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In our consumption-oriented, mediated society, much of what comesto pass as important is based often on the stories produced and dis-

seminated by media institutions. Much of what audiences know andcare about is based on the images, symbols, and narratives in radio, tele-vision, film, music, and other media. How individuals construct theirsocial identities, how they come to understand what it means to bemale, female, black, white, Asian, Latino, Native American—even ruralor urban—is shaped by commodified texts produced by media for audi-ences that are increasingly segmented by the social constructions of raceand gender. Media, in short, are central to what ultimately come to rep-resent our social realities.

While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to under-stand and perform gender is based on culture.1 We view culture “as aprocess through which people circulate and struggle over the meanings ofour social experiences, social relations, and therefore, our selves” (Byers& Dell, 1992, p. 191). Just as gender is a social construct through whicha society defines what it means to be masculine or feminine, race also is asocial construction. Race can no longer be seen as a biological category,and it has little basis in science or genetics. Identifiers such as hair and skincolor serve as imperfect indicators of race. The racial categories we use todifferentiate human difference have been created and changed to meet thedynamic social, political, and economic needs of our society. The premise

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that race and gender are social constructionsunderscores their centrality to the processesof human reality. Working from it compelsus to understand the complex roles playedby social institutions such as the mediain shaping our increasingly gendered andracialized media culture. This chapterexplores some of the ways mediated com-munication in the United States representsthe social constructions of race and genderand ultimately contributes to our under-standing of both, especially race.2

Although research on race, gender, andmedia traditionally has focused on under-represented, subordinate groups such aswomen and minorities, this chapter dis-cusses scholarship on media representationsof both genders and various racial groups.Therefore, we examine media constructionsof masculinity, femininity, so-called peopleof color, and even white people.3 On theother hand, given the limitations of thischapter and the fact that media research onrace has focused on African Americans, wedevote greater attention to blacks but notat the exclusion of the emerging saliencyof whiteness studies, which acknowledgewhiteness as a social category and seek toexpose and explain white privilege.4

Our theoretical and conceptual orienta-tion encompasses research that is com-monly referred to as “critical/culturalstudies.” Numerous theoretical approacheshave been used to examine issues of race,gender, and media, but we contend thatcritical/cultural studies represent the mostsalient contemporary thinking on mediaand culture. More important, unlike mostsocial and behavioral scientific research,most critical and cultural approaches tomedia studies work from the premise thatWestern industrialized societies are strati-fied by hierarchies of race, gender, andclass that structure our social experience.Moreover, cultural studies utilizes inter-disciplinary approaches necessary forunderstanding both the media’s role in theproduction and reproduction of inequityand for the development of more equitable

and democratic societies. Cultural studiesscholars have devoted considerable atten-tion to studies of media audiences, institu-tions, technologies, and texts. This chapterprivileges textual analyses of media thatexplicate power relationships and the con-struction of meaning about gender andrace and their intersections (Byers & Dell,1992). In addition, we draw considerablyfrom research employing various feministframeworks. Generally, our critical reviewof literature from the past two decadesdemonstrates the disruption of essentialistconstructions of gender, race, and sexualidentities.

♦♦ Black Feminist Perspectivesand Media Representationsof Black Women

A feminist critique is rooted in the struggleto end sexist oppression. We employ femi-nism as a multidisciplinary approach tosocial analysis that emphasizes gender as amajor structuring component of powerrelations in society. We believe media arecrucial in the construction and dissemina-tion of gender ideologies and, thus, in gendersocialization. We acknowledge feminismand feminist media studies’ tendency toprivilege gender and white women, in par-ticular, over other social categories of expe-rience, such as race and class (hooks, 1990;Dines, 1995; Dines & Humez, 2003). Blackfeminist scholars have acknowledged theneglect which women of color, specificallyblack women, have experienced throughtheir selective inclusion in the writingsof feminist cultural analysis (hooks, 1990;Bobo & Seiter, 1991; Valdivia, 1995).Black feminism positions itself as criticalsocial theory (Hill Collins, 2004) and is nota set of abstract principles but of ideas thatcome directly from the historical and con-temporary experience of black women. Itis from this perspective that we begin our

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discussion of black female representation inthe media.

Much contemporary academic writinghas criticized mainstream media for theirnegative depictions of African Americanwomen (Bobo, 1995; Hill Collins, 2000,2004; hooks, 1992; Lubiano, 1992;Manatu, 2003; McPhail, 1996; Perry,2003). Challenging media portrayals ofblack women as mammies, matriarchs,jezebels, welfare mothers, and tragic mulat-toes is a core theme in black feminist thought.Author bell hooks (1992) contends thatblack female representation in the media“determines how blackness and people areseen and how other groups will respond tous based on their relation to these con-structed images” (p. 5). Hudson (1998) andHill Collins (2000, 2004) both advance thenotion that media images of black womenresult from dominant racial, gender, andclass ideologies. Furthering hooks’s discus-sion of representation, Hudson (1998)argues that “these stereotypes simultane-ously reflect and distort both the ways inwhich black women view themselves (indi-vidually and collectively) and the ways inwhich they are viewed by others” (p. 249).The study of black female representation isinformed by whiteness studies and, accord-ing to Dyer (1997), “the only way to seethe structures, tropes, and perceptual habitsof whiteness, is when nonwhite (and aboveall, black) people are also represented”(p. 13).

Scholars have studied black female repre-sentation in a variety of media contexts.Meyers (2004) used discourse analysis toexamine the representation of violence againstAfrican American women in local TV newscoverage during “Freaknik,” a spring breakritual held in Atlanta, Georgia, throughoutthe 1990s. Her study concluded that thenews “portrayed most of its victims asstereotypic Jezebels whose lewd behaviorprovoked assault” (p. 95). Orbe andStrother’s (1996) semiotic analysis of thebiracial title character in Queen, AlexHaley’s miniseries, demonstrated how

Queen fell in line with “traditional stereo-typing of other bi-ethnic characters as beau-tiful, yet threatening, inherently problematic,and destined for insanity” (p. 117). Larson’s(1994) study of black women on the soapopera All My Children found the show con-sistently embraced the matriarch stereotype.In fact, the image of the black woman asoversexed fantasy object, dominating matri-arch, and nonthreatening, desexualizedmammy figure remains the most persistent inthe media (Edwards, 1993).

