Despite claims from pundits and politicians that we now live in a
post-racial America, people seem to keep finding ways to talk about
race--from celebrations of the inauguration of the first Black
president to resurgent debates about police profiling, race and racism
remain salient features of our world. When faced with fervent
anti-immigration sentiments, record incarceration rates of Blacks and
Latinos, and deepening socio-economic disparities, a new question has
erupted in the last decade: What does being post-racial mean?
The Post-Racial Mystique explores how a variety of media--the news,
network television, and online, independent media--debate, define and
deploy the term "post-racial" in their representations of American
politics and society. Using examples from both mainstream and niche
media--from prime-time television series to specialty Christian media
and audience interactions on social media--Catherine Squires draws upon
a variety of disciplines including communication studies, sociology,
political science, and cultural studies in order to understand emergent
strategies for framing post-racial America. She reveals the ways in
which media texts cast U.S. history, re-imagine interpersonal
relationships, employ statistics, and inventively redeploy other
identity categories in a quest to formulate different ways of responding
to race.