This book focusses on methods by which individuals in the USA who control societal institutions, particularly the mass media, operate to retain their power advantage while maintaining African-American women in a socially and economically depressed status. The author argues that the mass media play an important role in maintaining a social hierarchy of discrimination because it is the primary vehicle by which ideology is transmitted through news and entertainment. Technologically advances societies like the United States employ ideological hegemony to maintain a system of organized inequality through the "consent" of the masses. In effect the mainstream media have served the interests of the privileged who have defined African-American women and other disenfranchised segements of the population as possessing certain values, belief systems and lifestyles that do not entitle them to receive more than a modicum of societal resources. The book is unique in that it examines the specific methods by which the American power elite use coercion and consent to maintain an ineuqitable allocation of sources. The author also considers strategies for accomplishing societal transformat and a reallocation of resources. She argues that the main obstacle against those wanting change is fear of reprisals fom the privileged elite and thier functionaries. Fearless, unflagging and copiously supported with evidence, the book will be of interest to students interested in the mass media, the sociology of gender and race, and social policy