Black feminist thought also challenges theway some media outlets run by black menengage in misogynistic depictions of blackwomen. Burks (1996) notices the saliencyof hooks’s phrase, “white supremacist capi-talist patriarchy,” in many black independentfilms. She explains that “black independentcinema is not necessarily free of the dominantwhite, male, heterosexual hegemony that hassucceeded, at one point or another, in colo-nizing us all” (p. 26). Several cultural criticshave focused their studies of black femalerepresentation on majority-produced anddirected Hollywood films (Bobo, 1995;Bogle, 2001; Holtzman, 2000; hooks, 1992,1994). Many other media scholars havefocused their analyses on the way black film-makers depict black femininity, as part of atrend that Burks (1996) argues leaves main-stream (white) Hollywood producers free toconstruct the black female image in any waythey like and to reach a larger viewing audi-ence in the process.

Black female scholars Wallace (1990)and hooks (1993) both have written exten-sively on the work of black writer/directorSpike Lee’s portrayal of black women.Hooks contends that while Lee is

uncompromising in his commitment tocreate images of black males that chal-lenge perceptions and bring issues ofracism to the screen, he conforms to thestatus quo when it comes to images offemales. Sexism is the familiar construc-tion that links his films to all the otherHollywood dramas folks see. (p. 14)

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McPhail (1996) continues hooks’s argumentand argues that Lee’s films “subscribe toessentialist conceptions of race and genderthat reify the same ideological and epistemo-logical assumptions that undermine boththe representation of race and gender inmainstream media” (p. 127). According toour (Brooks & Hébert, 2004) study of Lee’sBamboozled, he creates female characterswho become defined by the men in their lives.We claim that although his films fight tochallenge racist frameworks within the massmedia and society, they simultaneously per-petuate sexist norms as they relate to blackwomanhood. Although Spike Lee is not theonly black male filmmaker who perpetuatesnegative representations of women, he hasgarnered the most attention by cultural crit-ics. This is an area of study that requires addi-tional work, as African American filmmakersare moving from the margins of independentfilms to the center of multibillion dollar stu-dios and networks that are run by heterosex-ual white males, thus potentially contributingto black women’s oppression.

Prime time television has tended toconfine black female roles to white modelsof “good wives” and to black matriarchalstereotypes. Byers and Dell’s (1992) analysisof characterization in the CBS workplaceensemble Frank’s Place demonstrates that itwas no exception to this trend. Their studyprovides an excellent example of a feministtextual analysis of the intersection of raceand gender from a cultural studies perspec-tive. Despite drawing inspiration from thesituation comedy’s association with the fem-inine, the series worked from a distinctlymasculine perspective. Although Frank’sPlace presented a fairly wide range of repre-sentations of African American men, itprovided a much narrower range of repre-sentations of African American women. Theattention it gave to inequities in skin colorand class was rarely afforded to its femalecharacters. Instead, feminine beauty wasrelated to light skin, straight hair, thinness,relative youthfulness, and middle-class sta-tus. Despite the show’s conscious attemptto illustrate the social ramifications of the

representation of racial difference, it wasoblivious to the ways gender and class inflectrace (Byers & Dell, 1992).

Much academic writing has focused onhistorically situated negative portrayals ofblack women, and the most recent theoreti-cal trend in black feminist media scholarshipis the representation of black female sexual-ity in the media (Hill Collins, 2004; Manatu,2003; Perry, 2003). Sexuality is not dis-cussed in reference to sexual orientation butto how popular culture has commodifiedthe black female body as hypersexed. Sometheorists (Guerrero, 1993; Iverem, 1997;Manatu, 2003) contend that black womenare portrayed only as sexual beings andnot as romantic characters, as indicated byHalle Berry’s Oscar-winning performancein Monster’s Ball. It has been argued thatshe played an oversexed jezebel and tragicmulatto at the same time (Hill Collins).Others assert that the habitual constructionof a subversive woman’s sexual image maycome to define women culturally (Kennedy,1992; Nelson, 1997).

While the black jezebel mythos is notnew to film and television studies, it hasfound a home in music videos. Much asblack music of the 1950s was repurposedby the industry as a new category calledrock and roll, and made its way into subur-ban white homes, popular culture today“draws heavily from the cultural produc-tion and styles of urban Black youth” (HillCollins, 2004, p. 122). It is within thisblack cultural production, reworkedthrough the prism of social class, “that thesexualized Black woman has become anicon in hip-hop culture” (p. 126). A theoryof the body and of how black women areobjectified as sexual commodities fuels thisdebate that has become popular in acade-mic circles. Within this context three pri-mary research interests have emerged: theobjectification of black women’s bodies forthe voyeuristic pleasure of men (HillCollins, 2004; hooks, 1994; Jones, 1994);the impact of sexual representation andideal Westernized body images on youngblack females (Perry, 2003); and black

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female sexuality as a symbol of agency(Gaunt, 1995; Hill Collins, 2004; Rose,1994).

The objectification of black women’sbodies in hip-hop music videos, accordingto Jones (1994), is particularly disturbingbecause these videos are produced primar-ily by black men. Edwards (1993) arguesthat music videos play into male sexualfantasies and that the notion of the blackwoman as a sex object or whore is alwaysplaced in opposition to the image of blackwoman as mammy. Hooks (1994) warnsthat while feminist critiques of the misog-yny in rap music must continue and thatblack males should be held accountable fortheir sexism, the critique must be contextu-alized. She continues:

Without a doubt black males, youngand old, must be held politically account-able for their sexism. Yet this critiquemust always be contextualized or we riskmaking it appear that the problems ofmisogyny, sexism, and all the behaviorsthis thinking supports and condones,including rape, male violence againstwomen, is a black male thing. (p. 116)

Most academic writing on this subjectfocuses on black men’s portrayals of blackwomen, but we argue that the music videosof hip-hop artists who are not black followa similar misogynist formula in whichscantily clad women surround the artist ina poolside, hot tub, or nightclub setting.Latino artists Fat Joe and Geraldo (other-wise known as Rico Suave), and whiteartists Justin Timberlake and Vanilla Ice allfall into this category, substituting Latinaand white women’s bodies for black ones.This discussion becomes more salient aswhite-centered visual music outlets such asMTV and VH-1 dedicate more program-ming time to hip-hop culture and create latenight programs designed to show so-calleduncut and uncensored videos that makeclear references to the culture of strip clubsand pornography. As Fiske (1996) con-tends, “Whiteness is particularly adept at

sexualizing racial difference, and thusconstructing its others as sites of savagesexuality” (p. 45).

