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

Squires, Catherine R.

9780791470992: Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America (Suny Series, Negotiating Identity: Discourses, Politics, Processes, and Praxes)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791470997 ISBN 13: 9780791470992

Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr, 2007

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.

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From the Back Cover:

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.

"This is one of the few sustained treatments on racial discourse, interracial representation, and the media. The use of case examples organized around coverage of key controversies--court cases, life stories, public controversies--gives the narrative momentum and at the same time provides the author with the space for serious and engaged analysis." -- Herman Gray, author of Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation

About the Author:

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

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