Natsu Taylor Saito
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780814723944
- eISBN:
- 9780814708170
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814723944.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Comparative Law
Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law begins from the premise that the United States is neither postracial nor postcolonial. Using the lens of settler colonial theory, it attributes the origins and ...
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Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law begins from the premise that the United States is neither postracial nor postcolonial. Using the lens of settler colonial theory, it attributes the origins and persistence of racialized inequities in the United States to the prerogatives asserted by its predominantly Angloamerican founders to appropriate Indigenous lands and resources, to profit from the labor of voluntary and involuntary migrants, and to ensure that all people of color remain “in their place.” This book assesses the experiences of American Indians, African Americans, Latina/os, and Asian Americans to the present day in terms of the strategies utilized by the settlers to accomplish these ends. By providing a functional analysis that links disparate forms of oppression, it makes the case for the oft-cited proposition that racial justice is indivisible, focusing particularly on the importance of acknowledging and contesting the continued colonization of Indigenous peoples and lands. It concludes that we will more effectively dismantle structural racism not by relying on promises of formal equality but by envisioning what the right of all peoples to self-determination means in a settler colonial state.Less
Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law begins from the premise that the United States is neither postracial nor postcolonial. Using the lens of settler colonial theory, it attributes the origins and persistence of racialized inequities in the United States to the prerogatives asserted by its predominantly Angloamerican founders to appropriate Indigenous lands and resources, to profit from the labor of voluntary and involuntary migrants, and to ensure that all people of color remain “in their place.” This book assesses the experiences of American Indians, African Americans, Latina/os, and Asian Americans to the present day in terms of the strategies utilized by the settlers to accomplish these ends. By providing a functional analysis that links disparate forms of oppression, it makes the case for the oft-cited proposition that racial justice is indivisible, focusing particularly on the importance of acknowledging and contesting the continued colonization of Indigenous peoples and lands. It concludes that we will more effectively dismantle structural racism not by relying on promises of formal equality but by envisioning what the right of all peoples to self-determination means in a settler colonial state.
Kenneth Prewitt
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157030
- eISBN:
- 9781400846795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157030.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter argues that the center of gravity is shifting because of an intricate interplay between America's color line and its nativity line. It uses the color line concept to ask whether America ...
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This chapter argues that the center of gravity is shifting because of an intricate interplay between America's color line and its nativity line. It uses the color line concept to ask whether America has the right policy tools to fully erase the line that separated whites and racial minorities throughout America's history. If they merge—if immigrants are racialized—the future sadly repeats America's past. If, instead, America's population becomes so diverse and multiracial that the color line disappears, an altogether different future is in store, perhaps the promised postracial society. However, it is not certain whether this social process will strengthen or weaken a color line inherited from the eighteenth century, strengthened across the next century and a half, and then challenged but not fully erased by the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.Less
This chapter argues that the center of gravity is shifting because of an intricate interplay between America's color line and its nativity line. It uses the color line concept to ask whether America has the right policy tools to fully erase the line that separated whites and racial minorities throughout America's history. If they merge—if immigrants are racialized—the future sadly repeats America's past. If, instead, America's population becomes so diverse and multiracial that the color line disappears, an altogether different future is in store, perhaps the promised postracial society. However, it is not certain whether this social process will strengthen or weaken a color line inherited from the eighteenth century, strengthened across the next century and a half, and then challenged but not fully erased by the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.
Matthew Pratt Guterl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469610689
- eISBN:
- 9781469612522
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9781469610696_Guterl
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This book focuses on how and why we come to see race in very particular ways. What does it mean to see someone as a color? As racially mixed or ethnically ambiguous? What history makes such things ...