In line with theories of the body that saythe mass media promotes images of “anideal body type,” Perry (2003) explains thatthe messages these videos send to youngwomen about their bodies are harmful.She argues that “the beauty ideal for blackwomen presented in these videos is asimpossible to achieve as the waif-thinmodels in Vogue magazine are for Whitewomen” (p. 138). In addition to the blackbody ideal of large breasts, thin waist andround buttocks presented in videos, manyof the black women featured depict aWesternized beauty ideal of lighter skin,long hair, and blue or green eyes. Edwards(1993) takes the concept of a beauty idealone step further and contends that the blackwomen featured in music videos exem-plify physical characteristics of the tragicmulatto. According to hooks (1994), racistand sexist thinking informs the way color-caste hierarchies affect black females. Shecontends:

Light skin and long, straight hair con-tinue to be traits that define a female asbeautiful and desirable in the racist whiteimagination and in the colonized blackmindset. . . . Stereotypically portrayed asembodying a passionate, sensual eroti-cism, as well as a subordinate femininenature, the biracial woman has been andremains the standard other black femalesare measured against.” (p. 179)

The other side of this discussion about neg-ative sexual imagery concerns black femalesexual agency. Hill Collins (2004) notesthat many African American women rap-pers “identify female sexuality as part ofwomen’s freedom and independence”(p. 127), maintaining that being sexuallyopen does not make a woman a tramp or a“ho,” which is a common term placed uponwomen in hip-hop. Rose (1994) demandsa more multifaceted analysis of blackwomen’s identity and sexuality within rap

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music, while Perry (2003) asserts that anypower granted to female rappers basedupon their being labeled attractive in con-ventional ways limits the feminist potentialof their music.

MULTICULTURAL FEMINISTPERSPECTIVES AND MEDIAREPRESENTATIONS OFASIAN, LATINA, ANDNATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN

Acknowledging Valdivia’s (1995) asser-tion that feminist work has focused on whitewomen as ethnic and race studies havefocused primarily on African Americans, weseek to include other “women of color” inour analysis of stereotypic female represen-tation. As we stated in the beginning of thischapter, our analysis relies primarily onblack women, as that is where the majorityof scholarship on race, gender, and themedia focuses. However, we agree with HillCollins (2004) that many of the argumentsmade previously about black women alsoapply to women from India, Latin America,Puerto Rico, and Asia, “albeit through thehistorical specificity of their distinctivegroup histories” (p. 12).

Asian women and Latinas are often por-trayed in the media as the exotic, sexualized“other as well. According to Tajima (1989),“Asian women in film are either passivefigures who exist to serve men as love inter-ests for White men (lotus blossom) or as apartner in crime of men of their own kind(dragon ladies)” (p. 309). Pursuing this lotusblossom/dragon lady dichotomy, Hagedorn(1997) argues that most Hollywood movieseither trivialize or exoticize Asian women:“If we are ‘good,’ we are childlike, submis-sive, silent and eager for sex. And if we arenot silent, suffering doormats, we are demo-nized . . . cunning, deceitful, sexual provo-cateurs” (pp. 33–34).

Much academic writing surroundingAsian female representation in the mediais steeped in postcolonial theory andOrientalist discourse, both of which are

concerned with otherness. The global other,in media terms, is always paired with theWest as its binary companion (Furguson,1998). Shome (1996) explains that whenwhiteness is comfortable in its hegemony, itconstructs the other as strange or differentand itself as the norm. Drawing from Said’sstudy of Orientalism, Heung (1995) says,“The power of the colonizer is fundamen-tally constituted by the power to speak forand to represent” (p. 83). Furthering thediscussion of an East/West binary, the Westis portrayed in the media as active and mas-culine while the East is passive and feminine(Wilkinson, 1990).

Though the number of female Asiancharacters represented in the media, espe-cially television, is miniscule, the way theyare portrayed in the media is crucialbecause stereotypes of underrepresentedpeople produce socialization in audiencesthat unconsciously take this misinforma-tion as truth (Heung, 1995; Holtzman,2000). Thus, the portrayal of Ling Woo,Lucy Liu’s character in the television seriesAlly McBeal, garnered much scholarlyattention. Although Woo breaks the sub-missive china doll stereotype, she is the epit-ome of the stereotypical dragon lady whenshe growls like an animal or enters a sceneto music associated with the Wicked Witchof the West in The Wizard of Oz (Sun,2003). She is knowledgeable in the art ofsexual pleasure, which is unknown to herWesternized law firm colleagues, withthe exception of Richard Fish, her whiteboyfriend who experiences it first hand.Patton (2001) explains that the Woo char-acter is particularly detrimental to Asianand Asian American women not becausethe oversexed seductress reifies existingstereotypes, but because “she is the onlyrepresentative of Asian women on televi-sion (besides news anchors and reporters),leaving no one else to counteract this pro-minent mediated stereotype” (p. 252).

While it is difficult to propose morework on Asian female representation whenthe number of females in the media aresparse, an obvious place to begin would be

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to look into production studies to find outwhat producers are looking for in castingan Asian female. Can she not play a detec-tive or attorney on one of the three Lawand Order series? Can she be a strong andfunny mom on an Asian American sitcom?And is she just as discontented with hersuburban life as white women such thatshe could be considered for DesperateHousewives? That popular program has aLatina and has added an African Americancharacter for the fall 2006 season, but itfeatures no Asian women as of this writing.

Although most of the academic litera-ture regarding black and Asian media rep-resentation focuses on historically situatedstereotypes, this does not hold true forLatinas. While there has been some refer-ence to Latinas being portrayed as exoticseductresses (Holtzman, 2000), as tackyand overly emotional (Valdivia, 1995), andas the hypersexualized spitfire (MolinaGuzmán & Valdivia, 2004), the majorityof literature on Latino/a representation hasfocused on men. Jennifer Lopez has madeher mark in Hollywood, but her films haveboth reified stereotypes of Latinas asdomestic workers (Maid in America, 2003)and broken them when she has playedroles that are not ethnically marked (TheWedding Planner, 2001; Gigli, 2003;Monster in Law, 2005). In these roles, how-ever, Lopez is always paired with a whitemale love interest and, because she rarelyplays characters true to her ethnicity(except of course when she played a maid,a role that emphasized it), she becomes anassimilated character who does nothing tonegate Latina stereotypes. Molina Guzmánand Valdivia assert that Lopez is most oftenallowed to perform whiteness, which ren-ders her seemingly raceless and cultureless.

