Dr. Linda Tucker, assistant professor of English in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Southern Arkansas University, Magnolia, recently had her book, Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture, published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Tucker’s book examines popular culture’s reliance on long-standing stereotypes of black men as animalistic, hypersexual, dangerous criminals, whose bodies, dress, actions, attitudes, and language both repel and attract white audiences. She studies this trope in the images of well-known African American men in four cultural venues: contemporary literature, black-focused films, sports commentary, and rap music.
Through rigorous analysis, the book argues that American popular culture’s representations of black men preserve racial hierarchies that imprison blacks both intellectually and physically. Of equal importance are the ways in which black men battle against, respond to, and become implicated in the production and circulation of these images.
Tucker cites examples ranging from Michael Jordan’s underwear commercials and the popular “Barbershop” movies, to the career of rapper Tupac Shakur and John Edgar Wideman’s memoir “Brothers and Keepers.” Tucker’s book tracks the continuity between historical images of African American men, the peculiar constitution of whites’ anxieties about black men, and black men’s tolerance of and resistance to the reproduction of such images. The legacy of these stereotypes is still apparent in contemporary advertising, film, music, and professional basketball. The book argues persuasively that these cultural images reinforce the idea of black men as prisoners of American justice but also shows how black men struggle against this imprisonment.
Copies of the book are available in the SAU bookstore. The book can also be purchased online at amazon.com.
Tucker joined the faculty of the Department of English and Foreign Languages in 2003. She received her B.A. from York University and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Alberta.
