Black Twitter Asks Rachel: Racial Identity Theft in “Post-Racial” America

Posted in Articles, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2017-09-06 04:41Z by Steven

Black Twitter Asks Rachel: Racial Identity Theft in “Post-Racial” America

Howard Journal of Communications
Published online: 2017-08-18
pages 1-17
DOI: 10.1080/10646175.2017.1354789

Leslie Stevens
Department of Rhetoric & Communication Studies
University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia

Nicole Maurantonio, Associate Professor
Department of Rhetoric & Communication Studies
University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia

On Monday, June 15, 2015, Rachel Dolezal resigned from her post as president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People amid allegations that she had been lying about her race. Dolezal, her White parents claimed, had been “presenting herself as a black person when she is not.” This article explores Black Twitter’s response to Dolezal’s “outing” as a White woman with particular emphasis on the #AskRachel hashtag, to which users posted a series of questions intended to discern Dolezal’s “true” racial identity. Although the hashtag has been alternately praised for its wit and critiqued for its cruelty, this article suggests that both critiques underestimate the hashtag’s significance. This article argues that the hashtag provided a site for the articulation, contestation, and negotiation of Blackness, capturing larger cultural anxieties surrounding racial identity in a “post-racial” United States.

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Interracial Intimacy: Hegemonic Construction of Asian American and Black Relationships on TV Medical Dramas

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive on 2013-01-30 02:02Z by Steven

Interracial Intimacy: Hegemonic Construction of Asian American and Black Relationships on TV Medical Dramas

Howard Journal of Communications
Volume 23, Issue 3 (2012)
pages 253-271
DOI: 10.1080/10646175.2012.695637

Myra Washington, Assistant Professor of Communication & Journalism
University of New Mexico

This article examines the representations of Black and Asian interracial relationships on prime-time television dramas, ER and Grey’s Anatomy. Interracial relationships are still a very small percentage of relationships depicted on television, and Black and Asian couplings represent an even smaller fraction, which makes examining the discourses surrounding these relationships valuable and illuminating. Using a close textual analysis of the discursive strategies that frame the representation of the Black and Asian characters in general, and the representations of their relationships with each other in the dramas specifically, I argue that the narrative arcs and racialized tropes maintain hegemonic racial hierarchies. The representations have the potential to be progressive and/or transgressive, but the death and destruction meted out to the couples ensures no couple reaches the dominant culture’s idea for romantic relationships: marriage and a baby.

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Signifying the tragic mulatto: A semiotic analysis of Alex Haley’s Queen

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Slavery on 2011-11-01 00:55Z by Steven

Signifying the tragic mulatto: A semiotic analysis of Alex Haley’s Queen

Howard Journal of Communications
Volume 7, Issue 2 (1996)
pages 113-126
DOI: 10.1080/10646179609361718

Mark P. Orbe

Karen E. Strother

Employing a semiotic framework, this article explores the signification process of the lead character in Alex Haley’s Queen. This popular miniseries is significant because a bi‐ethnic person is the focal point of its storyline. However, instead of transcending the traditional stereotypes associated with bi‐ethnicity, the program does little more than portray Queen as a “tragic mulatto.”; Specifically, three signifiers are discussed: bi‐ethnicity as (a) beautiful, yet threatening, (b) inherently problematic, and (c) leading to insanity.

For three days in mid-February 1993, millions of television viewers watched Alex Haley’s Queen, the epic miniseries that follows the life of a woman born in the 1840s of a European master and an enslaved African (Fein, 1993). Promoted as the third and final project featuring the story of Alex Haley’s multi- generational family, Alex Haley’s Queen extends his earlier docudramas. Roots and Roots: The Next Generation (Zoglin, 1993). Described as “Big Event television” (Goldberg, 1993), the miniseries was lauded as compelling and “of uncommon passion and substance” (O’Connor, 1993, p. C34). Each of the three two-hour segments of Queen was rated among Nielsen’s top ten television programs for the week, and the epic garnered an Emmy nomination for best miniseries.

As with Haley’s earlier works, some controversy arose regarding the accuracy…

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