Whose Lives Matter? Race, Space, and the Devaluation of Homicide Victims in Minority Communities

The recurring, horrific deaths of minority residents at the hands of police officers and vigilantes have led social movements and international protests to amplify the charge that whereas the loss of White lives is seen as tragic, the loss of Black and Hispanic lives is treated as normal, acceptable, and even inevitable. Building on and advancing theories of “color-blind racism,” the authors examine the process by which the news media uphold and reify the devaluation of Black and Hispanic lives through ostensibly race-neutral language, story lines, and cultural narratives. Drawing on an original data set containing all news articles ( n = 2,245) written about every homicide victim ( n = 762) in Chicago, Illinois, during 2016, the authors use multilevel models to assess the extent to which victims’ race and neighborhood racial composition are associated with the level of attention, or “newsworthiness,” devoted to their deaths. Using two measures of newsworthiness—the amount of coverage and recognition of “complex personhood”—the authors find that victims killed in predominantly Black neighborhoods receive less news coverage than those killed in non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. Those killed in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods are also less likely to be discussed as multifaceted, complex people. Our analyses underscore the importance of place, especially the racialization of place, in determining which victims are treated as newsworthy. These findings carry important implications for understanding and addressing color-blind racism, news-reporting practices, and territorial stigma in the reproduction of racist ideologies.

Color-Blind Racism in Pandemic Times

In this article the author examines how the frameworks of color-blind racism have influenced many topics during the pandemic. Using readily available material from popular culture (TV shows, newspaper and magazine articles, and advertisements) and from statements by government officials, the author examines how color blindness has shaped our national discussion on essential workers and heroes, charity, and differential mortality. The main argument is that color-blind racism is limiting our understanding of the structural nature of the various racial problems coronavirus disease 2019 has revealed, making it difficult to envision the kinds of policies needed to address them. the author concludes by summarizing what these ideological perspectives block from view as well as addressing the nascent discursive cracks that might be used to produce alternative frames for interpreting matters and organizing collective action.

The White-Centering Logic of Diversity Ideology

In this article, I present a framework for diversity as a racial ideology that rearticulates the logic of civil rights. Diversity ideology is, in part, a co-optation of calls for race consciousness that challenged color blindness: it highlights race and other axes of difference to achieve a color-blind ideal of fairness where race will no longer matter. In this way, diversity ideology creates space for minor acknowledgment of structural inequality in the abstract. This is an important difference from color-blind racism, which explains inequality as a function of the past, individual “racist” bad apples, or the failings of people of color. The logic of diversity ideology is based on four tenets (diversity as acceptance, diversity as intent, diversity as commodity, and diversity as liability) that frame an amorphous diversity as the answer to racial inequality, while centering white people’s desires and feelings. These conceptualizations of diversity are devoid of power and history, which is how systemic whiteness is reinscribed.

Protect this Belief

In April 2015, the Freddie Gray protests/riots/uprisings in Baltimore, Maryland, sparked a conversation on the national scene and in classrooms across the country. In my classroom near Baltimore, these events became a test case on how to teach and be in a moment of crisis. Building on a bricolage of methodologies, I explore teaching Bonilla-Silva's (2014) work on color-blind racism in my “Sport and Media” class during the Freddy Gray riots/protests/uprisings. By using my observations, official communications/e-mails, ethnographic snapshots of my students’ writings, and observations during these events, I explore teaching through a crisis and learning lessons on teaching race and politics.

Numbers, Narratives, and Nation: Mainstream News Coverage of U.S. Latino Population Growth, 1990–2010

Ideologies that support racial domination and White supremacy remain foundational in U.S. society, even as the nation becomes increasingly diverse and progressively focused on quantitative measurement. This study explores how a prominent mainstream news outlet represents the growth of the nation’s second largest population, Latinos, within this changing demographic and numeric environment. Drawing from two frameworks, the Latino Threat Narrative and Color-Blind Racism, quantitative and qualitative analyses are conducted with 174 Los Angeles Times ( LAT) articles about 2000 and 2010 census results. Reporters for the LAT, located in the single most important U.S. location for Latinos, frame Latinos and their population dynamics in line with the overtly racist narrative of Latino threat and the covertly racist ideology of color-blind racism. Moreover, the analyses reveal that quantitative logics circulating in the present evaluative climate further the view that Latinos pose cultural-demographic threats to the nation. Quantification also enhances color-blind frames and rhetorical strategies justifying present-day racial stratification and the subordinate locations of non-White groups. This suggests how White supremacy retains its power as the populations and metrics of evaluation change. Finally, given recent research linking demographic trends and media representations with attitudes, policy positions, and political partisanship, these representations have implications for the well-being of Latinos, other populations, and the nation.