Growing up as a Black girl in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sarah J. Jackson was always acutely aware of how racial stereotypes in the media impacted how she and her family were perceived by the predominantly white community around them.
“I saw from a very early age that there was enormous power in how stories were told, who got to tell those stories and how, as a result, the public comes to understand the most pressing issues around them and their fellow citizens,” she said.
As an author and associate professor at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication, Jackson has dedicated her career to interpreting how race, class and gender shape how media is communicated and received. With her new book, “A Second Sight,” she sought to take a sweeping look at the impact of Black storytellers on the founding and evolution of the country — from the poems of enslaved writer Phillis Wheatley to Ryan Coogler’s Oscar-winning blockbuster “Sinners.”…