ABSTRACT

This volume examines the ways in which the media, including film, television, social media, and gaming, has constructed and sustained a narrative of white supremacy that has entered mainstream American discourse.

With chapters by today’s preeminent critical race scholars, the book looks in particular at the ways media institutions have circulated white supremacist ideology across a wide range of platforms and texts that have had significant impact on shaping our current polarized and racialized social and political landscape. Systematically scrutinizing every media platform, this volume provides readers with an understanding of the ways in which media has provided institutional support for white supremacist ideology, and presents them with the means to examine and analyze the persistence of these narratives within our racial discourse, thus offering the necessary knowledge to challenge and transform these racially divisive and destructive narratives.

White Supremacy and the American Media will be of interest not only to scholars working in critical race studies and popular culture in the United States, but also to those working in the fields of Film and Television Studies, Sociology, Geography, Art History, Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Popular Culture, and Media Studies.

part I|69 pages

Theories of white supremacy and the media

chapter 2|26 pages

Theorizing white nationalism

Past, present, and future

chapter 3|20 pages

The soul of white nationalism in the American body politic

Birtherism, “Make America Great Again,” and immigration

part II|83 pages

White supremacy and film

chapter 5|12 pages

The Best of Enemies and BlacKkKlansman

Racial dog whistles, whiteness, and a sympathetic Klan

chapter 7|23 pages

What happened to the Green Book?

The disappearing act of black agency and other white framings in Green Book

chapter 8|27 pages

American Sniper

Constructing a white nationalist hero

part III|64 pages

White supremacy and television

chapter 10|24 pages

“Keep it off the field”

The mediatized sports stadium as white space

part IV|60 pages

White supremacy, social media, and gaming

chapter 12|13 pages

Stephen King's political monsters

chapter 13|29 pages

Playing at racism

White supremacist recruitment in online video game culture

chapter 14|16 pages

White female pain

Cis white women and digital masculine rhetoric