Mixed Race Studies

Post Racialism, Romance, and The Real World D.C.

FlowTV
Volume 11, Issue 13 (2010-05-07)

Jon Kraszewski, Assistant Professor of Communication
Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersery

MTV recently finished airing The Real World, DC, the twenty-third season of this long-running reality series. This past season, Ty, an African American from Baltimore, and Emily, a white roommate from Columbia, Missouri, became the series first interracial heterosexual couple. The Real World previously captured a few interracial one-night stands between roommates and people outside the house, and season three occasionally portrayed the courtship and engagement of Pedro Zamora and Sean Sasser, an interracial gay couple, although Sean was not part of the cast. The relationship between Emily and Ty is unique because both were members of the cast and had an ongoing relationship.
 
The romance, which is part of a larger post-racial project on The Real World where race no longer matters in an integrated world, is representative of a third era of race relations on the series. During the Clinton presidency, The Real World focused on defining country conservative roommates as racists and then on the urban African Americans who teach these country hicks the errors of their ways, in the process transforming the rural roommates into hip, urban liberals free of any racism and in line with MTV’s then liberal brand. In the early 2000s, The Real World turned its attention to multiracial roommates with one black and one white parent. Here MTV transitioned out of its liberal brand and courted viewers across the political spectrum, a move the channel had to make to stay relevant after the election of George W. Bush and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The Real World tapped into the liberal beliefs (i.e., multiracialism could help dismantle America’s racist past) and conservative notions (i.e., multiracialism was a neoliberal project of racial self-management in opposition to African American civil rights initiatives) present in multiracial activism at the time to win over viewers of various political backgrounds. Since the election of President Barack Obama, The Real World has presented race as inconsequential, as an afterthought in an integrated world. In the 2009 season set in Cancun, the roommates were multiracial, black, white, and Latina. Aside from the roommates identifying their races in the premiere, they never mentioned race again…

…As it defines Ty and Emily as atheist hipsters and dedicated athletes, The Real World provides troubling assumptions about blackness by positioning Ty as a threat to whiteness. Here race matters, even though the post racialism in the series claims it does not…

…It is hard not to see the post-racial world on the DC season as a nostalgic fantasy of blackness’ threat to a white America, especially since the season is set in America’s capital. Although race doesn’t matter in the way the series initially portrays the romance of Ty and Emily, race becomes important as Ty becomes a threat to Emily, the other roommates (especially white women), and white moms…

Read the entire article here.

Shades Of Grey: Interracial Couples On TV

FlowTV
Volume 15, Issue 4 (2011-12-05)

Erica Chito-Childs, Associate Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York

Showing interracial couples on television is not necessarily something new. In 1968, Star Trek aired what is widely regarded as the first black-white interracial kiss on television between William Shatner’s character, Captain Kirk, a white man and a black woman, Lt. Uhura, when the two were forced to kiss against their will by a galactic enemy.

Now, over thirty years later, media reports play up the idea that the numbers of interracial couples, both on-screen and off, are skyrocketing, and push the idea that these unions are so common that interracial relationships barely raise an eyebrow. Yet according to 2010 Census data, only eight percent of all marriages are interracial. While real-life interracial marriage remains low, interracial couples may be cropping up more frequently on television. Do the growing numbers of interracial couples on television signify increased racial acceptance and color-blindness or do these depictions overwhelmingly reproduce long-standing societal notions about the deviant nature of interracial sex and the location of these relationships in the margins of society?

Looking at the contemporary representations on television, interracial relationships are most often found as temporary relationships (lasting just a few episodes), in side-storylines or otherwise marginalized. These relationships are almost exclusively depicted as comical misadventures, introduced as part of a criminal case, used as symbolic of the different worlds that are being portrayed, or play on perceptions of difference, highlighting that racially matched characters are the norm.

Even among newer shows that are heralded for their diverse casts or cutting-edge approach, interracial representations are arguably problematic. There may be a trend to present interracial couples without mentioning race but that does not mean that these representations do not carry familiar racial messages. Still a number of television show producers maintain that they have adopted a colorblind strategy, which they argue transcends race. For example, on New Adventures of Old Christine, Christine is a divorced white woman who becomes interested in a black teacher at her daughter’s private school

…The question remains, if interracial coupes are portrayed in these problematic ways, then why do television shows feature interracial relationships at all? I argue that by showing interracial relationships yet parodying or fetishizing them at the same time, the shows can maximize their audience without alienating others. Difference sells, yet the presentation must be constantly adjusted to fit the contemporary discourses on race. Using interracial sex to push boundaries is widely recognized. Dana Wade, the president of advertising agency, Spike DDB, discussed this idea with television ads, arguing “certain brands might use interracial couples to convey a hip image” adding that “the whole personae of the brand is kind of risky, or on the edge.” Ironically these “hip” and “cutting-edge” depictions are actually just barely repackaged stereotypes…

Read the entire article here.

Not Another Remix: How Obama Became the First Hip-Hop President

Journal of Popular Music Studies
Volume 22, Issue 4, December 2010
pages 389–415
DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-1598.2010.01252.x

Travis L. Gosa, Assistant Professor of Social Science at Cornell University
Cornell University

January 20, 2009 marked the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the first African-American president of the United States. Political commentators are busy making sense of Obama’s candidacy and election, but not enough attention has been given to how youth have made sense of Obama. As I show in this article, young people—so-called “hip-hoppers” and “millennials”—used their unique sensibilities, technologies, and music to help define and elect the first black, hip-hop president.

This article examines “Obama-Hop,” rap music about Barack Obama, and the 2008 presidential election. Rap songs about election year politics were a highly visible aspect of the election (Hamby; NPR). This study provides the first systematic analysis of the political, racial, and gendered discourse of the Obama-Hop movement. While Obama’s campaign was discussed in the framework of “post-racialism” (Crowley), this study shows how Obama’s black masculinity became a major source of identification for rappers. The paper explores how Obama was depicted, embraced, and defended from scrutiny in hip-hop. Based on the review of ninety-seven Obama-themed mixtapes, I show how music was used in an attempt to energize youth toward voting and embracing Obama’s political messages.

The exploration necessarily informs the larger debate over hip-hop politics. The “hip-hop wars”—as Rose (2008) labels the persistent controversy over rap—are currently being waged over the political relevance of the music. Representing a generational divide over the meaning of political activism (Boyd), there has been resistance to the claim that hip-hop is indeed “political” (Bynoe; McWhorter 2008). Hip-hop academics are increasingly concerned that corporate control and media consolidation are destroying rap’s political significance (Asante; Rose; Powell). This article addresses the debate by considering the political content of digital mixtapes, which are non-commercial compilations of music, news clips, and photos. The proliferation of Obama rap mixes provides evidence that hip-hop continues to be used toward political ends. This paper shows how Obama’s campaign and subsequent victory put in motion a new wave of explicitly political rap, but one that still includes many of the same problematic tropes around race and masculinity…

Read the entire article here.

The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium

Stanford University Press
February 2011
312 pages
23 illustrations
Cloth ISBN-10: 0804756295; ISBN-13: 9780804756297
Paper ISBN-10: 0804756309; ISBN-13: 9780804756303

Michele Elam, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of English and Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Stanford University, Stanford, California

Cover Photo: “Baby Halfie Brown Head”, from artist Lezley Saar’s, Mulatto Nation (2003) art installation.

The Souls of Mixed Folk examines representations of mixed race in literature and the arts that redefine new millennial aesthetics and politics. Focusing on black-white mixes, Elam analyzes expressive works—novels, drama, graphic narrative, late-night television, art installations—as artistic rejoinders to the perception that post-Civil Rights politics are bereft and post-Black art is apolitical. Reorienting attention to the cultural invention of mixed race from the social sciences to the humanities, Elam considers the creative work of Lezley Saar, Aaron McGruder, Nate Creekmore, Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, Emily Raboteau, Carl Hancock Rux, and Dave Chappelle. All these writers and artists address mixed race as both an aesthetic challenge and a social concern, and together, they gesture toward a poetics of social justice for the “mulatto millennium.”

The Souls of Mixed Folk seeks a middle way between competing hagiographic and apocalyptic impulses in mixed race scholarship, between those who proselytize mixed race as the great hallelujah to the “race problem” and those who can only hear the alarmist bells of civil rights destruction. Both approaches can obscure some of the more critically astute engagements with new millennial iterations of mixed race by the multi-generic cohort of contemporary writers, artists, and performers discussed in this book. The Souls of Mixed Folk offers case studies of their creative work in an effort to expand the contemporary idiom about mixed race in the so-called post-race moment, asking how might new millennial expressive forms suggest an aesthetics of mixed race? And how might such an aesthetics productively reimagine the relations between race, art, and social equity in the twenty-first century?

