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Abstract
Communication scholars across the discipline have investigated the ways border metaphors influence racial identity formation and analysis. Intervening in contemporary conversations about racial borders and borderlands, the Race Card Project and accompanying NPR website was designed as a national forum to inspire and encourage a multi-media conversation about race across the United States. Exploring the metaphors they use, the logics they deploy, and the evidence they call upon to substantiate their claims, we contend that Race Card participants engage in a discursive practice that we call antiracial bordering to mitigate their experiences with racism in the United States; however, in so doing, they leave colorblind racist logics intact by devaluing borders (and subsequently categories). Specifically, by crafting antiracial bordering, Race Card participants engage in a post-racial rhetoric that is characterized by 1) discourses of management and transcendence, 2) discourses of scientific reason, and 3) discourses of heteronormativity that serve to sediment the racist logics they set out to trouble. After tracing the nuanced ways each of these discourses characterize antiracial bordering practices and the work they do to uphold colorblind logics of race, we conclude by theorizing the productive (anti-racist) value of constructing and maintaining borders.
Notes
[1] Tom Kludt, “Scarborough: Obama and Holder Should Stop Playing the Race Card,” April 10, 2014; Talking Points Livewire TPM Livewire, May 23, 2014 http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/joe-scarborough-eric-holder-barack-obama-racism.
[2] Larry Elder, “White People Playing the Race Card,” Opinion, Daily Tribune, May 23, 2014, elder-white-people-playing-the-race-card.
[3] Lucy McCalmont, “Donald Trump: Democrats Playing the ‘Race Card’,” Politico, April 14, 2014, http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/donald-trump-republicans-race-105670.html (accessed May 23, 2014)
[4] “Cuomo Chastised by African American Leader for Playing Race Card Against GOPer Astorino,” The Rockland County Times, May 22, 2014, http://www.rocklandtimes.com/2014/05/22/cuomo-chastised-by-african-american-leader-for-playing-race-card-against-goper-astorino/ (accessed May 23, 2014).
[5] Christopher J. Gilbert and Jonathan P. Rossing, “Trumping Tropes with Joke(r)s: The Daily Show “Plays the Race Card,” Western Journal of Communication 77, no.1 (2013): 92–111; Ronald Lee and Aysel Morin, “Using the 2008 Presidential Election to Think about ‘Playing the Race Card’,” Communication Studies 60, no. 4 (2009): 376–91.
[6] Michele Norris, “About,” Race Card Project, November 11, 2013, http://theracecardproject.com/about-the-race-card-project/.
[7] Norris, “About.”
[8] Ralina L. Joseph, Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).
[9] Jared Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiculturalism. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
[10] David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002); Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015).
[11] Goldberg, Racial State.
[12] D. Robert DeChaine, ed., Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier, (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012); Josue David Cisneros, “(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric, Hybridity, and Citizenship in La Gran Marcha,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 1 (2011): 26–49; D. Robert DeChaine, “Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Alienization, Fence Logic, and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 1 (2009): 43–65; Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, Shifting Borders; Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's Proposition 187 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002) Cisneros.
[13] See, e.g., Linda Bosniak, “Universal Citizenship and the Problem of Alienage,” Northwestern University Law Review 94 (2000): 963; DeChaine, “Bordering the Civic Imaginary;” Dustin Bradley Goltz & Kimberlee Pérez, “Borders without Bodies: Affect, Proximity, and Utopian Imaginaries,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 163–80; Kent A. Ono, “Borders that Travel: Matters of the Figural Border,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 19–32.
[14] Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 9.
[15] Kelly E. Happe, “The Body of Race: Toward a Rhetorical Understanding of Racial Ideology,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 2 (2013): 132.
[16] Respectively, DeChaine, ed., Border Rhetorics: “(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary”; Ono and Sloop, Shifting Borders; Lisa A. Flores, “Constructing Rhetorical Borders: Peons, Illegal Aliens, and Competing Narratives of Immigration,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20, no. 4 (2003): 362–87; Josue David Cisneros, The Border Crossed Us: Rhetorics of Borders, Citizenship, and Latina/o Identity (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2013); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987).
[17] Aimee Carrillo Rowe “Belonging: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation,” NWSA Journal 17, no. 2 (2005): 16.
[18] Omi and Winant, Racial Formation.