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This book focuses on how and why we come to see race in very particular ways. What does it mean to see someone as a color? As racially mixed or ethnically ambiguous? What history makes such things possible? Drawing creatively from advertisements, YouTube videos, and everything in between, it redirects our understanding of racial sight away from the dominant categories of color—away from brown and yellow and black and white—and instead insists that we confront the visual practices that make those same categories seem so irrefutably important. Zooming out for the bigger picture, the author illuminates the long history of the practice of seeing—and believing in—race, and reveals that our troublesome faith in the details discerned by the discriminating glance is widespread and very popular. In so doing, he upends the possibility of a postracial society by revealing how deeply race is embedded in our culture, with implications that are often matters of life and death.Less
This book focuses on how and why we come to see race in very particular ways. What does it mean to see someone as a color? As racially mixed or ethnically ambiguous? What history makes such things possible? Drawing creatively from advertisements, YouTube videos, and everything in between, it redirects our understanding of racial sight away from the dominant categories of color—away from brown and yellow and black and white—and instead insists that we confront the visual practices that make those same categories seem so irrefutably important. Zooming out for the bigger picture, the author illuminates the long history of the practice of seeing—and believing in—race, and reveals that our troublesome faith in the details discerned by the discriminating glance is widespread and very popular. In so doing, he upends the possibility of a postracial society by revealing how deeply race is embedded in our culture, with implications that are often matters of life and death.
Mollie Godfrey
Vershawn Ashanti Young (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041587
- eISBN:
- 9780252050244
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041587.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Bringing together fifteen essays by leading scholars, including a theoretical introduction by the editors and an insightful foreword and afterword by Gayle Wald and Michele Elam, respectively, this ...
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Bringing together fifteen essays by leading scholars, including a theoretical introduction by the editors and an insightful foreword and afterword by Gayle Wald and Michele Elam, respectively, this volume analyzes Godfrey and Young’s neologism neo-passing. Godfrey and Young define neo-passing as narratives and performative acts of passing that recall the complex racial politics that define classic tales of passing, such as Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (1912). The difference, however, between the former concept of passing and what Godfrey and Young call neo-passing is that neo-passing is performed and/or produced in various media after the end of legal segregation (circa 1954). Beginning with the Jim Crow–era assumption that passing will come to pass as soon as desegregation begins, this volume investigates how and why passing not only persists in the post–Jim Crow moment but has also proliferated. As with both neo-slave and neo-segregation narratives, performances of neo-passing speak to contemporary racial injustices and ideologies, asking readers to hold these in mind alongside the racial injustices and ideologies of the past. Typically, neo-passing also goes beyond the black/white binary that defined classic passing narratives to explore how identities are increasingly defined as intersectional—simultaneously involving class, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and sexuality. Through explorations of newspaper articles, advertisements, journalism, fiction, graphic novels, film, comedy sketches, reality television, music, and social media, the essays in this volume engage in a vigorous debate about the specific ways in which neo-passing alternatively shores up, deconstructs, or complicates our understanding of performance and identity production after Jim CrowLess
Bringing together fifteen essays by leading scholars, including a theoretical introduction by the editors and an insightful foreword and afterword by Gayle Wald and Michele Elam, respectively, this volume analyzes Godfrey and Young’s neologism neo-passing. Godfrey and Young define neo-passing as narratives and performative acts of passing that recall the complex racial politics that define classic tales of passing, such as Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (1912). The difference, however, between the former concept of passing and what Godfrey and Young call neo-passing is that neo-passing is performed and/or produced in various media after the end of legal segregation (circa 1954). Beginning with the Jim Crow–era assumption that passing will come to pass as soon as desegregation begins, this volume investigates how and why passing not only persists in the post–Jim Crow moment but has also proliferated. As with both neo-slave and neo-segregation narratives, performances of neo-passing speak to contemporary racial injustices and ideologies, asking readers to hold these in mind alongside the racial injustices and ideologies of the past. Typically, neo-passing also goes beyond the black/white binary that defined classic passing narratives to explore how identities are increasingly defined as intersectional—simultaneously involving class, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and sexuality. Through explorations of newspaper articles, advertisements, journalism, fiction, graphic novels, film, comedy sketches, reality television, music, and social media, the essays in this volume engage in a vigorous debate about the specific ways in which neo-passing alternatively shores up, deconstructs, or complicates our understanding of performance and identity production after Jim Crow
Zebulon Vance Miletsky
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780252043857
- eISBN:
- 9780252052750
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043857.003.0013
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This essay explores how the election of Barack Obama in 2008 moved America into a new postracial terrain. It examines the implications of the term “postracialism” that emerged as part of a new ...