Read an excerpt of “Obama’s Mixed Race Politics” here.

Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial

Duke University Press
November 2012
256 pages
20 photographs
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-5277-8
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-5292-1

Ralina L. Joseph, Associate Professor of Communication
University of Washington

Representations of multiracial Americans, especially those with one black and one white parent, appear everywhere in contemporary culture, from reality shows to presidential politics. Some depict multiracial individuals as being mired in painful confusion; others equate them with progress, as the embodiment of a postracial utopia. In Transcending Blackness, Ralina L. Joseph critiques both depictions as being rooted in—and still defined by—the racist notion that Blackness is a deficit that must be overcome.

Analyzing emblematic representations of multiracial figures in popular culture—Jennifer Beals’s character in the The L Word; the protagonist in Danny Senza’s novel, Caucasia; the title character in the independent film, Mixing Nia; and contestants in a controversial episode of the reality show, America’s Next Top Model, who had to “switch ethnicities” for a photo shoot—Joseph identifies the persistance of two widespread stereotypes about mixed-race African Americans: “new millennium mulattas” and “exceptional multiracials.” The former inscribes the multiracial African American as a tragic figure whose Blackness predestines them for misfortune; the latter rewards mixed-race African Americans with success for erasing their Blackness. Addressing questions of authenticity, sexuality, and privilege, Transcending Blackness refutes that idea that in American society, race no longer matters.

Table of Contents

• Preface. From Biracial to Multiracial to Mixed-Race to Critical Mixed-Race Studies
• Introduction. Reading Mixed-Race African American Representations in the New Millennium
• Part I: The New Millennium Mulatta
  • 1. The Bad Race Girl: Jennifer Beals on The L Word, the Race Card, and the Punishment of Mixed-Race Blackness
  • 2. The Sad Race Girl: Passing and the New Millennium Mulatta in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia
• Part II: The Exceptional Multiracial
  • 3. Transitioning to the Exceptional Multiracial: Escaping Tragedy through Black Transcendence in Mixing Nia
  • 4. Recursive Racial Transformation: Selling the Exceptional Multiracial on America’s Next Top Model
• Conclusion. Racist Jokes and the Exceptional Multiracial, or Why Transcending Blackness Is a Terrible Proposition
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture

Rowman & Littlefield
May 2009
250 pages
Cloth: 0-7425-6079-1 / 978-0-7425-6079-6
Paper: 0-7425-6080-5 / 978-0-7425-6080-2

Erica Chito Childs, Associate Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York

There is no teasing apart what interracial couples think of themselves from what society shows them about themselves. Following on her earlier ground-breaking study of the social worlds of interracial couples, Erica Chito Childs considers the larger context of social messages, conveyed by the media, that inform how we think about love across the color line. Examining a range of media—from movies to music to the web—Fade to Black and White offers an informative and provocative account of how the perception of interracial sexuality as “deviant” has been transformed in the course of the 20th century and how race relations are understood today.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Fade to Black and White
• 1. Historical Realities and Media Representations of Race and Sexuality
• 2. The Prime-Time Color-Line: Interracial Couples and Television
• 3. It’s a (White) Man’s World
• 4. When Good Girls Go Bad
• 5. Playing the Color-Blind Card: Seeing Black and White in News Media
• 6. Multiracial Utopias: Youth, Sports and Music
• Conclusion

IU Libraries Film Archive a treasure chest of educational, rare films

inside IU Bloomington
Weekly news for faculty and staff from the Indiana University Bloomington campus
2013-03-07

Lynn Schoch, Office of the Vice President for International Affairs

Many of a certain age—particularly those who were in elementary school in the ’50s and ’60s—will remember 16 mm films produced by the U.S. government, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., McGraw-Hill or National Educational Television.

They often provided the only glimpses of other worlds that U.S. school children had the opportunity to see.

By the 1970s, videotape and documentaries with large budgets and prime-time aspirations, like Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation,” began to replace the older formats.

From about 1940, IU’s Audio-Visual Center (then part of the Extension Division and later, Instructional Support Services) was the depository for U.S. government films. In time, it became the state’s most active lender of educational films to schools, museums, clubs, community centers, and churches in the state.

As the move to videotape made 16 mm films “obsolete,” the center became a repository for what other institutions and organizations no longer wanted.

