Blackness has always played a central role in the American imagination. Therefore, it should not be surprising that popular television--a medium that grew up with the Civil Rights Movement--has featured blackness as both a foil and a key narrative theme throughout its sixty-year existence. Ironically, in modern "colorblind" times, we are faced with a unique turn of events--blackness is actually overrepresented in television sitcoms and dramas.
Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America presents fifteen classic and contemporary studies of the shifting,...