The Post-Racial Mystique: Media and Race in the Twenty-First Century

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.