In 2006 what was then a collection of 34,000 reels formed the core of the IU Libraries Film Archive. IU Libraries has supported the transition from lending library to historical archive with a dedicated film achivist in the Herman B. Wells Library, support for resources to digitize the collections and an off-site storage environment designed to minimize deterioration.

“We have the largest educational film collection in any university library,” said Rachael Stoeltje, film archivist with the IU Libraries Film Archive.

There are films available nowhere else in the world, and rarities such as 30 titles from the 1950s CBS series “You Are There” and the world’s most complete collection of Encyclopedia Britannica films…

…Darlene Sadlier, director of the Portuguese Program and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, a program within the College of Arts and Sciences, has been using educational films from the collection for many years in her classes in Latin American cinema and culture.

“One film that is helpful in a discussion of the history of race relations in Brazil, for instance, is ‘Brazil: The Vanishing Negro,'” she said. The film is a 30-minute film produced for public television in the 1960s, showing Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies and the daily lives of Brazil’s black population.

“It was an informative resource when it was first produced, but it was also polemical because it discussed the benefits of racial mixing, or rather whitening, of the Brazilian African population, to the detriment of its heritage,” Sadlier said. “In recent years, Brazil has recognized its African heritage with affirmative action laws and a holiday dedicated to national race consciousness. With this film, we can look back and consider how far the country has moved to acknowledge its long-held myth of ‘racial democracy.’”

Sadlier has published extensively on the histories, languages and cultures of Brazil. Her latest book deals with the Good Neighbor policy adopted by the U.S. government during World War II to cultivate stronger alliances with countries in the Western Hemisphere…

Read the entire article here.

The use of popular media in multicultural education: Stressing implications for the Black/non-Black biracial North American student

Syracuse University
1999
206 pages

Wendy Cecille Thompson

Instructor usage of popular media in the classroom has spawned studies on the impact of the visual image on minority populations. These studies range from examining the effects of films as role models on the self-concepts of Black elementary school children (Dimas, 1970), to Black college women’s persistence in viewing a popular television show in which none of the cast members were Black (Strother, 1994). This study is the first to examine the effects of classroom usage of popular media on populations that are racially “in the middle”—biracial individuals. Moreover, it is believed that popular media recommended for use with Blacks may be used with these individuals to reify the notion that the world’s population can be categorized into five socially-constructed groups called race. Lastly, a thorough examination of the relevant literature reveals that no models or paradigms of multicultural education specifically address the educational needs of biracial persons.

This study, through the use of unstructured and semi-structured qualitative interviews with 15 informants, seeks to discover how parental and cultural influences aid in the formation of a racial identity. The study is also concerned with the informants’ views on whether or how multicultural education served their educational needs. This study also attempts to discover how this marginalized population has responded to the use of popular media in multicultural education.

This study concludes that, although biracial persons have their own process of racial self-definition that is unique to them, society views them as Blacks. Parents and cultural influences greatly affect the biracial process of racial identification. Such influences minimize the effects of media on the biracial formation of a self-image. Media images, however, enable others to harbor perceptions of biracial persons based on essentialized notions of race and culture.

Such essentialized notions permeate educational structures, and thwart efforts at multicultural education. These efforts further marginalize biracial people by forcing them into rigid racial categories and by providing stereotypical images of those races when using popular media to further instructional goals.

This study should provide recommendations for popular media use in diverse fields, such as education, communication, and media studies.

Log in to read the dissertation here.

The Manifestation of Race in Everyday Communication Interactions in New Zealand

Unitec New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand
October 2012
281 pages

Elizabeth S. Revell

A thesis submitted to the Department of Communication Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of International Communication

This thesis examines the manifestation of race in everyday communication interactions in New Zealand using an unconventional, experimental methodology. Experimenting with a partial collaborative autoethnographic approach that involved reflexive diaries, interviews, and focus groups as data collection methods, the author and nine other co-participants took part in a collaborative autoethnographic exercise, that required them to focus, reflect on, and discuss together their perceptions of the way race was manifested in their day-to-day experiences, over the period of a month. Co-participants were encouraged to write evocatively of their experiences. The author used her mixed-race identity as an autoethnographic analytical tool as a measure towards resolving her ‘double consciousness’ (Du Bois, 1903). Her own voice, thoughts, and stories of her lived experiences are woven into the study, alongside more traditional analysis. In carrying out this investigation, the author sought not only to generate knowledge in the traditional academic sense, but to facilitate a disruptive, emancipative and emotionally engaging conversation on racism in New Zealand, between herself, her co-participants, and readers.

