The Race and Media Reader

The Race and Media Reader provides a wide-ranging introduction to major issues and debates surrounding the role that the media plays in ongoing struggles around race and racism in the US today. The essays collected here come from a wide variety of disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological perspectives, and focus on a broad range of media practices, racial and ethnic populations, and historical moments. These readings, curated by Gilbert Rodman, offer an intersectional approach to thinking about media and the politics of race, arguing that media representations of specific racial/ethnic identities need to be understood within the broader social, cultural, and economic contexts in which they circulate. With concise introductory notes by Rodman, these selections ask readers to take a critical stance on the media’s role as one of the most powerful institutions involved in the creation and maintenance of problematic racial hierarchies, and to consider ways of thinking and acting that might bring us closer to a world where racism no longer exists.

Table of Contents:
Section I: Concepts and Definitions. 1. American Anthropological Association. Statement on "race." 2. Michael Omi and Howard Winant. Racial formation. 3. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Defining racism: "Can we talk?" 4. Peggy McIntosh. White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. 5. Stuart Hall. The whites of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media. Section II: Realities and Representations. 6. Randy Ontiveros. No golden age: Television news and the Chicano civil rights movement. 7. George Lipsitz. Lean on me: Beyond identity politics. 8. bell hooks. Representing whiteness in the black imagination. 9. Kathy N. Newman. The forgotten fifteen million: Black radio, radicalism, and the construction of the "Negro market." 10. Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis. White responses: The emergence of "enlightened" racism. 11. Tricia Rose. "Fear of a black planet": Rap music and black cultural politics in the 1990s. Section III: Authenticities and Appropriations. 12. Kembrew McLeod. Copyright, authorship and African-American culture. 13. Arthur Jafa. My black death. 14. Gilbert B. Rodman. Race . . . and other four letter words: Eminem and the cultural politics of authenticity. 15. Karen Shimakawa. Mind yourself: On soundwalking, race, and gender. 16. S. Elizabeth Bird. Imagining Indians: Negotiating identity in a media world. 17. Peter A. Chvany. "Do we look like Ferengi capitalists to you?": Star Trek’s Klingons as emergent virtual American ethnics. Section IV: Technologies and Institutions 18. Richard Dyer. The light of the world. 19. Herman S. Gray. Jazz tradition, institutional formation, and cultural practice. 20. Grant Farred. Phantom calls: Race and the globalization of the NBA [selections]. 21. Dwight A. McBride. Why I hate Abercrombie & Fitch. 22. Michael Eric Dyson. Unnatural disasters: Race and poverty. 23. George Lipsitz. The hip hop hearings: The hidden history of deindustrialization. 24. Carol A. Stabile. Criminalizing black culture. Section V: Identities and Globalizations 25. Stuart Hall. Old and new identities, old and new ethnicities. 26. Carol A. Stabile. The Typhoid Marys of the left: Gender, race, and the broadcast blacklist. 27. Patricia J. Williams. The distribution of distress. 28. Gloria Anzaldúa. How to tame a wild tongue. 29. Sarah Sharma. Taxi cab politics and the production of brown space after 9/11. 30. Henry Yu. How Tiger Woods lost his stripes: Post-nationalist American studies as a history of race, migration, and the commodification of culture. 31. Adrian Piper. Passing for white, passing for black. Section VI: Futures and Solutions? 32. Derrick Bell. Racial realism -- after we’re gone: Prudent speculations on America in a post-racial epoch. 33. Lauren Berlant. The face of America and the state of emergency. 34. Michael Awkward. Burying Don Imus [selections] 35. Lori Harrison-Kahan. Inside Inside man: Spike Lee and post-9/11 entertainment. 36. Catherine Squires. Dispatches from the twenty-first century color line.

About the Author :
Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota, USA

Review :
"A ‘top forty’ essay collection on race, media, and cultural studies. Gilbert B. Rodman selects his favorite academic stars' hits on race, representation, cultural appropriation, technology, identity, globalization, and the future of race and media—a must read for every serious media culture student." —Kent A. Ono, The University of Utah "The Race and Media Reader is a timely volume for the putatively ‘post-racial’ era. Crisply edited by Gilbert B. Rodman, it collects accessible essays that take a variety of approaches to the keywords ‘race’ and ‘media.’ Highly recommended for anyone interested in the role of media in the ongoing production, reflection, and contestation of race and racism." —Gayle Wald, George Washington University