Race and Contention in Twenty-First Century U.S. Media (Routledge Transformations in Race and Media)

This volume explores and clarifies the complex intersection of race and media in the contemporary United States. Due to the changing dynamics of how racial politics are played out in the contemporary US (as seen with debates of the "post-racial" society), as well as the changing dynamics of the media itself ("new vs. old" media debates), an interrogation of the role of the media and its various institutions within this area of social inquiry is necessary. Contributors contend that race in the United States is dynamic, connected to social, economic, and political structures which are continually altering themselves. The book seeks to highlight the contested space that the media provides for changing dimensions of race, examining the ways that various representations can both hinder or promote positive racial views, considering media in relation to other institutions, and moving beyond thinking of media as a passive and singular institution.

Chapters 3 and 13 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Jason Smith is a PhD Candidate in Public Sociology at George Mason University, USA. Past work has been featured in the International Journal of Communication, Journal of Black Studies, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Sociation Today, and the edited volume Agenda for Social Justice: Solutions 2012.

Bhoomi K. Thakore will be joining Elmhurst College in Fall 2016 as Visiting Assistant Professor and Director of the Sociology Program. Her research interests broadly cover structural inequality, with particular focus on race/ethnicity/gender and media. In her forthcoming book, South Asians on the U.S. Screen: Just Like Everyone Else? (Lexington Books, 2016), she examines the ways that South Asian characters and actors in popular entertainment reinforce a racialized hierarchy on Screen and in society.