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This essay explores how the election of Barack Obama in 2008 moved America into a new postracial terrain. It examines the implications of the term “postracialism” that emerged as part of a new popular discourse about racism and the degree to which it undercuts arguments for broad state action to address racial inequality. It illustrates that while whites embraced the concept of a “postracial” America because race loses its meaning, Blacks conversely rejected this same construct because race, and ultimately racism, lose significance in both popular discourse and lived experiences. This essay explores how the election of Barack Obama has moved America into a new post-racial terrain.Less
This essay explores how the election of Barack Obama in 2008 moved America into a new postracial terrain. It examines the implications of the term “postracialism” that emerged as part of a new popular discourse about racism and the degree to which it undercuts arguments for broad state action to address racial inequality. It illustrates that while whites embraced the concept of a “postracial” America because race loses its meaning, Blacks conversely rejected this same construct because race, and ultimately racism, lose significance in both popular discourse and lived experiences. This essay explores how the election of Barack Obama has moved America into a new post-racial terrain.
Ralina L. Joseph
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479862825
- eISBN:
- 9781479818426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479862825.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 1 scrutinizes the First Lady’s response to her racist and sexist treatment in mainstream media in the 2008 presidential election campaign. Michelle Obama faced many attacks from the ...
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Chapter 1 scrutinizes the First Lady’s response to her racist and sexist treatment in mainstream media in the 2008 presidential election campaign. Michelle Obama faced many attacks from the McCain-Palin campaign and the conservative media in the 2007–8 election campaign season, including ridicule over her “fist bump” with Barack Obama at a St. Paul, Minnesota campaign rally and the parody of her as a Black Panther on the cover of TheNew Yorker. But no attack was as brutal and sustained as the one that came after her “pride” comments during a stump speech in early 2008. In this chapter, Joseph analyses Obama’s response: coming out as a postracial, postfeminist glamour goddess on The View. The chapter asks: how did such a strategically ambiguous performance allow Obama to speak back to negative popular media representations without incurring additional racist and sexist wrath? Why did Obama’s reframes, redefinitions, and coded language work so effectively in this particular case?Less
Chapter 1 scrutinizes the First Lady’s response to her racist and sexist treatment in mainstream media in the 2008 presidential election campaign. Michelle Obama faced many attacks from the McCain-Palin campaign and the conservative media in the 2007–8 election campaign season, including ridicule over her “fist bump” with Barack Obama at a St. Paul, Minnesota campaign rally and the parody of her as a Black Panther on the cover of TheNew Yorker. But no attack was as brutal and sustained as the one that came after her “pride” comments during a stump speech in early 2008. In this chapter, Joseph analyses Obama’s response: coming out as a postracial, postfeminist glamour goddess on The View. The chapter asks: how did such a strategically ambiguous performance allow Obama to speak back to negative popular media representations without incurring additional racist and sexist wrath? Why did Obama’s reframes, redefinitions, and coded language work so effectively in this particular case?
Ralina L. Joseph
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479862825
- eISBN:
- 9781479818426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479862825.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 2 analyzes a case study from Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey has always occupied a unique, exceptional, and almost superhuman position in the American cultural imaginary. Winfrey has long since ...
