“I Just Wanted a World That Looked Like the One I Know”

Chapter 3 examines showrunner Shonda Rhimes’ twenty-first century Black respectability politics through the form of strategic ambiguity. Joseph traces Rhimes’ performance of strategic ambiguity first in the pre-Obama era when she stuck to a script of colorblindness, and a second in the #BlackLivesMatter moment when she called out racialized sexism and redefined Black female respectability. In the shift from the pre-Obama era to the #BlackLivesMatter era, this chapter asks: how did Rhimes’ careful negotiation of the press demonstrate that, in the former moment, to be a respectable Black woman was to perform strategic ambiguity, or not speak frankly about race, while in the latter, respectable Black women could and must engage in racialized self-expression, and redefine the bounds of respectability?

“No, But I’m Still Black”

Chapter 4 begins part two of the book, which analyzes the words of Black women who are behind and speaking back to their screens, and postulates about what happens when postracial resistance and strategic ambiguity are not available as strategies for success. Chapter 4 focuses on how the young women constructed their community through identifying against strategic ambiguity. This chapter begins by defining the contours of this women-of-color, feminist audience study. Joseph introduces the members of the study to the readers, and takes them through some of their critiques including how they identify against televisual images, how they refute tokenism, and how they enact racialized resistance by “hate-watching.”

“Because Often It’s Both”

Chapter 2 analyzes a case study from Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey has always occupied a unique, exceptional, and almost superhuman position in the American cultural imaginary. Winfrey has long since abandoned the status of mere mortal in the eyes of fans and foes alike. In her ubiquity, Winfrey did much to not only shore up her own brand, but also configure the representational space of a particular brand of celebrity African American womanhood. That particular brand was strategic ambiguity. This chapter asks: what happened when the magic trick stopped working, or when Winfrey’s postracial, strategically ambiguous negotiations of race and gender weren’t successful? In this chapter, Joseph analyzes the limits of Winfrey’s so-called racial transcendence, considering a telling moment when she used strategic ambiguity but was still pilloried in the press as a race-baiting, uppity, Angry Black Woman.

“Of Course I’m Proud of My Country!”

Chapter 1 scrutinizes the First Lady’s response to her racist and sexist treatment in mainstream media in the 2008 presidential election campaign. Michelle Obama faced many attacks from the McCain-Palin campaign and the conservative media in the 2007–8 election campaign season, including ridicule over her “fist bump” with Barack Obama at a St. Paul, Minnesota campaign rally and the parody of her as a Black Panther on the cover of The New Yorker. But no attack was as brutal and sustained as the one that came after her “pride” comments during a stump speech in early 2008. In this chapter, Joseph analyses Obama’s response: coming out as a postracial, postfeminist glamour goddess on The View. The chapter asks: how did such a strategically ambiguous performance allow Obama to speak back to negative popular media representations without incurring additional racist and sexist wrath? Why did Obama’s reframes, redefinitions, and coded language work so effectively in this particular case?

Coda

The book ends with a brief coda. In the introduction to this book Joseph presented Kerry Washington’s notion of taking a seat at the table as one at the heart of postracial resistance and strategic ambiguity. In closing the book, Joseph considers singer/songwriter Solange Knowles’s notion of a seat at the table as a flipped notion of inclusion: “I’m inviting you to have a seat at my table.” Solange presents the idea that power comes from being the one who sets the terms, the one who does the inviting and not the invitee. The coda demonstrates that with a different model, women of color can be the ones in charge of the table.

“They Got Rid of the Naps, That’s All They Did”

Chapter 5 is the second of the two audience reception chapters in the books, which continues documenting a group of young women flow of commentary before, during, and after watching a full season of their favorite television program, America’s Next Top Model. These young women claimed agency in the face of what they interpreted to be racist and sexist media representations, and they subsequently produced counter-narratives to strategic ambiguity. This chapter looks at how the young women flouted the corporate notion of the management of difference in their viewing community by flouting respectability politics, calling out colorism, rejecting code-switching, and, overall, rejecting postrace.

“Do Not Run Away from Your Blackness”

Chapter 6 focuses on television production economies and relies upon interview data in order to illustrate how Black female television writers, studios’ in-house legal counsel, and producers skirt and tease notions of postrace in constructing their own brands of resistance. This chapter investigates how a coded, more polite, and postracial form of racialized sexism affects those who work in the industry as much as infiltrates the entertainment products that make their way to audiences. This chapter draws upon interview data with prolific Black women television professionals in Hollywood in order to understand the ways in which twenty-first century representations of African Americans on television are shaped by segregated spaces.

Introduction

The introduction begins by providing an exemplar of postracial resistance and strategic ambiguity through the figure of celebrity figure Kerry Washington at the 2015 Oscars Red Carpet. The rest of the chapter sets up the stakes and defines the terms for the book. Much time is spent defining, tracing, and explaining the terms postrace and strategic ambiguity. The introduction also elucidates the contours of why media representations matter for the ways in which we understand Black women. This chapter situates and historicizes the Michelle Obama era, and talks about why that particular moment is an important one to analyse with regards to understanding Black women’s representations. It also traces the histories of Black feminist resistance, discusses the book’s interdisciplinary and multi-methodological media studies approach, and sets up the individual chapters.