García Canclini (1995) contends that“the contemporary experience of Latinas,which also holds true of other populationsshaped by colonialism, globalization, andtransnationalism, is informed by the com-plex dynamics of hybridity as a culturalpractice and expression” (as cited inMolina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004, p. 214).

Hill Collins (2004) calls this color-blindracism and explains that the significanceattached to skin color, especially forwomen, is changing. She argues that “inresponse to the growing visibility of bira-cial, multiracial, Latino, Asian, and raciallyambiguous Americans, skin color no longerserves as a definitive mark of racial catego-rization” (p. 194). This notion of hybridityor Latinidad, defined as the state andprocess of being, becoming, or appearingLatino/a (Martinez, 2004; Molina Guzmán& Valdivia, 2004; Rojas, 2004), is gainingscholarly attention. However, as a socialconstruct it lends itself to an essentialistgroup identity, instead of acknowledgingdifference between Dominicans, Mexicans,Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, all of whomepitomize Latinidad (Estill, 2000).

Latinas are also finding a place withinthe music world and, as with black women,their sex appeal is played up heavily intheir music videos. Shakira and JenniferLopez are some of the most visible whohave enjoyed music/acting crossover fame.One of the most common tropes surround-ing these and other mediated Latina hyper-sexualized bodies within popular culture istropicalism (Aparicio & Chavez-Silverman,1997; Martinez, 2004). According to MolinaGuzmán & Valdivia (2004), bright colors,rhythmic music, and olive skin fall underthe trope of tropicalism, and sexuality playsa central role. Dominant representations ofLatinas in music videos place emphasis onthe breasts, hips, and buttocks (Gilman,1985; Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004;Negrón-Muntaner, 1991). Desmond (1997)calls the Latina body “an urbane corporealsite with sexualized overdetermination” (ascited in Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004,p. 211).

While not enough academic research isconducted on Native American media rep-resentation, we would be remiss if we didnot mention two studies that examine howNative American women are portrayed.Portman and Herring (2001) discuss the“Pocahontas paradox,” a historical move-ment that persists in romanticizing and

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vilifying Native American women. Theyargue that Native American women areviewed in the media as either strong andpowerful or beautiful, exotic, and lustfuland that both images have merged togetherinto one representation through the stereo-type of Pocahontas. While Ono andBuescher’s (2001) study on Pocahontasexamines the commodification of productsand cultural discourses surrounding thepopular Disney film, they also assert thatnew meanings have been ascribed to the ani-mated figure, thus recasting the NativeAmerican woman in a Western, capitalistframe (p. 25). Ultimately, Pocahantas is nomore than a sexualized Native AmericanBarbie. Both Portman and Herring (2001)and Ono and Buescher (2001) agree that thePocahontas mythos is particularly harmfulto Native women because of the way thishistorical figure has been exoticized bymedia discourses that emphasize her rela-tionship with her white lover, John Smith.

MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OFRACIALIZED MASCULINITIES

Research on gender and media tradition-ally has focused on questions about women(and has been conducted primarily bywomen). In fact, as noted above, the focuson gender in media studies has come mainlyfrom feminists. However, in recent decadesthe study of gender has expanded to includestudies on men and masculinities (Connell,Hearn, & Kimmel, 2005). Feminist schol-arship also has produced a proliferationof whiteness studies that include increasedresearch on white masculinity and, to alesser extent, white womanhood. This workinterrogates gender identities and perfor-mances while exploring how masculineforms relate to patriarchal systems. Mas-culinity is defined broadly as “the set ofimages, values, interests, and activities heldimportant to a successful achievement ofmale adulthood” (Jeffords, 1989, quotedin Ashcraft & Flores, 2000, p. 3). We agreewith calls to refer to these gender roles as

“masculinities” to reinforce the notion thatideals of manhood vary by race and classacross time and cultural contexts (Dines& Humez, 2003, p. 733). Cultural studies’focus on white masculinity as the invisiblenorm, and (to a lesser extent) on black menand black masculinity as deviant, worksto reinforce the conception that black isthe trope for race (Nakayama, 1994). Yetanother intellectual movement inadver-tently may have contributed to this notion.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY ANDMEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OFBLACK MEN AND BLACKMASCULINITIES

Critical Race Theory (CRT) emergedfrom critical legal studies in the 1970s as anintellectual response to the slow pace ofracial reform in the United States. CRTplaces race at the center of critical analysisand traces its origins to the legal scholar-ship of Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, andKimberlé Crenshaw, who challenged thephilosophical tradition of the liberal civilrights color-blind approach to social justice.A central premise of CRT is that racism isan ordinary fact of American life. AlthoughCRT occasionally probes beyond the black-white binary of race, it privileges AfricanAmerican experiences. Much of the criticaledge in critical race studies is provided bya combination of legal, feminist, multicul-tural, social, political, economic, and philo-sophical perspectives (Delgado & Stefancic,1999). Despite CRT’s focus on legal studiesand policy, we would expect that the field’ssearch for new ways of thinking about race,the nation’s most enduring social problem,eventually would include media. Unfortu-nately, media studies scholars have notconsciously employed CRT and few criti-cal race theorists have devoted detailedattention to media institutions and theirrepresentations.5

Herman Gray’s (1995, 1989) workshares many of the assumptions of CRT.His ideological analysis (1986) of black

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male representations in prime time situationcomedies argues that television’s idealiza-tion of racial harmony, affluence, and indi-vidual mobility is not within the grasp ofmillions of African Americans. In the1983–84 television season, four programs—Benson, Webster, Different Strokes and TheJeffersons, provided an assimilationist viewof racial interaction that emphasized indi-vidualism, racial invisibility, and perhapsmost important, middle-class success. Theideological function of these representationsworked to support the contention that inthe context of current political, economicand cultural arrangements, all individuals—regardless of color (and gender)—canachieve the American dream. On the otherhand, such representations subsist in theabsence of significant change in the overallstatus of African Americans in the UnitedStates (Gray, 1986).

In an article on another genre of primetime television, the so-called real life crimeseries (formerly labeled as “reality” crimeshows), Hogrobrooks (1993) argues that thistype of programming contributed to the “den-igration and dehumanization” of AfricanAmerican males (p. 165). Hogrobrooksquotes a news director who acknowledgedthat “young black men—the unwitting‘media darlings’ of the explosion ofAmerica’s ‘real-life, prime time crime’programs—are, in reality, victims of char-acter assassination by a greedy televisionindustry, hungry for higher and higherratings” (p. 167).

