Playing the race card
Subtitle: melodramas of black and white from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson
By: Linda Williams.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 401
Subjects: African Americans in popular culture; Racism in popular culture -- United States; Melodrama, American -- Social aspects; Mass media and race relations -- United States; African Americans in mass media; African American men -- Race identity; Women, White -- Race identity -- United States; Popular culture -- United States -- Psychological aspects; United States -- Race relations -- Psychological aspects
Description: "The black man suffering at the hands of whites, the white woman sexually threatened by the black man. Both images have long been burned into the American conscience through popular entertainment, and today they exert a powerful and disturbing influence on American's understanding of race. So argues Linda Williams in this inquisitive book, where she probes the bitterly divisive racial sentiments aroused by such recent events as O. J. Simpson's criminal trial.

Williams, the author of Hard Core, explores how these images took root, beginning with melodramatic theater, where suffering characters acquire virtue through victimization."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-384) and index.