Imperiled Whiteness

Abstract

This bookexamines how media make race and how those racial makings shape and construct white Americans’ sense of their racial identity in a “postracial” era. Ingram argues that in the Obama-to-Trump era, a variety of media platforms, including film, television, news, and social media, turned white identity into a commodity that was packaged and disseminated to a white populace. The book demonstrates how media in its myriad forms coopted a postracial narrative, making whiteness a disenfranchised commodity and reviving white nationalist and neo-Nazi movements on the alt-right. In doing so, Ingram argues that media enabled the rise of an overt white identity politics, a sense of solidarity among white people, including those who espouse liberal or progressive political views. Ingram explores the convergence of entertainment, news, and social media in a digital networked environment, and traces how media’s renewed attention to “mainstream whiteness” has propelled a resurgence of rabid white nationalism. Reading popular film and television franchises (The Walking Dead, ThePlanet of the Apes reboot, and the Star Trek reboot)through the contemporary political flashpoints of immigration reform, gun control, and Black Lives Matter protests, Ingram demonstrates how media buttressed and exploited an affective experience among white audiences—a feeling or sense of vulnerability and loss. The book also analyzes how contemporary Black filmmakers utilize speculative fiction to intercede in and disrupt this shifting racial landscape, through an examination of Jordan Peele’s films Get Out and Us, and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.