The term race has many levels of meaning, scientific, administrative, and popular. The meanings are so diverse, even contradictory, that some authors believe the word ought not to be used. While sharing their discomfort over the confusions and distortions, we believe the word is unlikely to disappear from general usage and that therefore it is better to examine it carefully than to disregard it.

The Meaning of Race

Beyond the Cheers: Race as Spectacle in College Sport A Book co-authored by Illinois Wesleyan Professor, Examines Cultural Politics in Intercollegiate Athletics

Based on a sample of 28,360 albums identified by an online community devoted to progressive rock, this article examines factors that shape the retrospective consecration of music that operates beyo...

Retrospective Consecration Beyond the Mainstream: The Creation of a Progressive Rock Canon:

\n Racial inequality persists in culture industries, despite increases in representation. Focusing on the Hollywood film industry, this research analyzes written correspondence to understand how, in their discourses, cultural workers as intermediaries or gatekeepers construct ideas about race to make predictions about economic value, success, and failure of cultural products. Findings demonstrate that cultural workers make racial valuations, or race-based judgments about the economic worth of cultural products—in this case by associating white actors with low economic risk, increased chances of profitability, and the expectation of success and linking black actors to high economic risk, decreased chances of profitability, and the expectation of failure. This practice of racial valuation disrupts conventional logics that emphasize the financial ambiguity of cultural markets to advance white institutional logics that invoke raced-based projections about a cultural product’s expected performance. Ultimately, these racially biased assessments affect people, products, and processes along the film production, distribution, and consumption spectrum, especially privileging white workers and limiting Black workers in foreign markets, thereby creating and reinforcing unequal racial outcomes within culture industries.

Racial Valuation: Cultural Gatekeepers, Race, Risk, and Institutional Expectations of Success and Failure

Decades after the Civil Rights era, scholars maintain that enduring racial inequality remains entrenched throughout the film industry even as Hollywood grows more racially diverse. This study takes...

On the margins: black directors and the persistence of racial inequality in twenty-first century Hollywood

While scholars have long considered the relationship between genre and Black film production, less is known about African American directors’ participation in contemporary Hollywood film genres, es...

Maryann Erigha

Papers

On the margins: black directors and the persistence of racial inequality in twenty-first century Hollywood

Do African Americans Direct Science Fiction or Blockbuster Franchise Movies? Race, Genre, and Contemporary Hollywood: