Despite claims from pundits and politicians that we now live in a post-racial America, people seem to keep finding ways to talk about race—from celebrations of the inauguration of the first Black president to resurgent debates about police profiling, race and racism remain salient features of our world. When faced with fervent anti-immigration sentiments, record incarceration rates of Blacks and Latinos, and deepening socio-economic disparities, a new question has erupted in the last decade: What does being post-racial mean? The Post-Racial Mystique explores how a variety of media—the news, network television, and online, independent media—debate, define and deploy the term “post-racial” in their representations of American politics and society. Using examples from both mainstream and niche media—from prime-time television series to specialty Christian media and audience interactions on social media—Catherine Squires draws upon a variety of disciplines including communication studies, sociology, political science, and cultural studies in order to understand emergent strategies for framing post-racial America. She reveals the ways in which media texts cast U.S. history, re-imagine interpersonal relationships, employ statistics, and inventively redeploy other identity categories in a quest to formulate different ways of responding to race.

Product Description: bell hooks’ writings have been touchstones for major debates in the «culture wars», fostering insight into many central questions in communication studies. Her work is vital to students and scholars who explore the ways in which media shape our sense of our selves, our roles, and those with whom we interact...read more

Timely, multidisciplinary analysis of Obama’s presidential campaign, its context, and its impact.November 4, 2008 ushered in a historic moment: Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected the forty-fourth President of the United States of America. In The Obama Effect, editors Heather E. Harris, Kimberly R. Moffitt, and Catherine R. Squires bring together works that place Barack Obama’s candidacy and victory in the context of the American experience with race and the media. Following Obama’s victory, optimists claimed that the campaign signaled the arrival of an era of postracism and postfeminism in the United States. This collection of essays, all presented at a national conference to discuss the meaning and impact of the nomination of the first presidential candidate of African descent, remind the reader that reaching a point in U.S. history where a biracial man could be deemed “electable” is part of a still-ongoing struggle. It resists the temptation to dismiss the uncertainty, hope, and fear that characterized the events and discourse of the two-year primary and general election cycle and brings together multidisciplinary approaches to assessing “the Obama effect” on public discourse and participation. This volume provides readers with a means for recalling and mapping out the enduring issues that erupted during the campaign—issues that will continue to shape how our society views itself and President Obama in the coming years.“This eclectic collection of essays serves as a timely analysis of that global figure in a way that is relevant to researchers, teachers, and students across various disciplines. By crossing scholarly, gender, and ethnic-racial lines and positions, this group of personal, political, and popular renderings of the 2008 campaign offers a much-needed illumination on the new, nontraditional president.” — Presidential Studies Quarterly“The Obama Effect resists the temptation to dismiss the uncertainty, hope, and fear that characterized the events and discourse of the two-year primary and general election cycle. By bringing together multidisciplinary approaches, the collection provides readers with a means for recalling and mapping out the enduring issues that erupted during the campaign—issues that will continue to shape how our society views itself and President Obama in the coming years.” — Stevenson University Newsroom“Neither biography, hagiography, or demonization, The Obama Effect provides a refreshingly balanced interrogation of many issues the candidacy and presidency of Barack Obama has unearthed in American society, politics, and identity construction. It is an important contribution to a much-needed substantive body of work trapped neither by Obamamania nor Obamaphobia. This is a highly recommended read ranging across disciplines.” — Ricky L. Jones, author of What’s Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination

Product Description: When modern news media choose to focus attention on people of multiracial descent, how does this fit with broader contemporary and historical racial discourses? Do these news narratives complicate common understandings of race and race relations? Dispatches from the Color Line explores these issues by examining contemporary news media coverage of multiracial people and identities...read more