Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America (Suny Series, Negotiating Identity: Discourses, Politics, Processes, and Praxes) - Softcover

Squires, Catherine R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791471004 ISBN 13: 9780791471005

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2007

Synopsis

Explores contemporary news media coverage of multiracial people and identities.

When modern news media choose to focus attention on people of multiracial descent, how does this fit with broader contemporary and historical racial discourses? Do these news narratives complicate common understandings of race and race relations? Dispatches from the Color Line explores these issues by examining contemporary news media coverage of multiracial people and identities. Catherine R. Squires looks at how journalists utilize information from many sources-including politicians, bureaucrats, activists, scholars, demographers, and marketers-to link multiracial identity to particular racial norms, policy preferences, and cultural trends. She considers individuals who were accused (rightly or wrongly) of misrepresenting their racial identity to the public for personal gain, and also compares the new racial categories of Census 2000 as reported in Black owned, Asian American owned, and mainstream newspapers. These comparisons reveal how a new racial group is framed in mass media, and how different media sources reinforce or challenge long-standing assumptions about racial identity and belonging in the United States.

About this title

About the Author

Catherine R. Squires is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791471004
• ISBN 13: 9780791471005
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 276