“Ain’t I a Teacher?”: A Television Analysis of Black Male Media-Teachers on The Steve Harvey Show

Depictions of American educators in fictional television programming are often less professional and more contradictory than their real life counterparts. Leslie Swetnam’s (1992) study explored media distortions of the teacher image. Swetnam’s findings revealed a number of media-teacher demographic characteristics and stereotypes. The current research extends Swetnam’s study by examining the presence of her media-teacher stereotypes and Jackson and Dangerfield’s (2004) five factors of Black masculine positionality in the characters of Steve Hightower and Cedric Robinson on the American television series The Steve Harvey Show. The analysis determined that the television representations of both characters incorporated familiar themes associated with Swetnam’s media-teacher demographic characteristics, teacher stereotypes, and Black masculinity traits. Additionally, the study revealed an overwhelming emphasis on the romantic pursuits of Steve Hightower throughout the 50 examined episodes, presenting criteria for a new media-teacher stereotype: the suave, emotionally indifferent, romance-driven teacher.