Abstract
As a postmodern parodic television cartoon, South Park has much more to say about race than its crudely stereotypical and even crassly juvenile depictions of the racial Other would suggest. This study argues that the text is a potent example of a contemporary American television landscape that communicates difference largely in and through the absence of the Other. Exploring the program's dialectical role in both effacing and fostering a desire for difference, I conclude that South Park recenters whiteness by presenting the position in contrast to conceptualizations of liminal whiteness in the form of the cartoon's core characters. South Park's persistent messages about the racial subject position are also reinforced through its active relating to other texts within the cartoon genre.
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