Strategic Social Identities and Judgments: A Murder in Appalachia

ABSTRACT

This essay extends the work on Whiteness by using the tension between strategic and tactical rhetoric to demonstrate how social identities are reconfigured in the face of challenges to those identities. Through an examination of the media coverage of a murder in West Virginia, the authors argue that the tactical rhetoric from the African American and gay communities forced a reconfiguration of and distancing from the perpetrators by the White and heterosexual community. It extends the focus on Whiteness to include heterosexuality as privileged forms of social identity that function in strategic ways and use strategic discourses in the media.

Keywords:

• hate crimes
• strategic rhetoric
• tactical rhetoric
• whiteness
• heterosexuality
• gay
• African American

A version of this paper was presented at the National Communication Association, Meeting, Seattle, WA, November 2001. We extend our sincere appreciation to Kent Ono for his substantive and insightful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.