In love and war: racial disharmony and America's discordant racial articulations in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright media spectacle

Abstract

Utilizing articulation theory, critical race theory and discourse analysis, this study examines the socio-racial discourses mobilized in response to the Jeremiah Wright media spectacle during the 2008 US presidential election. Two perspectives pervaded the social climate: one advancing racial transcendence and the other color consciousness in the name of addressing ongoing racial oppression. To explore the legitimacy of these claims, an analysis of online posts on YouTube and the Huffington Post revealed three socio-racial discourses: (1) the racial scaffolding of US society must be exposed by “speaking truth to power”; (2) the US has transcended race and oppositional opinions are unpatriotic, anti-America profanity; and (3) claims of enduring racial oppression by African Americans are ungrateful, anti-progress “babble.” This study contends that the simultaneous articulation of multiple socio-racial discourses reflecting divergent commitments calls into question the very foundation of the discourse of racial transcendence.

Keywords:

• critical race theory
• racial transcendence
• articulation theory
• whiteness
• nationalism