Postracial Resistance : : Black Women, Media, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity / / Ralina L. Joseph.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Complete eBook-Package 2018
• VerfasserIn: Joseph, Ralina L.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2018]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Critical Cultural Communication ; 27
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 17 black and white illustrations

Winner, 2019 Outstanding Book Award, International Communication AssociationHow Black women in the spotlight negotiate the post-racial gaze of Hollywood and beyond From Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Shonda Rhimes to their audiences and the industry workers behind the scenes, Ralina L. Joseph considers the way that Black women are required to walk a tightrope. Do they call out racism only to face accusations of being called “racists”? Or respond to racism in code only to face accusations of selling out? Postracial Resistance explores how African American women celebrities, cultural producers, and audiences employ postracial discourse—the notion that race and race-based discrimination are over and no longer affect people’s everyday lives—to refute postracialism itself. In a world where they’re often written off as stereotypical “Angry Black Women,” Joseph offers that some Black women in media use “strategic ambiguity,” deploying the failures of post-racial discourse to name racism and thus resist it.In Postracial Resistance, Joseph listens to and observes Black women as they perform and negotiate race in strategic ambiguity. Using three methods of media analysis—textual readings of the media's representation of these women; interviews with writers, producers, and studio executives; and audience ethnographies of young women viewers—Joseph maps the tensions and strategies that all Black women must engage to challenge the racialized sexism of everyday life, on- and off-screen.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. “Of Course I’m Proud of My Country!” -- 2. “Because Often It’s Both” -- 3. “I Just Wanted a World That Looked Like the One I Know” -- 4. “No, But I’m Still Black” -- 5. “They Got Rid of the Naps, That’s All They Did” -- 6. “Do Not Run Away from Your Blackness” -- Coda -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- About the Author