[19] E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Nadine Ehlers, “‘Black Is’ and ‘Black Ain't’: Performative Revisions of Racial ‘Crisis’,” Culture, Theory & Critique 47, no. 2 (2007): 149–63.
[20] Flores, “Constructing Rhetorical Borders”; Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono (eds.) Critical Rhetorics of Race (New York, NY: NYU Press, 2011).
[21] Lisa A. Flores and Dreama G. Moon, “Rethinking Race, Revealing Dilemmas: Imagining a New Racial Subject in Race Traitor,” Western Journal of Communication 66, no. 3 (2002): 181–207.
[22] Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 3.
[23] Julia R. Johnson “Bordering as Social Practice: Intersectional Identifications and Coalitional Politics,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 35.
[24] Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera; Cisneros, “(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary”; DeChaine, “Bordering the Civic Imaginary”; Johnson, “Bordering as Social Practice.”
[25] Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004), 21.
[26] Ono & Sloop, Shifting Borders, 12.
[27] George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006), 4.
[28] Joseph, Transcending Blackness, 2.
[29] Omi & Winant, Racial Formation, 8.
[30] Lipsitz, Possessive Investment.
[31] Omi & Winant, Racial Formation, 2.
[32] Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006).
[33] Goldberg, The Racial State.
[34] Catherine Squires, Eric King Watts, Mary Douglas Vavrus, Kent A. Ono, Kathleen Feyh, Bernadette Marie Calafell, and Daniel C. Brouwer “What Is This ‘Post-’ in Postracial, Postfeminist… (Fill in the Blank)?,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 34 no. 3; Joseph, Transcending Blackness.
[35] Kent A. Ono, “Postracism: A Theory of the ‘Post’- as Political Strategy,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 34, no. 3 (2010): 227.
[36] Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, 2.
[37] Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, 3.
[38] Goldberg, Racial State, 21.
[39] Patricia Hill Collins, 2004, quoted from Calafell in Squires et al., “What is this ‘Post-’,” 241.
[40] Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, “The Critique of Vernacular Discourse,” Communication Monographs 62, no. 1 (1995): 25.
[41] Eddy Bowen, “Black out Side, Mixed in Side,” http://theracecardproject.com/black-out-side-mixed-in-side, retrieved from Race Card Project January 10, 2014.
[42] Nadine Ehlers, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Defying Juridical Racialization in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 1, no. 4 (2004): 316.
[43] Bradley Jones and Roopali Mukherjee, “From California to Michigan: Race, Rationality and Neoliberal Governmentality,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7, no. 4 (2010): 401–23.
[44] Emily Wood, “Having a Foot in Two Canoes,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/?s=Having+a+foot+in+two+canoes
[45] Goldberg, Racial State, 23.
[46] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York, NY: The New Press, 2012), 2.
[47] Anne Ward Masterson, “What am I, I am Human,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/human/
[48] Katherine Fogelberg “I'm Biracial, Yellow Outside, White in,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/im-biracial-yellow-outside-white-in/
[49] Olivia Meyers, “Hardship. Coffin-ships. Caucasian?! Don't Whitewash Me.” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, “http://theracecardproject.com/hardship-coffin-ships-caucasian-dont-whitewash-me/
[50] Ranya “I Always Created a New Box to Check,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/always-created-new-box-check/
[51] Marivel T. Danielson, Homecoming Queers: Desire and Difference in Chicana Latina Cultural Production (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 12.
[52] Mossee, 1978 and Poliakov, 1974 in Richard Dyer White (New York, NY: Routledge, 1997), 71.
[53] Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81(1995): 300.
[54] See, respectively, Karina, “I'm Only Asian to Non-Asians,” http://theracecardproject.com/asian-non-asians; Miriam C. Vargas, “Blend of Cultures. African, Taino, Spanish,” http://theracecardproject.com/blend-cultures-african-taino-spanish/; Edward O'Neill, “I'm Irish and Black. Micks-ed,” http://theracecardproject.com/im-irish-black-micks-ed/; Bowen, “Black out Side, Mixed in Side,”; all retrieved from Race Card Project , January 10, 2014.
