Pregnant Women, Crack Cocaine, and the Media in American History
By Holly Karibo | comments |
In Constructing an Image Holly Karibo traces the development of the mythology of the ‘crack mother’ in mainstream American media during the 1980s. The author demonstrates how implications of race, class, and gender in the popular press furthered the systematic marginalization of minority women, and particularly, African American single mothers, effectively reinforcing the burgeoning conservative and patriarchal ideologies being espoused by the New Right. Through a comprehensive analysis of the decade’s print media, Karibo argues that the racial targeting of the ‘crack scare’ served to strengthen both the concept of the middle-class, nuclear family, and the notion of a ‘normal,’ female, maternal instinct. Thus, the author concludes, the ‘crack scare’ which emerged in American society at the close of the twentieth century is demonstrative of the ways in which media representations have been instrumental in constructing particular social categories, which in turn, serve to further legitimize the hegemonic power structure that inform American society.
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