White Norm, Black Deviation: Class, Race, and Resistance in America’s “Postracial” Media Discourse

Abstract

The authors deploy Marxist theory—and Gramscian hegemonic theory in particular—to investigate the subtleties of racial “othering” in the media representations of African Americans in a putatively postracial America. The paper’s objects of inquiry are an opinion article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the reaction it instigated in the Atlanta Black Star. We argue that the contestations of signification between the dominant narrative about African Americans in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the rhetorical pushback it actuated in the alternative Atlanta Black Star both reproduce and legitimate dominant media framing by highlighting the alterity of subordinate ethnic groups and providing a site for contestation.

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