The (racial) biases of communication

Rethinking Media and Blackness

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2990231
AutoresArmond R Towns (0009-0006-4118-811X, University of Denver, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen21
Número5
Páginas474-488
Fecha de publicación2015-09-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630.2015.1093469
OpenAlexW1902469684
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas28

The media studies approach to race often examines blackness through depictions in music lyrics, movies, and videos. The vast majority of these studies posit that media may provide ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ depictions of blackness. Less examined is the importance of media environments to the structuring of racial relations in the United States. This article extends the contemporary literature on black media studies by taking a ‘medium theory’ approach to analyzing blackness. I argue medium theory aids studies of blackness by showing the ways in which the technologies we use transform the environments we inhabit in ways that further racialization processes beyond depictions of music lyrics or reality TV. To examine the interrelations between media environments and blackness, I offer a critical rereading of the Underground Railroad. I argue the Underground Railroad's success was related to the necessity of brilliant planning and a complex understanding by slaves and conductors of the essential overlapping of space- and time-biased media cultures. In short, the different understandings of media ensured that the slaves and slave catchers inhabited radically different yet interconnected worlds or galaxies, increasing the effectiveness of the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves

Aesthetics · Art · Conflation · Critical race theory · Epistemology · Literature · Lyrics · Media studies · Racialization · Sociology · Underground Railroad · Computer Science · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Rhetoric and Communication Studies