Dispatches from the Color Line

Catherine R. Squires is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

With Barack Obama a major candidate for president at the time of its publication, this study of how news media deal with multiracial people and issues is timely." — CHOICE"This is one of the few sustained treatments on racial discourse, interracial representation, and the media. The use of case examples organized around coverage of key controversies—court cases, life stories, public controversies—gives the narrative momentum and at the same time provides the author with the space for serious and engaged analysis." — Herman Gray, author of Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation

• List of IllustrationsPrefaceIntroduction1. "Hybrid Degenerates" to "Multiracial Families": Discourses of Race Mixing in America2. The In/discernible Body of Susie Phipps3. "Not as Black as the Next Guy": A Peculiar Case of White Identity in the News4. Descended from Whom? Defining Maria Hylton in the News5. Counting Race, Counting Controversy: Multiracial Identity and the 2000 Census in Asian American, Black American, and Dominant Periodicals6. After the CensusConclusion: Dispatches from the Twenty-First-Century Color LineNotesReferencesIndex