MacDonald’s (2004) analysis of depic-tions of homicide detectives in television andfilm represents the more recent focus inmedia studies on masculinity and race.Specifically, she illustrates the ways in whichboth the police drama Homicide: Life on theStreet and Spike Lee’s film Clockers high-light the struggle of various men to cometo terms with their own masculinities.MacDonald argues that these texts offer“new potential” for men of different racesto reject traditional stereotypes of masculin-ity (p. 221). She commends Homicide’s twoblack male detectives for offering a cultural

construction of black masculinity that isneither “tokenistic nor predictable” (p. 223).Conversely, Clockers demonstrates the fail-ure of the white male homicide detective(Rocco Klein) to develop an in-depth under-standing of African American life mainlybecause of his insistence on performing as atough cop who resorts to “a desperate useof physical violence, racism, and tough talkin order to reassure himself of his unshak-able masculinity” (p. 225). Nevertheless,MacDonald claims that collectively thesetexts teach viewers that masculinity is a com-plex idea that coexists with various othercomplex ideas such as class and race andthat these complexities are increasing beingportrayed in media culture.

Byers and Dell (1992), in their study ofrepresentations of masculinity and feminin-ity across numerous characters in Frank’sPlace, argue that its most important contri-bution to television programming in partic-ular and American culture in general wasthe construction of new ways of represent-ing African Americans. Byers and Dell con-textualize these constructions of masculinityof race in Frank’s Place in the historical rep-resentations of African American males,where racial and gender hierarchies functionto reinforce each other. Such imagery can betraced to slavery when black manhoodcould not be realized or maintained becauseof the slave’s inability to protect blackwomen in the same fashion that “conven-tion dictated that inviolability of the body ofthe White woman” (Carby, 1987, quoted inByers & Dell, p. 196). Further, the historicalimages of the shuffling Uncle Tom, the ani-malistic savage (positioned as a threat towhite women), and the childlike Sambofunction to exclude black men from the cat-egory of “true men.”

Unlike the “new black male” constructedin Gray’s analysis of 1980s sitcoms, Frank’sPlace made the struggle over race and gen-der highly visible. The lead character, FrankParish, propelled the series to simultane-ously confront African American malestereotypes and to participate in the con-struction of the “new man” (Byers & Dell,

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1992, p. 196). Despite the absence of theUncle Tom stereotype, Frank reinforces thecaricature of the ignorant, ineffectualSambo, while his education and drive chal-lenge this stereotype. Frank’s character alsoinvoked the image of the sexually aggressiveblack male without representing a threatto white women. Perhaps most important,by displaying “feminine” attributes suchas nonaggressive behavior and sensitivity,Frank—like many white male characters—challenged essentialist, macho notions ofmasculinity. Ultimately, Frank functioned asa site for the interplay of characteristics tra-ditionally defined as masculine and feminineand offered a way to envision a new blackmasculinity. In this sense, Frank’s Place—and to a lesser extent, Homicide: Life on theStreet—appears to be exceptions to mostmedia portrayals of black masculinity.

Dines (2003) focuses on the image of theblack man as a sexual spoiler of white wom-anhood in cartoons in Hustler—a hard-coreporn magazine. She locates such depictionswithin “a much larger regime of racial repre-sentation, beginning with The Birth of aNation and continuing with Willie Horton,which makes the black man’s supposed sex-ual misconduct a metaphor for the inferiornature of the black ‘race’ as a whole” (Dines,p. 456). This racist ideology claims that fail-ure to contain black masculinity will result ina collapse of the economic and social fabricof white society. Specifically, Dines draws onthe work of Kobena Mercer in analyzinghow the depiction of black men as beingobsessed with the size of their penises isone example of how the dominant regimeof racial representation constructs blacksas “having bodies but not minds” (Mercer,1994; quoted in Dines, p. 456). Hustler car-toons construct a world populated by whiteworking-class hustlers and losers, whereblack men possess two status symbols thatwhite men lack, big penises and money.

However, Dines maintains that it is notwhite men as a group who are beingridiculed, just lower-working-class whitemen—a class few whites see themselves asbelonging to, regardless of their income:

The lower-class, sexually impotentWhite man in Hustler cartoons is, thus,not an object of identification, but ratherof ridicule, and serves as a pitifulreminder of what could happen if Whitemen fail to assert their masculinity andallow the black man to roam the streetsand bedrooms of White society. (Dines,2003, p. 459)

Dines points out that although racial cod-ings of masculinity may shift depending onsocioeconomic conditions, black masculin-ity continues to be constructed as deviant.

Orbe’s (1998) semiotic analysis of blackmasculinity on MTV’s The Real Worldfocuses on the imagery and significationprocesses surrounding three black malesfeatured throughout the six seasons inthe so-called reality (unscripted) series. Theimages of the three black men work to sig-nify all black men as inherently angry,potentially violent, and sexually aggressive.Orbe argues that when such images are pre-sented as real life they function to reinforcethe justification of a general societal fearof black men (p. 35). He also argues thatwhat is notably absent from the six seasonsare any considerable representations that“signify Black masculinity in a positive,healthy, or productive manner” (p. 45).Equally important, the mediated imagesof black masculinity on The Real Worldrepresent a powerful source of influencebecause they are not presented as mediatedbut as real life images captured on camera.

Martin and Yep (2004) demonstrate thatblack masculine performances in the mediaare not restricted to black males. Drawingon the work of Orbe and others that locateblack masculine identities in angry, physi-cally threatening, and sexually aggressivebehaviors and discourses, Martin and Yeputilize a whiteness framework to examinehow the white rap artist Eminem has beenpresented in the media. Whiteness refers tothe “everyday invisible, subtle cultural, andsocial practices, ideas, and codes that dis-cursively secure the power and privilege ofWhite people, but that strategically remain

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unmarked, unnamed, and untapped incontemporary society” (Shome, 1996,quoted in Martin & Yep, p. 230). Oneprominent feature of whiteness is that it isuniversal, which makes it seemingly devoidof race and culture. Therefore, whitenessstudies also pursue strategies for bothmarking and naming whiteness and expos-ing white privilege (Martin & Yep, 2004,p. 230). Eminem exploits one privilege ofwhiteness—the ability to appropriate aspectsof other cultures—in this case, black mas-culinity. And as Martin and Yep note,although black masculinity is not an essen-tial, unified, or monolithic category, in hip-hop culture (which includes rap music) itrepresents anger, violence, and sexual aggres-siveness. Eminem manifests these featuresin both his lyrics and mainstream mediarepresentations.

