Erica Chito Childs' careful research and creative insights are clearly displayed in this engaging and interesting book. Fade to Black and White is an original study that convincingly shows how the depictions of interracial sex and marriage in popular culture and media reflect contemporary attitudes about race and sex in the United States. This book is a significant contribution to the study of American race relations. -- William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University
Excellent and novel integration of a wide range of contemporary readings, films, television programs, news coverage and youth-oriented media's coverage of inter-racial relationships. It moves the discourse on the increasingly important area of inter-racial relationships to another plane, opening readers' eyes to subtle, but persisting framing patterns that both reflect and influence our views of inter-racial relationships. -- Clara Rodriguez, Fordham University
Childs does not explore the half full argument that media representations of a color-blind U.S., though not factual or realistic, are aspirational and index a progressive rollback of the most virulent forms of public racism in the U.S. Instead, she confronts the undeniable and unacceptable fact that racism remains powerful in popular culture. Recommended. * CHOICE, April 2010 *
Fade to Black and White shows, first and foremost, how the racial exception can be used to prove the racial rule. Erica Chito Childs presents a provocative analysis of popular television shows, movies, and news in order to better understand the ideological work performed by the relatively rare interracial images that circulate in American popular culture. What she finds charts new ground in our understanding of an early 21st century conundrum-how it is that whiteness continues to be celebrated in what are supposedly colorblind times. -- Darnell Hunt, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA
