ABSTRACT
Until the late 1980s, whiteness was consistently naturalized in U.S. television-social whiteness, that is, not the “pinko-grayishness” that British novelist E.M. Forster identified as the “standard” skin hue of Europeans. This whiteness has not been culturally monochrome. Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, British, French, German, and Russian people, whether as ethnic entities or national representatives, have dotted the landscape of TV drama, providing the safe spice of white life, entertaining trills and flourishes over the basso ostinato of social whiteness.