MEDIA REPRESENTATIONSOF ASIAN AND NATIVEAMERICAN MEN

Research on media constructions of race,men, and masculinity exemplify the black-white binary of racial discourse prevalent incontemporary discourse in the United States.Unfortunately, few studies examine Latinoor Native American males in the media.Thus, we know considerably less about con-structions of masculine identities withingroups of men who are not white or AfricanAmerican. One exception to this trend comesfrom research on Asian American masculin-ity. Historically, portrayals of Asian andAsian American men (seldom is any distinc-tion made) in mainstream American mediahave been restricted to motion pictures.These films represented men of Asian descentas threatening foreigners (Fu Manchu),Americanized detectives (Charlie Chan),laborers and laundry men, and most recently,as (corrupt) businessmen and martial artists.Most often these men are not seen as possess-ing traditionally dominant masculine charac-teristics—most notably sexual prowess.Sexuality, like race and gender, is a socially

constructed category of power, and thedesexualized or effeminate Asian malestereotype works in conjunction with depic-tions of Asian women as ultrafeminine sex-ual objects used by white men to emasculateAsian men. Consequently, Asian Americanmen are redefined as an angry threat toAmerican culture (Feng, 1996). However,the ideological and power relations embed-ded in the intersections of race, gender, andsexuality warrant greater attention in cul-tural studies.

Nakayama (1994) addresses this void byexamining Asian and white masculinity inthe Hollywood film Showdown in LittleTokyo. He identifies ways that white het-erosexual masculinity is recentered andargues for the importance of spatial rela-tions in constructing identities. The vulner-ability of white heterosexual masculinity isapparent in the wake of the emasculating ofthe United States in Vietnam and itsinevitable multicultural future. Nakayamademonstrates how racial and homoerotictensions are used to “fuel the fire thatbreathes life into the cultural fiction ofwhite heterosexual masculinity” (p. 165).

One additional study, Locke’s (1998)analysis of comedic representations ofJudge Lance Ito from episodes of TheTonight Show, disrupts the black-whiteduality of race so common to critical media/cultural studies. Locke uses John Fiske’snotion of racial recoding to read Ito’sinscrutability as a racial signifier consistentwith the legacy of coding Asians in popularculture as people who pose a threat andwho keep their motives and means hidden.Locke reads another skit on The TonightShow that ridiculed Ito’s child as exposing“the threat of a racially compromisedfuture: the daughter as the freakish misce-genated offspring of Ito and his whiteAmerican wife” (p. 252). Even as Locke’sanalysis points to the show’s stereotypicalvisual coding of blackness as an explana-tion of how the show “desires race” (p.246), he compels scholars to consider suchimportant issues as how binary racial dis-courses contribute to what constitutes the

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racial, how media texts code a variety ofracial groups, and ultimately, how thesecodes work together within a larger sphereof racial discourse.

Scholarship on representations of NativeAmerican males is scarce, but the novel TheIndian in the Cupboard and the film of thesame name have received some scholarlyattention about Native American masculin-ity and paternalism. Taylor (2000) arguesthat “the image of the Indian as the savage,a paternalistic role for the White protago-nist, and an auxiliary role for the Indianas the faithful sidekick” all reify existingstereotypes about Native American males.While Sanchez and Stuckey (2000) agreethat the movie was an improvement overthe book, they disagree with Taylor andassert that The Indian in the Cupboardchallenges hegemonic codes and demeaningstereotypes. In line with Hall’s encoding/decoding model, Sanchez and Stuckey pro-vide a negotiated reading of the film andargue that the casting of Native Americanactors and consultants both lends authentic-ity and provides a resolution to “the tensionbetween paternalism and interdependence”(p. 87).

MEDIA REPRESENTATIONSOF WHITE MASCULINITY

As the previous discussion illustrates, thefundamental delineation in media researchis between the dominant, normative, white,heterosexual, and middle-class masculinityand subordinated masculinities. The crisisin white masculinity is perhaps the mostoverriding feature of constructions of dom-inant masculinity, and the most commonresponse to this crisis is violent behavior bywhite men (Katz, 2003).

Shome (2000) uncovers the way in whichthe crisis of white masculinity is marked andnegotiated in contemporary film. One dom-inant theme—that of the presidency or theU.S. government in crisis—evident in suchfilms as Air Force One, Murder at 1600,Independence Day, Dave, and The Pelican

Brief, all focus on an “ultimate site” ofwhite masculinity where whiteness, mas-culinity, and nationhood converge (Shome,p. 369). In these films, the subtheme is thatof “one bad white guy” who is outed by a“good white guy” who “saves, salvages, andrestores the Presidency and the ‘people’”(p. 369). Another inflection of this themeoccurs when whiteness is conflated withnationhood and is marked as being threat-ened and tortured by aliens (e.g., Air ForceOne and Independence Day). The commonHollywood strategy of depicting others (as“aliens”) is significant in this contextbecause “White nationalized masculinity, assymbolized by the Presidency is first repre-sented as being ‘oppressed’ and weakened(by aliens) and through great [violent] strug-gles—that tend to constitute the major plotaction of these films—it recuperates andsalvages itself” (p. 370).

Ashcraft and Flores (2000) also examineHollywood film for ways in which masculineperformances offer identity to middle-classheterosexual white men. Specifically, theyanalyze discursive performances in twofilms—Fight Club and In the Company ofMen—that provide identity politics to“white/collar men” (p. 1). Each film’s dis-course laments the imminent breakdown ofthe corporate man, “over-civilized and emas-culated by allied obligations to work andwomen” (p. 2). To restore the beleagueredcorporate man, the films (re)turn to “civi-lized/primitive” masculinity wherein thehardened white man finds healing in wounds(p. 2). Ultimately, this tough guy obscures therace and class hierarchy in which it resides byovertly appealing to gender division.

As much of the research discussed aboveindicates, both whiteness and hegemonic(white) masculinity do not appear to be cul-tural/historical categories, thus renderinginvisible the privileged position from which(white) men in general are able to articulatetheir interests to the exclusion of interestsof women, men and women of color, andchildren (Hanke, 1992, p. 186). Masculinity—whether black or white—must be uprootedfrom essentialist thinking that understands

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gender—as well as race, class and manyother constructs of personal and collectiveidentity—not as biologically determined orsubject to universal laws of science or nature,but as products of discourse, performance,and power.

