Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture

Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture

Rowman & Littlefield
May 2009
250 pages
Cloth: 0-7425-6079-1 / 978-0-7425-6079-6
Paper: 0-7425-6080-5 / 978-0-7425-6080-2

Erica Chito Childs, Associate Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York

There is no teasing apart what interracial couples think of themselves from what society shows them about themselves. Following on her earlier ground-breaking study of the social worlds of interracial couples, Erica Chito Childs considers the larger context of social messages, conveyed by the media, that inform how we think about love across the color line. Examining a range of media—from movies to music to the web—Fade to Black and White offers an informative and provocative account of how the perception of interracial sexuality as “deviant” has been transformed in the course of the 20th century and how race relations are understood today.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction: Fade to Black and White
  • 1. Historical Realities and Media Representations of Race and Sexuality
  • 2. The Prime-Time Color-Line: Interracial Couples and Television
  • 3. It’s a (White) Man’s World
  • 4. When Good Girls Go Bad
  • 5. Playing the Color-Blind Card: Seeing Black and White in News Media
  • 6. Multiracial Utopias: Youth, Sports and Music
  • Conclusion
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