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Policing the Borderlands: White‐ and Black‐American Newspaper Perceptions of Multiracial Heritage and the Idea of Race, 1996–2006
Author(s) -
Thornton Michael C.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01590.x
Subject(s) - newspaper , denial , white (mutation) , race (biology) , gender studies , identity (music) , african american , census , distancing , criminology , sociology , meaning (existential) , civil rights , political science , law , psychology , ethnology , aesthetics , art , demography , population , psychoanalysis , psychotherapist , chemistry , pathology , biochemistry , covid-19 , medicine , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , gene
By employing a new policy of “check all that apply,” the Census Bureau accommodated a mushrooming multiracial lobby demanding that its members be allowed a right to self‐identification. With its implied shifting meaning of race, newspapers portrayed the reaction to this change as a firestorm of debate along racial fault lines, highlighted by Black‐American inferences that this was a perilous decision. Using textual analysis, I examine from 1996 to 2006 how five Black‐American and three White‐American newspapers characterized multiracial people. White‐American papers framed the discussion in two ways: (a) multiracial people epitomize a new era in which race has lost its bite, and (b) Black America stands in the way of their gaining their civil rights. There were also two frames for the Black‐American papers: (a) The lobby advocates individual identity and is undergirded by denial or distancing from Blackness, and (b) that focus undermines Black America's future by playing into the misguided notion that race is socially insignificant.