The research discussed above utilizes avariety of methodological and theoreticalframeworks to examine intersections ofrace, gender, and media. This chapter hasfocused on one of the more prominent per-spectives, social constructivism, in whichmedia texts, images, and narratives are seenas intimately connected with broader socialrelations of domination and subordination.Although studies of representation fuelthe majority of this chapter, we would beremiss if we did not include a brief discus-sion on audience reception studies.

♦♦ Audience Studies

The 1980s saw an emerging interest inreader/audience studies especially relatingto women’s genres such as romance, melo-drama, and soap opera. Some of the workswere Ang’s (1985) Watching Dallas,Radway’s (1984) Reading the Romance,and Hobson’s (1982) Crossroads: TheDrama of a Soap Opera. In fact, McRobbie(1991) was one of the first scholars to lookat how young girls negotiate meaningthrough magazines. While they did notspecifically look at gender, cultural criticsJohn Fiske (1987) and David Morley(1980) have conducted several studies onaudiences and television. On a similar note,Rockler’s (2002) study of both AfricanAmerican and European American inter-pretations of the comic strips Jump Startand The Boondocks revealed blacks’ oppo-sitional readings of the comics through theterministic screen of race cognizance. Incontrast to African American readings thatunderscored the relevance of racial politicsand oppression, white’s interpretationswere produced through the terministicscreen of whiteness that deflected attention

from racial power structures that privilegewhite people (Rockler, 2002, p. 416).

Many cultural critics (Bobo, 1995;Clifford, 1983; hooks, 1990) have calledattention to the “unequal power relationsinherent in the ethnographic enterprise andto the ‘objectification’ of the subject inethnographic discourse” (Bobo & Seiter,1991, p. 290). Thus they argue “the notionsof gender difference deriving from ethno-graphic work with all-white samples incurrent circulation are reified and ethno-centric,” leaving voices of women of color“unheard, unstudied, untheorized” (p. 291).While some authors did devote some timeto studies of ethnic media audiences (Katz& Liebes, 1985) leading this call to includewomen of color in audience research wasJackie Bobo (1988, 1995) and her centralwork, The Color Purple: Black Women asCultural Readers, which first appeared as asingle study and later became a book. Inthis book, Bobo (1995) studied how blackwomen negotiate meaning in two film texts,The Color Purple by white male filmmakerSteven Spielberg, and Daughters of theDust by female filmmaker Julie Dash. Bobodiscovered that despite The Color Purple’spatriarchal nature, black women foundways to empower themselves through nego-tiated readings of its text.

Lee and Cho (2003) looked at Koreansoap opera fans in the United States andexamined why they preferred the Koreanto the American variety. The authors con-cluded that, despite arguments of culturalimperialism, third world audiences liketo watch their own cultural products(Lee & Cho). Two recent audience studieson women of color may indicate aresurging interest in this line of scholarship.Oppenheimer, Adams-Price, Goodman,Codling, and Coker (2003) studied how menand women perceived strong female char-acters on television, noting that womenwere more accepting than men of the pow-erful female characters and that AfricanAmericans related better to the strongcharacters than did whites. Rojas (2004)argues there is a lack of information on

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how Latinas consume popular culture andhow they interact and respond to Spanish-language media (p. 125). She addresses thepoint echoed by Latino/a scholars (Desipio,1998; Rodriguez, 1999) that little or noattention has been paid to Latino audien-ces as subjects of academic research. Sheexamined how immigrant and nonimmi-grant Latinas from Austin, Texas “evaluateand negotiate the content and representa-tions presented in Univision and Telemundo,the two largest Hispanic networks in theUnited States” (Rojas, 2004, p. 125). As theU.S. population includes more nativeSpanish speakers, this type of bilingual/bicultural research becomes more signifi-cant to communication studies. Althoughthese studies vary considerably by topic,collectively they point to some of theimportant ways race and gender identitiesinfluence struggles over meaning. Further,while the audience studies cited above haveprovided a strong foundation for futureresearch, women—and especially men—from nonwhite races still remain sorelyunderrepresented in ethnographic audiencestudies.

♦♦ Directions for Research

With the world becoming more multicul-tural/racial, there must be further studyregarding the malleability of ethnicitydepending upon the role being played. AsHill Collins (2004) points out in her discus-sion of Halle Berry, blackness can beworked in many ways. As noted in the caseof Jennifer Lopez, skin color or ethnicityis not a marker of racial categorization.Actresses like Jennifer Beals, who is black,usually play characters that lack racialmarking, although she currently portrays ablack woman in the Showtime series, The LWord. This trend has continued into movieslike the remake of Guess Who’s Comingto Dinner (1967), titled Guess Who (2005),which starred Zoe Saldana, a Latina whoplays a black woman. Lumping together

races and ethnicities into one homogenizedgroup ignores the cultural diversity thatcharacterizes human difference.

The multitude of studies on AfricanAmerican representations far outnumbersthose on Asians, Latinos, and NativeAmericans. The dearth of representationsof these races/ethnicities represented in“mainstream” media makes it even moredifficult to examine constructions of thesecultures. Studies of media institutions andtheir production and encoding processescould provide invaluable insights into ourunderstanding of the ways the intersectionsof race, gender, and sexuality structuremedia content. We must continue to dis-mantle the black-white binary that persistsin shaping our understanding of race.

One avenue toward this end is CriticalRace Theory, which we briefly discussabove, but which deserves additional atten-tion from media scholars. Beyond changingthe way we look at and study race, CriticalRace Theory’s more complete understand-ing of human difference offers enormouspotential for understanding our multicul-tural world. Media scholars must join schol-ars from education and political science andsociology who have broadened this fast-growing field from its roots in legal studies.Critical race scholars have made an impor-tant step in this direction by embracing crit-ical race feminism and critical white studies.And critical race theory’s critiques of essen-tialism and challenges to social scienceorthodoxies are compatible with thepremises of critical/cultural studies.

Another stream of scholarship that wediscuss above also deserves more criticalwork. Hip-hop culture is a central contem-porary arena through which to examinemediated intersections of race and gender.While cultural studies have a tradition ofexamining the cultural engagement withvarious forms of music, hip-hop culture asconstructed in the media and popular cul-ture epitomizes many of the contemporarytensions within U.S. media culture alongthe lines of race, gender, class, sexuality,regionalism, and age. Beyond the misogyny

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and heterosexism prevalent in hip-hopculture, scholars must remain vigilant inresisting hip-hop’s repeated allusions tocertain racial and gender authenticities. Asan international movement, hip-hop culturecan shed light on postcolonial struggles anda so-called global economy that relegatesmore than a third of its citizens to povertyand economic despair.