[55] Mara Andino, “Mixed Latina Two Times “Different,” Lonely,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/mixed-latina-two-times-different-lonely/
[56] Selena “Jazz” Baker, “Mixed: Beaten for Looking too White,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/mixed-beaten-for-looking-too-white/
[57] Matthew Pastrone, “Half White, Half Mexican, I'm Proud,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/half-white-half-mexican-im-proud/
[58] Jason Martin, “I'm Biracial. Being Half isn't Easier,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/im-biracial-being-half-isnt-easier/
[59] Quinn Woods “Plain ol’ White. No I'm Not,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/plain-ol-white-im/
[60] Heinrich Beck, “Kindergarten Registration: White? Asian? Choices? Eskimo,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/kindergarten-registration-white-asian-choices-eskimo/
[61] Rita Kane, “Dark Mother. Fair Daughter. Recessive Genes,” http://theracecardproject.com/dark-mother-fair-daughter-recessive-genes; Melanie “Why Can't my Children Embrace Both (of their) Heritages?” http://theracecardproject.com/cant-children-embrace-heritages/ both retrieved Race Card Project, January 10, 2014.
[62] Jada Golden Sherman, “White Skinned Negro: Community of One,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/white-skinned-negro-community-one/
[63] Casey Ryan Kelly “Blood-Speak: Ward Churchill and the Racialization of American Indian Identity,” Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies 8, no. 3 (2011): 240–65.
[64] Julian B. Carter, The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880-1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 7.
[65] Jonathan Ned Katz, “The Invention of Heterosexuality,” in Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class: Dimensions of Inequality, ed. Susan J. Ferguson (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013), 97.
[66] Denyse C. McGriff, “Yes he Really is my Child,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/?s=Yes+he+really+is+my+child
[67] Dr. J. “Your Son Looks Nothing Like You,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/son-looks-nothing-like/
[68] Sexton. Amalgamation Schemes, 7.
[69] Liliane Dizon, “No, I'm Not the Nanny,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/no-i-am-not-the-nanny-2/
[70] Patricia Hill Collins. “Like One of the Family: Race, Ethnicity, and the Paradox of US National Identity,” Ethnic Racial Studies 24, no. 1, (2001): 5.
[71] Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes, 9.
[72] Naomi Raquel Enright, “Yes, he is my Biological Son,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/yes-he-is-my-biological-son/
[73] Ralina L. Joseph, “Hope is Finally Making a Comeback: First Lady Reframed,” Communication, Culture & Critique 4 (2011): 56–77.
[74] Melanie “Why Can't my Children Embrace Both.”
[75] DeChaine, “Bordering the Civic Imaginary”; Ono, Borders that Travel”; Stacey K. Sowards and Richard D. Pineda, “Immigrant Narratives and Popular Culture in the United States: Border Spectacle, Unmotivated Sympathies, and the Individualized Responsibilities,” Western Journal of Communication 77, no. 1 (2013): 72–91.
[76] Cisneros, “(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary;” John Lucaites, “Afterword: Border Optics,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 227–30.
[77] Calafell 2012 - “Love, Loss, and Immigration: Performative Reverberations between a Great-Grandmother and Great-Granddaughter,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 151–62.
[78] Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera; Don Waisanen, “Bordering Populism in Immigration Activism: Outlaw-Civic Discourse in a (Counter) Public,” Communication Monographs 79, no. 2 (2012): 232–55.
[79] Raymie McKerrow, “Foreward,” in Critical Rhetorics of Race, ed. Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2011), 10.
[80] Joseph, Transcending Blackness, 44.
[81] Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes.
[82] Goldberg, Racial State; Joseph, Transcending Blackness.
[83] Britta Solan, “Without Skin, Would We be Equals?,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/?s=without+skin%2C+would+we+be+equals
[84] Rick Kraske, “White Dad, Black Son, Daily Frontiers,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/white-dad-black-son-daily-frontiers/
[85] Danielle Amodeo “No Words Spoken, but Already Judged,” Race Card Project, January 10, 2014, http://theracecardproject.com/words-spoken-already-judged/
[86] See, for instance Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists; Darrel Enck-Wanzer, “Trashing the System: Social Movement, Intersectional Rhetoric, and Collective Agency in the Young Lords Organization's Garbage Offensive,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, no. 2(2006): 174–201; Goldberg, Racial State; McKerrow, “Forward.”
[87] Moshin and Jackson, “Inscribing Racial Bodies,” 215.
[88] Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes, 9.
[89] Joseph, Transcending Blackness, 166.
[90] Johnson, “Bordering as Social Practice,” 40.
[91] Johnson, “Bordering as Social Practice,” 43.