Like 193 million other viewers, I binged the gloriously extravagant second-season production of Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton (Netflix, 2022).[1] The series is an escapist space filled with normative multiracial romances, Black aristocrats, a mixed-race…

Announcing CALL FOR PAPERS for The Velvet Light Trap issue 91: Digital Storytelling. Submissions due by January 31, 2022. Shareable CFP link here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dcwk4UcXwO_NPxLtGlhaVI5kR_wmaqrGakQiFG_TcIY/edit

The Kardashians made their money by trademarking their white femininity, their relationships with African American men and marketing Black beauty aesthetics for white women—a type of modern mediated Blackface in a cultural space where few actual…

J.Lo is not Black nor does she claim that identity when she uses the term “negrita” on Maluma’s “Lonely” single. But Twitter isn’t having any of it and the controversy is obscuring a complicated discussion about race in the United States and the…

As we consider the changing landscape of television and new media, TV Studies itself seems precarious. The constant stream of technological development, increasing fragmentation of audiences, and expansion of programming and distribution outlets has…

On February 26, 2013, the one year anniversary of the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL by George Zimmerman, I stare at the beautiful face of Trayvon Martin on my television screen and online news feed. I study his cinnamon brown skin, big…

On September 12, 2012 the New York Times featured a story with the following question: “Should Zoe Saldana Play Nina Simone? Some say no.” At the heart of the report was the growing debate and on-line petitions over whether or not US-born black…

At a moment of deep global economic anxiety, Modern Family recuperates middle-class whiteness through a subtle narrative of resentment (See Image 1). The discourse of white resentment requires that difference (sexual, ethnic, racial or linguistic) be…