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.