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Chapter 2 analyzes a case study from Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey has always occupied a unique, exceptional, and almost superhuman position in the American cultural imaginary. Winfrey has long since abandoned the status of mere mortal in the eyes of fans and foes alike. In her ubiquity, Winfrey did much to not only shore up her own brand, but also configure the representational space of a particular brand of celebrity African American womanhood. That particular brand was strategic ambiguity. This chapter asks: what happened when the magic trick stopped working, or when Winfrey’s postracial, strategically ambiguous negotiations of race and gender weren’t successful? In this chapter, Joseph analyzes the limits of Winfrey’s so-called racial transcendence, considering a telling moment when she used strategic ambiguity but was still pilloried in the press as a race-baiting, uppity, Angry Black Woman.Less
Chapter 2 analyzes a case study from Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey has always occupied a unique, exceptional, and almost superhuman position in the American cultural imaginary. Winfrey has long since abandoned the status of mere mortal in the eyes of fans and foes alike. In her ubiquity, Winfrey did much to not only shore up her own brand, but also configure the representational space of a particular brand of celebrity African American womanhood. That particular brand was strategic ambiguity. This chapter asks: what happened when the magic trick stopped working, or when Winfrey’s postracial, strategically ambiguous negotiations of race and gender weren’t successful? In this chapter, Joseph analyzes the limits of Winfrey’s so-called racial transcendence, considering a telling moment when she used strategic ambiguity but was still pilloried in the press as a race-baiting, uppity, Angry Black Woman.
Ralina L. Joseph
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479862825
- eISBN:
- 9781479818426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479862825.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 3 examines showrunner Shonda Rhimes’ twenty-first century Black respectability politics through the form of strategic ambiguity. Joseph traces Rhimes’ performance of strategic ambiguity first ...
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Chapter 3 examines showrunner Shonda Rhimes’ twenty-first century Black respectability politics through the form of strategic ambiguity. Joseph traces Rhimes’ performance of strategic ambiguity first in the pre-Obama era when she stuck to a script of colorblindness, and a second in the #BlackLivesMatter moment when she called out racialized sexism and redefined Black female respectability. In the shift from the pre-Obama era to the #BlackLivesMatter era, this chapter asks: how did Rhimes’ careful negotiation of the press demonstrate that, in the former moment, to be a respectable Black woman was to perform strategic ambiguity, or not speak frankly about race, while in the latter, respectable Black women could and must engage in racialized self-expression, and redefine the bounds of respectability?Less
Chapter 3 examines showrunner Shonda Rhimes’ twenty-first century Black respectability politics through the form of strategic ambiguity. Joseph traces Rhimes’ performance of strategic ambiguity first in the pre-Obama era when she stuck to a script of colorblindness, and a second in the #BlackLivesMatter moment when she called out racialized sexism and redefined Black female respectability. In the shift from the pre-Obama era to the #BlackLivesMatter era, this chapter asks: how did Rhimes’ careful negotiation of the press demonstrate that, in the former moment, to be a respectable Black woman was to perform strategic ambiguity, or not speak frankly about race, while in the latter, respectable Black women could and must engage in racialized self-expression, and redefine the bounds of respectability?
Ralina L. Joseph
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479862825
- eISBN:
- 9781479818426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479862825.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 4 begins part two of the book, which analyzes the words of Black women who are behind and speaking back to their screens, and postulates about what happens when postracial resistance and ...
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Chapter 4 begins part two of the book, which analyzes the words of Black women who are behind and speaking back to their screens, and postulates about what happens when postracial resistance and strategic ambiguity are not available as strategies for success. Chapter 4 focuses on how the young women constructed their community through identifying against strategic ambiguity. This chapter begins by defining the contours of this women-of-color, feminist audience study. Joseph introduces the members of the study to the readers, and takes them through some of their critiques including how they identify against televisual images, how they refute tokenism, and how they enact racialized resistance by “hate-watching.”Less
Chapter 4 begins part two of the book, which analyzes the words of Black women who are behind and speaking back to their screens, and postulates about what happens when postracial resistance and strategic ambiguity are not available as strategies for success. Chapter 4 focuses on how the young women constructed their community through identifying against strategic ambiguity. This chapter begins by defining the contours of this women-of-color, feminist audience study. Joseph introduces the members of the study to the readers, and takes them through some of their critiques including how they identify against televisual images, how they refute tokenism, and how they enact racialized resistance by “hate-watching.”
