“I can’t believe your mixed ass wasn’t on the pill!”: race and abortion on American scripted television, 2008-2019

Abstract

Racial identities provide important context for understanding reproductive experiences, including abortion. However, this context is often not fully reflected in popular cultural narratives about abortion, including on American television. Because onscreen depictions have the potential to influence public understandings of abortion, it is crucial to examine the messages these plotlines convey about the relationship between race, racism, and abortion access. We analyze a decade of onscreen abortion depictions, finding that the vast majority contain no racially-specific content. When plotlines do portray a character of color obtaining an abortion, these depictions can be both progressive in making race visible and regressive in relying on problematic racial tropes. These patterns differed by race: Black characters often obtain abortions while wrestling with and reinforcing racial stereotypes; Latina characters' abortion stories are predominantly concerned with Catholic judgment. Plotlines featuring Asian or multiracial characters are largely absent. In contrast, white characters' stories comprise the vast majority of abortions on television, and none of these plotlines substantially address issues of race. These disparate patterns obfuscate structural barriers to abortion access and may contribute to the skewed beliefs that the American public holds about abortion.

“From All Sides”: Black-Asian Reddit Communities Identify and Expand Experiences of the Multiracial Microaggression Taxonomy

“…In support of the literature on Black-Asian racial stereotypes (Herold et al 2020;Washington 2015Washington , 2017a, we find that Black-Asian men and women Redditors described encounters where monoracial White, Black and Asian acquaintances, classmates, friends, and family members projected racialized, gendered, and hypersexualized stereotypes towards their multiracial identity. Our analysis indicates that Black-Asian users, particularly men, overwhelmingly discussed navigating stereotypes of their Black heritage as strong, masculine, hypersexual, ignorant, and deviant compared with their Asian heritage as weak, feminine, and submissive.…”

“…Their findings suggest that popular culture stereotypes Black-Asian womanhood as hyper-sexual, parallel to the "jezebel" controlling image stereotype of monoracial Black women (Hill Collins 2000) or the purity stereotype of monoracial Asian women (Chou 2012;Herold et al 2020). For illustration, Herold et al (2020) find that multiracial Black-Asian women are depicted as simply "displaying" sexuality, whereas monoracial Black women are shown to "deploy" theirs. Furthermore, in a review of media coverage on Tiger Woods, Washington (2015) found that the professional golf player navigates both Black racial stereotypes, such as "hyper-sexuality", "hyper-aggression", and "criminality", and Asian stereotypes such as "bad-driver", and "femininity".…”

“…Nadal et al (2011) found that mixed-race populations experience racial stereotyping at similar rates to monoracial minority groups. Unfortunately, there is little empirical investigation into how Black-Asian individuals self-report racial stereotypes; thus, most of the research on Black-Asian stereotypes draws from representation in the media (Herold et al 2020;Washington 2015Washington , 2017aFeng 2018). For instance, Herold et al (2020)analyzed the identity construction of Vietnamese and African-American actress, Karrueche Tran, in the television show Claws (Laurence 2018).…”

“…Unfortunately, there is little empirical investigation into how Black-Asian individuals self-report racial stereotypes; thus, most of the research on Black-Asian stereotypes draws from representation in the media (Herold et al 2020;Washington 2015Washington , 2017aFeng 2018). For instance, Herold et al (2020)analyzed the identity construction of Vietnamese and African-American actress, Karrueche Tran, in the television show Claws (Laurence 2018). Their findings suggest that popular culture stereotypes Black-Asian womanhood as hyper-sexual, parallel to the "jezebel" controlling image stereotype of monoracial Black women (Hill Collins 2000) or the purity stereotype of monoracial Asian women (Chou 2012;Herold et al 2020).…”

“…For instance, Herold et al (2020)analyzed the identity construction of Vietnamese and African-American actress, Karrueche Tran, in the television show Claws (Laurence 2018). Their findings suggest that popular culture stereotypes Black-Asian womanhood as hyper-sexual, parallel to the "jezebel" controlling image stereotype of monoracial Black women (Hill Collins 2000) or the purity stereotype of monoracial Asian women (Chou 2012;Herold et al 2020). For illustration, Herold et al (2020) find that multiracial Black-Asian women are depicted as simply "displaying" sexuality, whereas monoracial Black women are shown to "deploy" theirs.…”