TY - JOUR
T1 - Nothing Sells like Whiteness
T2 - Race, Ontology, and American Advertising
AU - Shankar, Shalini
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding for research featured in this article was provided by the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Program (BCS-1323769) and Northwestern University. I am very grateful to Aisha Beliso-De Jesús and Jemima Pierre for inviting me to participate in this special section, to Deborah Thomas for her editorial guidance, and to the anonymous peer reviewers for their time, effort, and thoughtful comments. I also thank Jonathan Rosa for collaborating on an earlier version of a portion of this paper, and Jillian Cavanaugh, Graham Jones, and David Valentine for their feedback. All errors are my own.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the American Anthropological Association
PY - 2020/3/1
Y1 - 2020/3/1
N2 - In this article, I examine how white supremacy is reproduced and circulated through advertising. I explore the shift from the racial and ethnic specificities of “multiculturalism” to the more open-ended concept of “diversity,” which indexes difference in unspecific and nonthreatening ways. How diversity is represented in general-market advertising and how it differs from multicultural advertising offers a window into white supremacy and the role of advertising in furthering its agenda. Advertising has long acted as a vehicle for white supremacy, and by analyzing diversity, there is something to be learned about the current work done by this medium. [race/ethnicity, advertising, media, diversity, white supremacy].
AB - In this article, I examine how white supremacy is reproduced and circulated through advertising. I explore the shift from the racial and ethnic specificities of “multiculturalism” to the more open-ended concept of “diversity,” which indexes difference in unspecific and nonthreatening ways. How diversity is represented in general-market advertising and how it differs from multicultural advertising offers a window into white supremacy and the role of advertising in furthering its agenda. Advertising has long acted as a vehicle for white supremacy, and by analyzing diversity, there is something to be learned about the current work done by this medium. [race/ethnicity, advertising, media, diversity, white supremacy].
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U2 - 10.1111/aman.13354
DO - 10.1111/aman.13354
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85077863658
SN - 0002-7294
VL - 122
SP - 112
EP - 119
JO - American Anthropologist
JF - American Anthropologist
IS - 1
ER -