Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream

by Sut Jhally, Justin M. Lewis

The Cosby Show needs little introduction to most people familiar with American popular culture. It is a show with immense and universal appeal. Even so, most debates about the significance of the program have failed to take into account one of the more important elements of its success—its viewers. Through a major study of the audiences of The Cosby Show, the authors treat two issues of great social and political importance—how television, America’s most widespread cultural form, influences the way we think, and how our society in the post–Civil Rights era thinks about race, our most widespread cultural problem.This book offers a radical challenge to the conventional wisdom concerning racial stereotyping in the United States and demonstrates how apparently progressive programs like The Cosby Show, despite good intentions, actually help to construct “enlightened” forms of racism. The authors argue that, in the post–Civil Rights era, a new structure of racial beliefs, based on subtle contradictions between attitudes toward race and class, has brought in its wake this new form of racial thought that seems on the surface to exhibit a new tolerance. However, professors Jhally and Lewis find that because Americans cannot think clearly about class, they cannot, after all, think clearly about race.This groundbreaking book is rooted in an empirical analysis of the reactions to The Cosby Show of a range of ordinary Americans, both black and white. Professors Jhally and Lewis discussed with the different audiences their attitudes toward the program and more generally their understanding and perceptions of issues of race and social class.Enlightened Racism is a major intervention into the public debate about race and perceptions of race—a debate, in the 1990s, at the heart of American political and public life. This book is indispensable to understanding that debate.

Genres: Race, Nonfiction, Sociology

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Sut Jhally is Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF). He is one of the world's leading scholars looking at the role played by advertising and popular culture in the processes of social control and identity construction. The author of numerous books and articles on media(including The Codes of Advertising and Enlightened Racism) he is also an award-winning teacher (a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts, where the student newspaper has also voted him "Best professor"). In addition, he has been awarded the Distinguished Outreach Award, and was selected to deliver a Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2007.

He is best known as the producer and director of a number of films and videos (including Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Music Video; Tough Guise: Media, Violence and the Crisis of Masculinity; and Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire) that deal with issues ranging from gender, sexuality and race to commercialism, violence and politics. Born in Kenya, raised in England, educated in graduate studies in Canada, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the Cosby Show. It is hands down my favorite TV show of all times so picking up this book was difficult for me. With reluctance to see the Cosby Show in a different light, I picked this book up and challenged my own thoughts on race relations.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. It's all right, but it's also kind of stupid. I have used it in papers a couple times, though.

[Anna Domestico · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish there was a possibility to give half stars because I would give this book 3.5. I don't think it was terrible research, nor was it the best.

Jhally frequently draws conclusions from information that does not directly indicate said conclusion. That is, there isn't overwhelming evidence from the actually source given. He looks at statements from people and draws widespread conclusion (evidence isn't overwhelming in terms of numbers, either).

I don't want to be too hard on him. Coming from a place of academia, I understand that he had a study funded only so much. And only so much time in which to produce results. It was the best he could do given the resources.

Overall, an interesting read. Would prefer excerpts rather than the whole thing. Was also difficult to read, given the recent court cases involving Cosby. Nonetheless, needed to take into account that the Cosby Show did have an overarching cultural impact regardless of it's founder/writer's personal history.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an adult, slowly re-watching the Cosby Show in its entirety, this answered a lot of my questions.