In answering the main research question about the manifestation of race in everyday communication interactions in New Zealand, the author found that in public contexts in New Zealand, race as a topic is taboo and racists are social pariahs amongst Western, educated, middle-class members of society. Consequentially, race is often manifested in a variety of subtle ways in everyday communication interactions, and is difficult to identify and challenge. The subtle way in which race is manifested in everyday settings masks an undercurrent of prejudice and hostility. Whether or not these hidden tensions will emerge problematically in the future remains to be seen, as New Zealanders negotiate and manage their biculturalism and multiculturalism.

In terms of the significance of race in New Zealand, the author concluded that New Zealand’s racial and ethnic identity is changing (browning), and that the longstanding New Zealand European (White) majority is decreasing in proportion and dominance. Some New Zealand Europeans are consciously and subconsciously trying to assert their authority, refusing to let the idea that a ‘true’ New Zealander is ‘White’ go because of a) a subconscious belief in the superiority of White skin and/or Western culture, and b) insecurity around what will happen to them and their lifestyle, if non-White ethnic and non-Western cultural groups continue to gain in proportion to White, Western groups. As a result, some non-White individuals are experiencing being subtly and overtly ‘othered’, excluded, disrespected, and negatively stereotyped. Being subjected to everyday racism has resulted in some non-White New Zealanders having a fractured sense of identity, and others having adopted the racist worldview of Whites.

In terms of resolving the dialectic of her mixed-race identity, the closure the author had hoped for was not achieved. Instead, she became more conscious of her own racist beliefs and actions, and convinced of the importance of continuing to challenge them.

Table of Contents

• ABSTRACT
• DECLARATION
• CANDIDATE’S DECLARATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
  • MY “DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS”: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE
    • First thing’s first: Who I am
    • But: The dreaded question
    • Fleshing out the issue
    • Defining my research topic
  • WIDER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
  • RESEARCH PURPOSE
  • CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS
    • “Race”
    • “Everyday communication interaction”
  • METHODOLOGY: A PARTIAL COLLABORATIVE AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH
  • THESIS OUTLINE
• CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTS AND CONTEXT
  • CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS
    • Concept 1: ‘Race’
    • Concept 2: ‘Everyday communication interaction’
  • CONTEXT
    • Multiculturalism and biculturalism in New Zealand
    • Recent signs of ethnic ‘unease’ in multicultural New Zealand
    • Use of the term ‘race’ in New Zealand
• CHAPTER 3– LITERATURE REVIEW
  • RACE IN COMMUNICATION STUDIES
    • The critical turn in communication studies
  • THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
    • Critical Theory
    • General theories of race and racism
    • Theories and concepts from sociology (on the everyday social construction of race)
    • Theories and concepts from social psychology (on contemporary racism)
  • A REVIEW OF RELEVANT RESEARCH
    • …on race and the everyday
    • …on race and the everyday in New Zealand
• CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH DESIGN
  • SITUATING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY ONTOLOGICALLY AND EPISTEMOLOGICALLY
  • METHODOLOGY
    • A qualitative approach
    • Ethnography
    • Autoethnography
    • Partial collaborative autoethnography
    • Co-participant selection
  • DATA COLLECTION METHODS
    • Solicited reflexive diaries
    • Semi-structured interviews
    • Semi-structured focus groups (briefing and debriefing sessions)
  • METHODS OF ANALYSIS
    • Thematic analysis
    • Analysis and discussion in autoethnography
    • ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
• CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS
  • PARTICIPANT POSITIONALITIES
    • Liz:
    • Ameera:
    • Yasmin:
    • Rachel:
    • Timothy:
    • Heather:
    • Lana:
    • Luke:
    • Zane:
    • Natalie:
  • EMERGENT THEMES
    • Theme 1: Everyday living in a multicultural society
      • 1a. NZ European dominance is eroding
      • 1b. New Zealanders are managing this change well
      • 1c. New Zealanders are not managing this change well
      • Concluding notes for theme one
    • Theme 2: References to ‘racisms’ past
      • 2a. Ethnic inequality and redistribution
      • 2b. Crying race
      • 2c. Old racist attitudes
      • 2d. The declining significance of race?
      • Concluding notes for theme two
    • Theme 3: Everyday awareness and negotiation of social hierarchy
      • 3a. White superiority
      • 3b. Negotiating the social ladder
      • 3c. Legitimacy
      • Concluding notes for theme three
    • Theme 4: Conversational tact – Everyday speech conventions
      • 4a. Racialised ‘neutral’ terms
      • 4b. Racial stereotyping
      • 4c. Censoring
      • Concluding notes for theme four
    • Theme 5: Everyday emotional reactions to races
      • 5a. Anger/cumulative anger towards a race
      • 5b. Disgust
      • 5c. Instant connection
      • 5d. Comfort/discomfort
      • 5e. Fear
      • 5f. Romantic attraction/indifference/repulsion
      • Concluding notes for theme five
    • Theme 6: Reacting to everyday racism
      • 6a. Emotional reactions to everyday racism
      • 6b. Dealing with everyday racism
      • Concluding notes for theme six
    • Theme 7: “Race matters to me because I look different”
      • Concluding notes for chapter seven
  • OVERALL CONCLUSION
• CHAPTER 6 – DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
  • THEMATIC DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
    • Theme 1: Everyday living in a multicultural society
    • Theme 2: References to ‘racisms’ past
    • Theme 3: Social status
    • Theme 4: Conversational tact – Everyday speech conventions
    • Theme 5: Emotional reactions to races
    • Theme 6: Reacting to everyday racism
    • Theme 7: “Race matters to me because I look different”
  • HOW IS RACE MANIFESTED IN EVERYDAY COMMUNICATION INTERACTIONS IN NEW ZEALAND?
  • THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE IN NEW ZEALAND
• CHAPTER 7: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
  • RESOLVING MY MIXED-RACE DIALECTIC
  • LIMITATIONS
  • RECOMMENDATIONS
  • SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
  • APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT INFORMATION FORM
  • APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM
  • APPENDIX C: PROCEDURAL EXPLANATIONS
  • APPENDIX D: GUIDELINE SHEET FOR DIARIES
  • APPENDIX E: EXTRACT FROM A PARTICIPANT’S REFLEXIVE RESEARCH DIARY
  • APPENDIX F: DEBRIEFING SESSION MAIN CO-PARTICIPANT SHEET
  • APPENDIX G: DEBRIEFING SESSION CO-PARTICIPANT SHEET

