Winner of the International Communication Association’s 2019 Outstanding Book of the Year Award
Dr. Joseph’s second book, Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media Culture, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity, examines how African American women negotiate the minefield of “postracial racism.”
“A fascinating study that boldly mines the complexities of racial and gender microaggressions in contemporary media, examining the many ways in which Black women culture workers and consumers have navigated said minefields. Through nuanced readings of our notoriously vexed “postracial” pop cultural landscape, and through rich explorations of Black women and their audiences, Ralina Joseph has written a necessary accompaniment to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen.”
— Daphne Brooks, author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910
“With the spectacular visibility of Oprah, Michelle Obama, and Beyoncé, such a book is needed now, perhaps, more than ever. To advance conversations about the intersections of race, class, gender, media, and accomplishment, Ralina Joseph introduces us to the concept of ‘strategic ambiguity,’ one that complicates the realities of celebrity life for women of color in the wake of the ‘postracial’ condition.”
— Herman Gray, author of Cultural Moves, African Americans and the Politics of Representation
In addition, her work has appeared in The International Journal of Communication; Critical Studies in Media Communication; Communication Studies; The Black Scholar; and Communication, Culture, and Critique, and she has chapters in Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers; Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/Body Politics in Africana Communities; and Claiming a Seat at the Table: Feminism, Underserved Women of Color, Voice, and Resistance.
Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial
All photography provided by Jared Chambers.