Ralina L. Joseph
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479862825
- eISBN:
- 9781479818426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479862825.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 5 is the second of the two audience reception chapters in the books, which continues documenting a group of young women flow of commentary before, during, and after watching a full season of ...
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Chapter 5 is the second of the two audience reception chapters in the books, which continues documenting a group of young women flow of commentary before, during, and after watching a full season of their favorite television program, America’s Next Top Model. These young women claimed agency in the face of what they interpreted to be racist and sexist media representations, and they subsequently produced counter-narratives to strategic ambiguity. This chapter looks at how the young women flouted the corporate notion of the management of difference in their viewing community by flouting respectability politics, calling out colorism, rejecting code-switching, and, overall, rejecting postrace.Less
Chapter 5 is the second of the two audience reception chapters in the books, which continues documenting a group of young women flow of commentary before, during, and after watching a full season of their favorite television program, America’s Next Top Model. These young women claimed agency in the face of what they interpreted to be racist and sexist media representations, and they subsequently produced counter-narratives to strategic ambiguity. This chapter looks at how the young women flouted the corporate notion of the management of difference in their viewing community by flouting respectability politics, calling out colorism, rejecting code-switching, and, overall, rejecting postrace.
Ralina L. Joseph
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479862825
- eISBN:
- 9781479818426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479862825.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 6 focuses on television production economies and relies upon interview data in order to illustrate how Black female television writers, studios’ in-house legal counsel, and producers skirt ...
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Chapter 6 focuses on television production economies and relies upon interview data in order to illustrate how Black female television writers, studios’ in-house legal counsel, and producers skirt and tease notions of postrace in constructing their own brands of resistance. This chapter investigates how a coded, more polite, and postracial form of racialized sexism affects those who work in the industry as much as infiltrates the entertainment products that make their way to audiences. This chapter draws upon interview data with prolific Black women television professionals in Hollywood in order to understand the ways in which twenty-first century representations of African Americans on television are shaped by segregated spaces.Less
Chapter 6 focuses on television production economies and relies upon interview data in order to illustrate how Black female television writers, studios’ in-house legal counsel, and producers skirt and tease notions of postrace in constructing their own brands of resistance. This chapter investigates how a coded, more polite, and postracial form of racialized sexism affects those who work in the industry as much as infiltrates the entertainment products that make their way to audiences. This chapter draws upon interview data with prolific Black women television professionals in Hollywood in order to understand the ways in which twenty-first century representations of African Americans on television are shaped by segregated spaces.
Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479885459
- eISBN:
- 9781479805341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479885459.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
Horrible White People shows focus on liberals confronting the structures keeping their hegemonic power intact while seeing the normalized neoliberal dreams to which they have aspired for decades ...
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Horrible White People shows focus on liberals confronting the structures keeping their hegemonic power intact while seeing the normalized neoliberal dreams to which they have aspired for decades collapse around them. In wallowing in their despair, these characters consolidate their identity around a gendered whiteness, often obscuring or overshadowing the plight of characters of color around them. The large scale of this programming cycle, as well as its address to middle- and upper-class audiences, highlights how educated, urban-dwelling white liberals, presumed to mobilize for civil rights and vote for left-leaning politicians, react with an ineffectual fear that neither returns them to their former status and security nor leaves room to organize for those whom they claim to support. The introduction sets out the contexts in which Horrible White People shows proliferated: recession, a postracial ethos, changing TV technologies and industry patterns, emerging feminisms, and shifting generic norms. Ultimately, the chapter argues that Horrible White People representations and business practices mirror and help reproduce the ineffectual responses of liberals and progressives to growing class- and race-based inequalities and that they are indeed part of a broadly neoliberal economy and ideology that continues to worsen those divides.Less
Horrible White People shows focus on liberals confronting the structures keeping their hegemonic power intact while seeing the normalized neoliberal dreams to which they have aspired for decades collapse around them. In wallowing in their despair, these characters consolidate their identity around a gendered whiteness, often obscuring or overshadowing the plight of characters of color around them. The large scale of this programming cycle, as well as its address to middle- and upper-class audiences, highlights how educated, urban-dwelling white liberals, presumed to mobilize for civil rights and vote for left-leaning politicians, react with an ineffectual fear that neither returns them to their former status and security nor leaves room to organize for those whom they claim to support. The introduction sets out the contexts in which Horrible White People shows proliferated: recession, a postracial ethos, changing TV technologies and industry patterns, emerging feminisms, and shifting generic norms. Ultimately, the chapter argues that Horrible White People representations and business practices mirror and help reproduce the ineffectual responses of liberals and progressives to growing class- and race-based inequalities and that they are indeed part of a broadly neoliberal economy and ideology that continues to worsen those divides.