Read the entire thesis here.

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy

Lexington Books
March 2012
136 pages
Size: 6 1/2 x 9 1/2
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7391-6964-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-7391-6965-0

Samantha Nogueira Joyce, Assistant Professor in Communication Studies
Indiana University, South Bend

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy, by Samantha Nogueira Joyce, examines what happens when a telenovela directly addresses matters of race and racism in contemporary Brazil. This investigation provides a traditional textual analysis of Duas Caras (2007-2008), a watershed telenovela for two main reasons: It was the first of its kind to present audiences with an Afro-Brazilian as the main hero, openly addressing race matters through plot and dialogue. Additionally, for the first time in the history of Brazilian television, the author of Duas Caras kept a web blog where he discussed the public’s reactions to the storylines, media discussions pertaining to the characters and plot, and directly engaged with fans and critics of the program.

Joyce combines her investigation of Duas Caras with a study of related media in order to demonstrate how the program introduced novel ideas about race and also offered a forum where varying perspectives on race, class, and racial relations in Brazil could be discussed. Brazilian Telenovelas is not a reception study in the traditional sense, it is not a story of entertainment-education in the strict sense, and it is not solely a textual analysis. Instead, Joyce’s text is a study of the social milieu that the telenovela (and especially Duas Caras) navigates, one that is a component of a contemporary progressive social movement in Brazil, and one that views the text as being located in social interactions. As such, this book reveals how telenovelas contribute to social change in a way that has not been fully explored in previous scholarship.

Table of Contents

• Chapter I – Episode 1: And Let There be White
• Chapter II – Black Flows: Duas Caras / The Legacy of Whitening and Racial Democracy
• Chapter III – “My Little Whitey” / “My Big, Delicious Negro:” Telenovelas, Duas Caras, and the Representation of Race
• Chapter IV – Deu no Blogão! (“It was in the Big Blog!”): Writing a Telenovela, a Blog, and a Metadiscourse
• Chapter V – Duas Caras as a New Approach to Social Merchandising
• Chapter VI – Conclusions
• References
• About the Author
• Index