Critical/cultural scholarship on the inter-sections of race and gender in advertisingalso deserves further development. Theimages, narratives, types of products pro-moted, and stereotypical portrayals (i.e.black families advertising Popeye’s chicken,or Asian men shown as the office computerwhiz) in both print and electronic advertise-ments are in need of critical study. In addi-tion, audience interpretations of ads remainunderstudied. One notable exception isWatts and Orbe’s (2002) analysis ofBudweiser’s successful “Whassup?!” adcampaign. They examine how spectacularconsumption by the (African American)Budweiser guys is constitutive of whiteAmerican ambivalence toward “authentic”blackness (p. 1). Spectacular consumptiondescribes an important “process wherebythe material and symbolic relations amongthe culture industry, the life worlds ofpersons, and the ontological status of cul-tural forms are transformed in terms gener-ated by public consumption” (p. 5). Theirtextual analysis of the Budweiser “True”commercial focuses on a site where genderand cultural performances are conditionedby sports and spectatorship, with masculin-ity and blackness emerging as key themes inthis setting. Watts and Orbe argue that thecampaign constitutes and administers cul-tural authenticity as a market value (p. 3).In terms of spectacular consumption, theforce of the pleasure of consuming the otheris both directly and paradoxically tied tothe replication and amplification of so-called authentic difference (p. 3).

In a related vein, Merskin’s (2001) semi-otic study of Native American brand namesand trademarks explains how advertisinguses “pictorial metaphors” to reinforce

ideologies about Native Americans startedby whites (p. 159). She argues that compa-nies that use these images are trying “tobuild an association with an idealized andromanticized notion of the past through theprocess of branding” (p. 160).

Finally, mediated representations ofsports constitute a particularly fruitful arenafor scholarly study of the intersections ofrace and gender. Some work has incorpo-rated the study of sport within broader cul-tural studies themes such as media andconsumption (McKay & Rowe, 1997) andcultural critiques of race relations (Boyd,1997). Other scholars have drawn fromcritical/cultural studies to analyze the mean-ings of race, gender, and sports in specificmedia texts. For example, Cole and King(1998) analyze the ways the film HoopDreams reveals cultural tensions about raceand gender in a postindustrial, post-Fordist,and postfeminist America. Pronger’s (2000)examination of the suppression of the eroticand the narrowing of the concept of mas-culinity in mainstream gay sports asks whowins when gay men embrace the very cul-tural forms that have been central to theirhistorical oppression. The most relevantstream in this research is the work that ana-lyzes the variations in media coverage ofwomen’s and men’s sports as well as con-structions of race and gender in sports.Before concluding, we turn briefly to thisliterature.

Not only do female athletes receive a frac-tion of the coverage afforded to male ath-letes, but the traditional trappings offemininity—fashion, motherhood, beauty,morality, and heterosexuality—characterizetheir constructions (Messner, Dunbar, &Hunt, 2000; Messner, Duncan, & Wachs,1996). Banet-Weiser’s (1999) study of thedevelopment of the Women’s NationalBasketball Association (WNBA) examinedthe gendered and racialized meanings thatsurround both male and female professionalbasketball players. She finds that the WNBA

has strategically represented itself in sucha way as to counteract the American

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public’s fears about the players—andthus, by association, the sport—beinghomosexual. Fans and sponsors areencouraged to see basketball as a sportto be played not only by those womenlabeled as deviant by dominant ideologybut also by those who follow the norma-tive conventions of heterosexual femi-ninity. (p. 404)

Conversely, male basketball players, andespecially black men, have been constructedas fetish objects, so much so that personality,glamour, and so-called bad boy behaviorhave become the central features of the sport.Media portrayals of the NBA represent blackplayers as potentially dangerous and menac-ing, which in turn allows the WNBA to mar-ket itself in positive opposition to these racialpolitics (Banet-Weiser, 1999).

Finally, two studies can be cited for theirillumination of the intersections of genderwith race and sexual orientation. McKay(1993) documented the ways the mediaresponded to basketball player Earvin“Magic” Johnson’s revelation that he wasHIV-positive by inserting Johnson’s sexualpromiscuity onto “wanton women.”Dworkin and Wachs’s (1998, 2000) com-parison of media treatment of three storiesof HIV-positive male athletes illustrated themanner in which social class, race, and sex-ual orientation came into play in the verydistinct media framings of the three stories.

♦♦ Conclusion

Although the research this chapterdescribes is quite diverse, it is clear that ithas enhanced our knowledge of the socialconstructions of race and gender in impor-tant ways. Collectively, this literature hasmade another contribution that is lesstransparent: it has dismantled essentialistways of thinking about and representingrace and gender. As a term used to describethe notion that humans, objects, or textspossess underlying essences that define

their true nature or identity, essentialistarguments have little credibility in academiccircles. However, essentialist thinking iscommon in the public sphere as popularnotions of what is natural in men andwomen, or in stereotypes of racial and ethnicgroups (Brooker, 2003). The researchdescribed in this chapter has exposed thevarious ways the media construct monolithicnotions of race and gender. Several studieshave demonstrated how layered representa-tions challenge static constructions, leaving,in turn, ambivalent space for alternative def-initions of gender, race, and even sexuality.Our scholarship must continue along theseantiessentialist paths, especially in the face ofbacklash and conservative ideals that seekto promote and implement a regressive poli-tics of difference. Media will continue to playa prominent role in these struggles, makingthe work of media scholars all the moreimportant.

♦♦ Notes

1. For an alternative perspective that arguesthat biology itself must be viewed as a culturalconstruction, see Sloop, this volume.

2. Issues of gender, race, and media from aglobal perspective are discussed in Section 5 ofthe Handbook on intercultural communication.

3. Borrowing from Dyer (1997), we contendthe well-intentioned term people of color func-tions to reinforce the erroneous notion thatwhite people do not constitute a race of people.

4. We use African American and black inter-changeably in referring to the multiple identities,experiences, and cultures of Americans ofAfrican descent. We use white to refer to thoseof European/Anglo descent.

5. Another feature of CRT is the use of sto-rytelling or narrative style. In this vein, althoughnot deliberately employing CRT, Brooks andJacobs (1996) analyzed HBO’s televisual adap-tation of Derrick Bell’s narrative on race (TheSpace Traders). The analysis focused on themain character, a black man who employedmultiracial identities in combating racism.

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