Aneeka Ayanna Henderson
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469651767
- eISBN:
- 9781469651781
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469651767.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter offers a close reading of black/white interracial romance in Sandra Kitt's The Color of Love (1995) and Eric Jerome Dickey's Milk in My Coffee (1998) alongside Michael Jackson's 1991 ...
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This chapter offers a close reading of black/white interracial romance in Sandra Kitt's The Color of Love (1995) and Eric Jerome Dickey's Milk in My Coffee (1998) alongside Michael Jackson's 1991 song "Black or White" and Me'Shell NdegeOcello's 1993 ballad "Soul on Ice." This chapter uncovers how black/white interracial romance is proffered as a postracial antidote to white supremacy and antiblack racism.Less
This chapter offers a close reading of black/white interracial romance in Sandra Kitt's The Color of Love (1995) and Eric Jerome Dickey's Milk in My Coffee (1998) alongside Michael Jackson's 1991 song "Black or White" and Me'Shell NdegeOcello's 1993 ballad "Soul on Ice." This chapter uncovers how black/white interracial romance is proffered as a postracial antidote to white supremacy and antiblack racism.
Paul Street
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628460216
- eISBN:
- 9781626740426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628460216.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter argues that it is historically significant that droves of whites are willing to embrace a black presidential candidate. Indeed, forty years ago, it would have been impossible for a black ...
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This chapter argues that it is historically significant that droves of whites are willing to embrace a black presidential candidate. Indeed, forty years ago, it would have been impossible for a black politician to become a viable presidential contender as the United States entered the racially turbulent summer of 1967 and the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner disturbed conventional racial norms by portraying a black doctor (played by Sidney Poitier) dating a white woman (Joanna Drayton). Nothing black candidates could have done or said would have prevented them from being excluded on the basis of the color of their skin. The fact that this is no longer true is a sign of some (admittedly slow) racial progress more than fifty years after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But this chapter maintains that there are various reasons not to become overly excited about Obama’s cross-racial appeal from a racial justice perspective.Less
This chapter argues that it is historically significant that droves of whites are willing to embrace a black presidential candidate. Indeed, forty years ago, it would have been impossible for a black politician to become a viable presidential contender as the United States entered the racially turbulent summer of 1967 and the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner disturbed conventional racial norms by portraying a black doctor (played by Sidney Poitier) dating a white woman (Joanna Drayton). Nothing black candidates could have done or said would have prevented them from being excluded on the basis of the color of their skin. The fact that this is no longer true is a sign of some (admittedly slow) racial progress more than fifty years after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But this chapter maintains that there are various reasons not to become overly excited about Obama’s cross-racial appeal from a racial justice perspective.
Ebony Utley and Amy L. Heyse
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628460216
- eISBN:
- 9781626740426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628460216.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter argues that Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech was an appropriate and successful response to a political-personal crisis. He negotiated the controversy surrounding his personal ...
