The Colorblind Screen: Television in Post-Racial America

Description

The election of President Barack Obama signaled for many the realization of a post-racial America, a nation in which racism was no longer a defining social, cultural, and political issue. While many Americans espouse a “colorblind” racial ideology and publicly endorse the broad goals of integration and equal treatment without regard to race, in actuality this attitude serves to reify and legitimize racism and protects racial privileges by denying and minimizing the effects of systematic and institutionalized racism. In The Colorblind Screen, the contributors examine television’s role as the major discursive medium in the articulation and contestation of racialized identities in the United States. While the dominant mode of televisual racialization has shifted to a “colorblind” ideology that foregrounds racial differences in order to celebrate multicultural assimilation, the volume investigates how this practice denies the significant social, economic, and political realities and inequalities that continue to define race relations today. Focusing on such iconic figures as President Obama, LeBron James, and Oprah Winfrey, many chapters examine the ways in which race is read by television audiences and fans. Other essays focus on how visual constructions of race in dramas like 24, Sleeper Cell, and The Wanted continue to conflate Arab and Muslim identities in post-9/11 television. The volume offers an important intervention in the study of the televisual representation of race, engaging with multiple aspects of the mythologies developing around notions of a “post-racial” America and the duplicitous discursive rationale offered by the ideology of colorblindness. Cover Contents Introduction PART I: THEORIES OF COLORBLINDNESS 1. Shades of Colorblindness: Rethinking Racial Ideology in the United States 2. Rhyme and Reason: “Post-Race” and the Politics of Colorblind Racism 3. The End of Racism? Colorblind Racism and Popular Media PART II: ICONS OF POST-RACIAL AMERICA 4. Oprah Winfrey: Cultural Icon of Mainstream (White) America 5. The Race Denial Card: The NBA Lockout, LeBron James, and the Politics of New Racism 6. Representations of Arabs and Muslims in Post-9/11 Television Dramas 7. Maybe Brown People Aren’t So Scary If They’re Funny: Audience Readings of Arabs and Muslims on Cable Television Comedies PART III: REINSCRIBING WHITENESS 8. “Some People Just Hide in Plain Sight”: Historicizing Racism in Mad Men 9. Watching TV with White Supremacists: A More Complex View of the Colorblind Screen 10. BBFFs: Interracial Friendships in a Post-Racial World PART IV: POST-RACIAL RELATIONSHIPS 11. Matchmakers and Cultural Compatibility: Arranged Marriage, South Asians, and Racial Narratives on American Television 12. Mainstreaming Latina Identity: Culture-Blind and Colorblind Themes in Viewer Interpretations of Ugly Betty 13. Race in Progress, No Passing Zone: Battlestar Galactica, Colorblindness, and the Maintenance of Racial Order About the Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z