solution was to separate Black men from Black women; to trick Black women into believing they should be independent from Black men; to emasculate Black men so they would never dare question their oppressors; and to trick Black men into thinking women deserved contempt and mistreatment. There is, therefore, a direct link between the Willie Lynch letter and the problem of domestic violence in the Black community today.

The principles of the Black perspective in social work are: (1) to respond to oppression and discrimination experienced by minorities, and (2) to maintain sensitivity to all experiences of the oppressed. Before Kanye West began challenging the mental constraints placed on the Black community by white elites—and before he began promoting figures such as Candace Owens, a Black activist responsible for promoting morality and family values as a solution to Black poverty—West was lauded by media gatekeepers. He touched upon nothing in his art that could undermine the oppressive methods being used by the Culture Industry to perpetuate systems of racism and to promote a culture permissive of domestic violence (Pegues, 2018). As soon as he started challenging the Culture Industry, the same industry began depicting him as a buffoon, as mentally ill, and as a figure of mockery.

As Pegues (2018) points out, social media is one space in the broader media landscape that is difficult for the Culture Industry to control. Kanye West and Candace Owens have been able to have a significant media impact precisely because they have become their own media outlets, using social media to reach the public directly. Social media has been especially useful in conveying alternative points of view that contradict the narratives put out by mainstream media. Pegues (2018) notes the support West gave Owens via social media when she challenged the liberal ideologies that both the Left and Right use to oppress Black communities. This kind of direct outreach has an effect on the public similar to the self-delivered messages that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were delivering in the 1960s—men who did not rely on the Culture Industry to communicate with the public. Their reward was assassination. West's reward appears to be character assassination by the Culture Industry.