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This chapter argues that Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech was an appropriate and successful response to a political-personal crisis. He negotiated the controversy surrounding his personal relationship with Reverend Wright by acknowledging racial disparities in the United States without placing blame for those disparities. Accordingly, Obama successfully maintained a post-racial rhetorical stance that appealed to extremely diverse audiences. Yet the speech failed to accurately represent a racially differentiated United States of America. By sanitizing the country’s histories of chattel slavery and racism, Obama’s speech reified many harmful racial tropes. Our essay exposes the potentially damaging strategies Obama employed to resolve his political-personal crisis and considers the rhetorical implications of a post-racial discourse.Less
This chapter argues that Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech was an appropriate and successful response to a political-personal crisis. He negotiated the controversy surrounding his personal relationship with Reverend Wright by acknowledging racial disparities in the United States without placing blame for those disparities. Accordingly, Obama successfully maintained a post-racial rhetorical stance that appealed to extremely diverse audiences. Yet the speech failed to accurately represent a racially differentiated United States of America. By sanitizing the country’s histories of chattel slavery and racism, Obama’s speech reified many harmful racial tropes. Our essay exposes the potentially damaging strategies Obama employed to resolve his political-personal crisis and considers the rhetorical implications of a post-racial discourse.
Lisa Anderson-Levy
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628460216
- eISBN:
- 9781626740426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628460216.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter argues that within the context of the operation of race in the US, the conceptual space inhabited by the “post” in post-race is only understandable through white privilege and that white ...
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This chapter argues that within the context of the operation of race in the US, the conceptual space inhabited by the “post” in post-race is only understandable through white privilege and that white privilege necessarily requires an explication of white fear, which is also evident in this post-racial moment.Less
This chapter argues that within the context of the operation of race in the US, the conceptual space inhabited by the “post” in post-race is only understandable through white privilege and that white privilege necessarily requires an explication of white fear, which is also evident in this post-racial moment.
Karanja Keita Carroll
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628460216
- eISBN:
- 9781626740426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628460216.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter interrogates the reality of racism and white supremacy in what some today refer to as “The Obama Era” and what others regard as evidence of a “Post-Racist America.” By utilizing an ...
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This chapter interrogates the reality of racism and white supremacy in what some today refer to as “The Obama Era” and what others regard as evidence of a “Post-Racist America.” By utilizing an African-centered conceptual framework, centering on culture and worldview, this discourse constitutes a critical examination of the impossibilities of a post-racist America by investigating the lived experiences of African descended people and other communities of color. Through this analysis, it will be evident that while we may be in “The Obama Era,” we are far from a post-racist society. Thus, discussions of post-racism are assessed as conceptual masks used to conceal the philosophical and structural realities of global white supremacy as exemplified through continuous racist practices.Less
This chapter interrogates the reality of racism and white supremacy in what some today refer to as “The Obama Era” and what others regard as evidence of a “Post-Racist America.” By utilizing an African-centered conceptual framework, centering on culture and worldview, this discourse constitutes a critical examination of the impossibilities of a post-racist America by investigating the lived experiences of African descended people and other communities of color. Through this analysis, it will be evident that while we may be in “The Obama Era,” we are far from a post-racist society. Thus, discussions of post-racism are assessed as conceptual masks used to conceal the philosophical and structural realities of global white supremacy as exemplified through continuous racist practices.
David A. Hollinger
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628460216
- eISBN:
- 9781626740426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628460216.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines Obama’s candidacy as a significant challenge to identity politics, a challenge that will only deepen with his Presidency. At the center of that challenge is a growing ...
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This chapter examines Obama’s candidacy as a significant challenge to identity politics, a challenge that will only deepen with his Presidency. At the center of that challenge is a growing uncertainty about the significance of color lines. It has special significance for blackness given its pivotal role in the US intellectual and administrative apparatus for dealing with ethnoracial distinctions. Doubts about its basic meaning, boundaries, and social role affected ideas about whiteness, and all other color-coded identities. These uncertainties make it easier to contemplate a possible future in which the ethnoracial categories central to identity politics would be more matters of choice than ascription; in which mobilization by ethnoracial groups would be more a strategic option than a presumed destiny attendant upon mere membership in a group; and in which economic inequalities would be confronted head-on, instead of through the medium of ethnorace.Less
This chapter examines Obama’s candidacy as a significant challenge to identity politics, a challenge that will only deepen with his Presidency. At the center of that challenge is a growing uncertainty about the significance of color lines. It has special significance for blackness given its pivotal role in the US intellectual and administrative apparatus for dealing with ethnoracial distinctions. Doubts about its basic meaning, boundaries, and social role affected ideas about whiteness, and all other color-coded identities. These uncertainties make it easier to contemplate a possible future in which the ethnoracial categories central to identity politics would be more matters of choice than ascription; in which mobilization by ethnoracial groups would be more a strategic option than a presumed destiny attendant upon mere membership in a group; and in which economic inequalities would be confronted head-on, instead of through the medium of ethnorace.
Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041587
- eISBN:
- 9780252050244
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041587.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This introduction defines neo-passing by contextualizing the term not only in relation to classic passing narratives and scholarship on passing but also in relation to broad notions of performance, ...
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This introduction defines neo-passing by contextualizing the term not only in relation to classic passing narratives and scholarship on passing but also in relation to broad notions of performance, pretending, and identifying. The editors also connect their effort to delineate a genre of neo-passing narratives to recent scholarly efforts to define neo-slave narratives and neo-segregation narratives. Like those genres, neo-passing narratives mediate between historical and contemporary notions of racial and intersectional injustice. Using several recent case studies, the introduction explores the ways in which neo-passing narratives speak directly to the contradictions within contemporary debates about colorblindness and color-consciousness, or what one contributor calls the debate between postracialism and most-racialism. Finally, the introduction briefly describes each essay in the volume, emphasizing its engagement in a vigorous debate about the specific ways in which neo-passing narratives alternatively shore up, deconstruct, or complicate our understanding of performance and identity production after Jim Crow.Less
This introduction defines neo-passing by contextualizing the term not only in relation to classic passing narratives and scholarship on passing but also in relation to broad notions of performance, pretending, and identifying. The editors also connect their effort to delineate a genre of neo-passing narratives to recent scholarly efforts to define neo-slave narratives and neo-segregation narratives. Like those genres, neo-passing narratives mediate between historical and contemporary notions of racial and intersectional injustice. Using several recent case studies, the introduction explores the ways in which neo-passing narratives speak directly to the contradictions within contemporary debates about colorblindness and color-consciousness, or what one contributor calls the debate between postracialism and most-racialism. Finally, the introduction briefly describes each essay in the volume, emphasizing its engagement in a vigorous debate about the specific ways in which neo-passing narratives alternatively shore up, deconstruct, or complicate our understanding of performance and identity production after Jim Crow.
Martha J. Cutter
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041587
- eISBN:
- 9780252050244
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041587.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Some scholars argue that racial passing began in the mid- to late nineteenth century, reached its pinnacle in the early twentieth century, and then abated by the 1930s. This chapter substantiates, ...
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Some scholars argue that racial passing began in the mid- to late nineteenth century, reached its pinnacle in the early twentieth century, and then abated by the 1930s. This chapter substantiates, however, that as a word and a behavior, passing has a longer and more extensive chronology. By providing a broad historical overview of racial-passing texts, the chapter argues that the most radical ones play on the multivalent possibilities of this behavior, using passing as a mirror, as a sort of “dirty” glass that is held up to the reader. Instead of clarifying the meaning of whiteness or blackness, some of these texts ultimately confuse a stable reading of the meaning of race, revealing dialectical tensions that exist at the heart of identity categories themselves.Less
Some scholars argue that racial passing began in the mid- to late nineteenth century, reached its pinnacle in the early twentieth century, and then abated by the 1930s. This chapter substantiates, however, that as a word and a behavior, passing has a longer and more extensive chronology. By providing a broad historical overview of racial-passing texts, the chapter argues that the most radical ones play on the multivalent possibilities of this behavior, using passing as a mirror, as a sort of “dirty” glass that is held up to the reader. Instead of clarifying the meaning of whiteness or blackness, some of these texts ultimately confuse a stable reading of the meaning of race, revealing dialectical tensions that exist at the heart of identity categories themselves.