Early On: Locating Secondary Sources

Bring the most recently published book you’ve located on your secondary source to class with you. Try to find one that has been published in the last seven years.

Step I. Use the Library of Congress Subject Headings to locate more sources.

In Class: Look at the subject headings listed on the bibliographic information page. In the space below, write down the phrases seem most related to your RAE.

Afro-Americans in mass media

Mass media and race relations––United States

United Status––Race Relations

For Homework:

1. Pull up the book in the university catalog. Scroll down to the related subject headings and browse them. OR type in one of the subject headings that you listed above into a Subject Headings search.

2. On your REA Blog, provide the subject heading that lead you to locating a new book (s). Give the MLA citation information for the new book(s) you located.

Unfortunately, the library search is down so I am unable to search the catalog right now. I’ll search it tomorrow under the subject “African Americans in mass media” which is a derivation of one of my subjects from the library of congress.

Step II. Use the Legwork in the Introduction.

In Class: The introduction or first chapter of a book often reviews the previous scholarship done in the field. Scan these pages of your book and note the titles they give. You may also find this information in the foot- or endnotes for the chapter.

List quotations from the source that state what those sources mean and how they fit into the argument. Give page numbers.

New Source #1 located in context:

Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York, 1994.

“As demonstrated by studies that ask for rankings of ethnic groups, Blacks are generally the most vulnerable, though this varies somewhat by locale and circumstance. Moreover, as Winant³ points out, unlike Whites, African Americans have little control over society’s group identification of them; most are visibly marked as African Americans, and most Whites are hyperconscious of each individual’s racial membership.” (Entman, The Black Image in the White Mind pg. xiii)

New Source #2 located in context:

Donald Bogle. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York, 1989

“Growing beyond the myths of genetic racial hierarchy, the current culture rejects the most overt claims of Black inferiority––and this ironically cultivates White impatience and hostility. / The contrast becomes clear when we compare Hollywood’s submissive, jolly Black mammies and uncles of the 1930s or 1940s⁴ with the aggressive Black characters in such films of the 1990s as Independence Day or Jerry Maguire,” (Entman, The Black Image in the White Mind pg. 3)”

For Homework: Check out at least one book that you discovered in Step I or Step II. Write a brief summary 5-or-so sentence summary of the source. Next, describe how it will be useful for your project.

The Source I chose emerged from Step II and is a book by Donald Bogle that examines the stereotypical roles that black actors and actresses were pigeon-holed into as cinema developed. Bogle asserts that the roles black actors were stereotyped into generally fall into the categories of Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks. Furthermore, Bogle argues that not only were these the roles that black actors were traditionally stereotyped into but they continued to exist and in fact still exist as the general roles that black actors fill today. Although some black actors have been able to transcend these stereotypes within their role, many must still succumb to these stereotypes in order to get famous or gain employment. Bogle implies that America has not developed as much as it may seem because we are still locked into the stereotypes of the 1940s and 1950s.

Donald Bogle. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York, 1989