Critical Rhetorics of Race

Front matter

EDITED BY MICHAEL G. LACY AND KENT A. ONO

CRITICAL CULTURAL COMMUNICATION General Editors: Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kent A. Ono Dangerous Curves: Latinas in the Media

Isabel Molina-Guzman

Introduction

PART 1: Racialized Masculinities Apocalypse: The Media's Framing of Black Looters, Shooters, and Brutes in Hurricane Katrina’s Aftermath Michael G. Lacy and Kathleen C. Haspel

Tales of Tragedy: Strategic Rhetoric in News Coverage of the Columbine and Virginia Tech Massacres

Cynthia Willis-Chun N-word vs. F-word, Black vs. Gay: Uncovering Pendejo Games to Recover Intersections

Catherine R. Squires

PART 11: Whiteness Quentin Tarantino in Black and White Sean Tierney

Patrolling National Identity, Masking White Supremacy: The Minuteman Project Michelle A. Holling

Control, Discipline, and Punish: Black Masculinity and (In)visible Whiteness in the NBA Rachel Alicia Griffin and Bernadette Marie Calafell

PART III: Vernacular Resistances Declarations of Independence: African American Abolitionists and the Struggle for Racial and Rhetorical Self-Determination Jacqueline Bacon vii

Transgressive Rhetoric in Deliberative Democracy: The Black Press Michael Huspek

Bling Fling: Commodity Consumption and the Politics of the “Post-Racial”

PART Iv: Racialized Complexities and Neocolonialism The Rhythm of Ambition: Power Temporalities and the Production of the Call Center Agent in Documentary Film and Reality Television Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Sheena Malhotra, and Kimberlee Pérez

Inscribing Racial Bodies and Relieving Responsibility: Examining Racial Politics in Crash

Jamie Moshin and Ronald L. Jackson II Cinematic Representation and Cultural Critique: The Deracialization and Denationalization of the African Conflict Diamond Crises in Zwick's Blood Diamond

Marouf Hasian, Jr., Carol W. Anderson, and Rulon Wood Abstracting and De-Racializing Diversity: The Articulation of Diversity in the Post-Race Era

About the Contributors Index vi Contents

Acknowledgments

This book benefited greatly from the generous spirit of many people. From the outset, we would like to thank Dana Cloud, who introduced us to each other. Since first meeting, we have had many wonderful conversations about communication, race, politics, and life. We sent each other email messages, talked via phone, sent drafts of ideas back and forth, and, from time to time, picked one another up when the other was down. During that time, we developed an idea for a book. We sought out contributors, pored over book chapters, convened convention panels, and carefully revised and edited each other’s work. This book is the end result.

We could not have sustained a book project without the help and support of our families, friends, colleagues, librarians, and editorial staff. We therefore thank our families for their endless love and support (especially Michael's mother, Margaret P. Lacy), even in difficult and trying times. We especially thank our partners (Michael's) Kathleen Haspel and (Kent's) Sarah Projansky, who created a loving space, listened to us talk, read our work, and urged us on, with humor and grace. Completing a book like this makes you think a lot about time, Mina and Daniel (Kent's children) grew significantly over the time it took to complete the book; Daniel is now talking in complete sentences, and Mina has almost finished the Harry Potter series! Kent thanks them for their patience and love.

We thank those who advised us on the early stages of the book, including Joe Marconi of DePaul University. We thank New York University Press editor Eric Zinner and editorial assistant Ciara McLaughlin for their patience, advice, and support. Series editor Sarah-Banet Weiser supported the concept of the book unflaggingly, Despina Papazoglou Gimbel and our copyeditor, Karen Verde, did remarkable work in the production phase. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions and detailed advice, which we tried to address carefully. Though they go unnamed, their generous ideas have significantly improved this work. We also greatly appreciate the works that were submitted to us that we ultimately could not include, because of space limitations. We feel lucky to have had the opportunity to read and review such exciting work in the field, These pieces have already begun to be published elsewhere, and we plan to read them and teach them in our classes.

We offer special thanks to our research assistant, Sayuri Arai, who worked diligently and arduously making needed editorial changes and also making the book stylistically consistent, a tall order indeed. Thanks also to our additional

Vii research assistants, Kapil Mathur, Nina Li, and Robert Mejia, for helping out when we were overwhelmed. Kapil and Nina entered changes, and Sayuri and Nina produced the index. All of these contributed tremendously to the book's quality. We are greatly indebted to the DePaul University librarians, and the librarians at Chatham Library in New Jersey (especially Diane and Mary), who always made time to help us. We also want to thank all of the students in our critical rhetoric and race courses, especially Rya Butterfield, who helped Michael and Kathleen during the early stages of their chapter.

Others who directly or indirectly inspired us to write this book include: Aaron Gresson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Marconi, Roderick Hart, Molefi Asante, Carole Stabile, Eric Watts, Kirt Wilson, Gus Friedrich, Pat Sullivan, Steven Goldzwig, Barry Brummett, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Herman Gray, Carole Blair, John Nerone, Robert Hariman, Radha Hegde, Mark McPhail, Ronald L. Jackson II, Tom Nakayama, Cameron McCarthy, Karen Tracy, Robert Craig, Curt LeBaron, Robert Weiss, John Sloop, Bruce Gronbeck, Michael McGee, James Hay, Angharad Valdivia, Lisa Nakamura, Kal Alston, Cara Finnegan, John Murphy, Ned O’Gormann, Debby Hawhee, Fernando Delgado, Ben Attias, Lisa Flores, Dreama Moon, Raka Shome, Isabel Molina-Guzman, Lucy Xiang Lu, and our many other colleagues with whom we work and have worked.

Special thanks are reserved for Raymie McKerrow, who waited patiently for us to finish the book before kindly writing the guest preface for it, using his 2010 spring break to do so.

Finally, we thank the contributors to this volume for sticking with us through thick and thin, for responding to (too many) requests for revision and information, for their collegiality and friendship, and for believing in the project. Without them, there would be no book at all.

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