Racism and Communication
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 August 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 August 2022
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0280
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 August 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 August 2022
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0280
Introduction
Manifestations of racism in communication have been studied in many disciplines, including anthropology, applied linguistics, communication studies, education, journalism, law, psychology, sociology, and more. Racism works to maintain hierarchies of power between groups of people characterized by perceived racial differences through acts and mechanisms of inferiorization, denigration, marginalization, and exclusion. Racism is embedded and reproduced in language, discourse, knowledge, social practices, and institutional structures. While racism is typically understood as individual indignities, which are often called racial microaggressions, it also takes the form of institutional racism, as seen in unequal access and representations within various social domains, including criminal justice, education, employment, entertainment, healthcare, housing, politics, and more. Additionally, epistemological racism, which is entrenched in our knowledge system as seen in school curricula or academic research, legitimates the perspectives derived from or produced by a certain racial group while marginalizing or erasing others. These forms of racism are intertwined, shaping people’s beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in their everyday communicative experiences. In understanding racism, it is necessary to recognize intersectionality—a perspective that individual and group oppression cannot be explained solely in terms of race, but rather in combination with other identity categories, including gender, class, language, nationality, sexuality, religion, and (dis)ability. Just as racism has multiple meanings and manifestations, communication can be conceptualized in many ways. While communication can be broadly understood as conveying and interpreting meanings, it takes place in many forms through multiple means for various purposes in diverse contexts. People engage in communication using language and other semiotic resources, which can be categorized into oral, written, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modes. The ways these modes are combined shape communication. Communication can also take place through various media, including print, performance, and information technology. People communicate face to face or in cyberspace. The settings in which communication occurs are diverse as well. They can be public spaces, such as schools, universities, and workplaces, as well as private homes or other personal spaces. In these contexts, various forms of racism are communicated, consumed, sedimented, and contested in overt and covert ways. As shown in the works reviewed here, different forms of racism are expressed and enacted through various modes and means of communication in diverse contexts, and they perpetuate the system of domination and subordination.
General Overviews
Racism caused, spread, and resisted through various modes and contexts of communication is addressed in various research fields rather than in a tightly defined inquiry area. As such, identifying publications that provide a comprehensive overview of this topic is a challenge. Nonetheless, the following three volumes offer general ideas about the connections between racism and communication. Lippi-Green 2012 provides discussions on language ideologies and discrimination in the United States, while Alim, et al. 2020 discusses race, racialization, and racism from linguistic anthropology perspectives. Kubota and Lin 2009 examines race, racialization, and racism as manifested in language education in various geographical and institutional contexts.
Alim, H. Samy, Angela Reyes, and Paul V. Kroskrity, eds. 2020. The Oxford handbook of language and race. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Taking a linguistic anthropological approach, this large volume contains twenty-one chapters exploring issues of not only racism but also race and racialization in language-based scholarship. The authors employ various conceptual frames, including history, language ideologies, coloniality, and political economy. The book covers multiple countries in the world, such as Angola, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Italy, Liberia, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Kubota, Ryuko, and Angel Lin, eds. 2009. Race, culture, and identities in second language education: Exploring critically engaged practice. New York: Routledge.
This edited volume addresses how racialization and racism are manifested in language teaching and learning in various parts of the world. Chapters highlight how racial biases and injustices are reflected in teacher and learner identity, institutional practices, pervasive stereotypes, language ideology, the superiority of Whiteness, colorblind discourses, language-in-education policies, and teaching materials. The book illuminates the importance of explicitly addressing racism in language education.
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 2012. English with an accent. 2d ed. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
In this book, Lippi-Green provides theoretical discussions and concrete examples of how standard language ideology in the United States negatively impacts the lives of people from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Jewish, and Muslim backgrounds. The author unpacks linguistic discrimination targeted to these racialized people by examining various contexts and topics, such as education, politics, courtrooms, housing, and Disney animation films.
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Article
- Accounting Communication
- Acculturation Processes and Communication
- Action Assembly Theory
- Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis
- Activist Media
- Adherence and Communication
- Adolescence and the Media
- Advertisements, Televised Political
- Advertising
- Advertising, Children and
- Advertising, International
- Advocacy Journalism
- Agenda Setting
- Annenberg, Walter H.
