Psychiatrist Says Mass Media Shortens Life Span of Blacks

Mass media, especially television commericals, produce stress which shortens the life expectancy of blacks, a black Harvard psychiatrist said yesterday.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Chester M. Pierce '48, said that television is a crucial factor in mass media's casting blacks in inferior roles.

Pierce delivered a keynote address to about 150 persons at the Harvard Black Students Psychological Association's two-day conference on cultural stress in American society. The conference is being held at the Graduate School of Education.

Citing evidence that black males die two years earlier than they did ten years ago, Pierce said, "it is more stressful to live in the ghetto than to live in a spaceship." The astronaut, unlike the ghetto dweller, can dream of the time when he will get out of his confinement, Pierce explained.

Analysis of Commercials

An analysis made by Pierce of 77 randomly selected prime time commercials revealed several ways in which television "stresses, permits and encourages black youths and adults to continue defensive and deferential ways of thinking."

The commercials, according to Pierce, never pictured blacks teaching whites or made any reference to black families, whereas they portrayed whites as family units at least 20 per cent of the time.

More animals appeared in the commericals Pierce analyzed than blacks. No blacks were shown in a position of command and only once did a black speak in a commercial and "his line did not even consist of a complete sentence."

He said "Superfly," one of a recent group of "black exploitation" films is the first audio-visual manual on how to use cocaine. Unofficial sources, he said, report that the use of cocaine has increased substantially in ghettos since the release of the movie.

Some blacks who live in high stress ghetto areas learn to tolerate and to adjust passively to the media images, Pierce said.

These passive, defeated people unknowingly support the pro-racist ideas which, according to Pierce, account for a lack of a greater number of radicals in the black communities.

"This passive stance can be seen through the fact that blacks usually respond to ideas, rather than initiate them," Pierce said.