- Apologies and Accounts
- Applied Communication Research Methods
- Argumentation
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advertising
- Attitude-Behavior Consistency
- Audience Fragmentation
- Audience Studies
- Authoritarian Societies, Journalism in
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bandwagon Effect
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Blockchain and Communication
- Blogs
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Brand Equity
- British and Irish Magazine, History of the
- Broadcasting, Public Service
- Capture, Media
- Castells, Manuel
- Celebrity and Public Persona
- Censorship
- Civic Duty
- Civil Rights Movement and the Media, The
- CNN
- Co-Cultural Theory and Communication
- Codes and Cultural Discourse Analysis
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Collective Memory, Communication and
- Comedic News
- Communication Apprehension
- Communication Campaigns
- Communication, Definitions and Concepts of
- Communication History
- Communication Law
- Communication Management
- Communication Networks
- Communication, Philosophy of
- Community Attachment
- Community Journalism
- Community Structure Approach
- Computational Journalism
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- Content Analysis
- Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication
- Crisis Communication
- Critical and Cultural Studies
- Critical Race Theory and Communication
- Cross-tools and Cross-media Effects
- Cultivation
- Cultural and Creative Industries
- Cultural Imperialism Theories
- Cultural Mapping
- Cultural Persuadables
- Cultural Pluralism and Communication
- Cyberpolitics
- 3D Media
- Death, Dying, and Communication
- Debates, Televised
- Deliberation
- Developmental Communication
- Diffusion of Innovations
- Digital Divide
- Digital Gender Diversity
- Digital Intimacies
- Digital Literacy
- Diplomacy, Public
- Distributed Work, Comunication and
- Documentary and Communication
- E-democracy/E-participation
- E-Government
- Elaboration Likelihood Model
- Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM)
- Embedded Coverage
- Entertainment
- Entertainment-Education
- Environmental Communication
- Ethnic Media
- Ethnography of Communication
- Experiments
- Families, Multicultural
- Family Communication
- Federal Communications Commission
- Feminist and Queer Game Studies
- Feminist Data Studies
- Feminist Journalism
- Feminist Theory
- Focus Groups
- Food Studies and Communication
- Freedom of the Press
- Friendships, Intercultural
- Gatekeeping
- Gender and the Media
- Global Englishes
- Global Media, History of
- Global Media Organizations
- Glocalization
- Goffman, Erving
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Habituation and Communication
- Health Communication
- Hegemony
- Hermeneutic Communication Studies
- Heuristics
- Homelessness and Communication
- Hook-Up and Dating Apps
- Hostile Media Effect
- Identification with Media Characters
- Identity, Cultural
- Image Repair Theory
- Implicit Measurement
- Impression Management
- Indexing
- Infographics
- Information and Communication Technology for Development
- Information Management
- Information Overload
- Information Processing
- Infotainment
- Innis, Harold
- Instructional Communication
- Integrated Marketing Communications
- Interactivity
- Intercultural Capital
- Intercultural Communication
- Intercultural Communication, Tourism and
- Intercultural Communication, Worldview in
- Intercultural Competence
- Intercultural Conflict Mediation
- Intercultural Dialogue
- Intercultural New Media
- Intergenerational Communication
- Intergroup Communication
- International Communications
- Interpersonal Communication
- Interpersonal LGBTQ Communication
- Interpretation/Reception
- Interpretive Communities
- Journalism
- Journalism, Accuracy in
- Journalism, Alternative
- Journalism and Trauma
- Journalism, Citizen
- Journalism, Citizen, History of
- Journalism Ethics
- Journalism, Interpretive
- Journalism, Peace
- Journalism, Tabloid
- Journalists, Violence against
- Knowledge Gap
- Language Ecology
- Lazarsfeld, Paul
- Leadership and Communication
- LGBTQ+ Family Communication
- LGBTQ+ People and Media Industries
- Mass Communication
- McLuhan, Marshall
- Media Activism
- Media Aesthetics
- Media and Time
- Media Bias
- Media Convergence
- Media Credibility
- Media Dependency
- Media Ecology
- Media Economics
- Media Economics, Theories of
- Media, Educational
- Media Effects
- Media Ethics
- Media Events
- Media Exposure Measurement
- Media, Gays and Lesbians in the
- Media Literacy
- Media Logic
- Media Management
- Media Policy and Governance
- Media Regulation
- Media, Social
- Media Sociology
- Media Streaming
- Media Systems Theory
- Merton, Robert K.
- Message Characteristics and Persuasion
- Mobile Communication Studies
- Muckraking
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Approaches to
- Multinational Organizations, Communication and Culture in
- Murdoch, Rupert
- Narrative
- Narrative Engagement
- Narrative Persuasion
- Net Neutrality
- News, Fake
- News Framing
- News Media Coverage of Women
- NGOs, Communication and
- Online Campaigning
- Open Access
- Organizational Change and Organizational Change Communicat...
- Organizational Communication
- Organizational Communication, Aging and
- Parasocial Theory in Communication
- Participation, Civic/Political
- Participatory Action Research
- Patient-Provider Communication
- Peacebuilding and Communication
- Perceived Realism
- Personalized Communication
- Persuasion and Social Influence
- Persuasion, Resisting
- Photojournalism
- Political Advertising
- Political Communication, Normative Analysis of
- Political Economy
- Political Knowledge
- Political Marketing
- Political Scandals
- Political Socialization
- Polls, Opinion
- Priming
- Product Placement
- Propaganda
- Proxemics
- Public Interest Communication
- Public Opinion
- Public Relations
- Public Sphere
- Queer Intercultural Communication
- Queer Migration and Digital Media
- Race and Communication
- Racism and Communication
- Radio Studies
- Reality Television
- Reasoned Action Frameworks
- Religion and the Media
- Reporting, Investigative
- Rhetoric and Communication
- Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication
- Rhetoric and Social Movements
- Rhetoric, Religious
- Rhetoric, Visual
- Risk Communication
- Rumor and Communication
- Schramm, Wilbur
- Science Communication
- Scripps, E. W.
- Selective Exposure
- Semiotics
- Sense-Making/Sensemaking
- Sesame Street
- Sex in the Media
- Small-Group Communication
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Cognition
- Social Construction
- Social Identity Theory and Communication
- Social Interaction
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Protest
- Sports Communication
- Stereotypes
- Strategic Communication
- Superdiversity
- Surveillance and Communication
- Symbolic Interactionism in Communication
- Synchrony in Intercultural Communication
- Tabloidization
- Telecommunications History/Policy
- Television
- Television, Cable
- Textual Analysis and Communication
- Third Culture Kids
- Third-Person Effect
- Time Warner
- Transgender Media Studies
- Transmedia Storytelling
- Two-Step Flow
- UNESCO
- United Nations and Communication
- Urban Communication
- Uses and Gratifications
- Video
- Video Deficit
- Video Games and Communication
- Violence in the Media
- Virtual Reality and Communication
- Visual Communication
- Web 2.0
- Web3 and Communication
- Web Archiving
- Webcare
- Whistleblowing
- Whiteness Theory in Intercultural Communication
- WikiLeaks
- Youth and Media
- Zines and Communication