Policing the Post-Racial: Visual Rhetorics of Racial Backlash
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POLICING THE POST-RACIAL: VISUAL RHETORICS OF RACIAL BACKLASH James Alexander McVey A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication. Chapel Hill 2018 Approved by: Eric King Watts Christian O. Lundberg Kumi Silva Sharon P. Holland Torin Monahan © 2018 James Alexander McVey ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT James Alexander McVey: Policing the Post-Racial: Visual Rhetorics of Racial Backlash (Under the direction of Eric King Watts) Policing the Post-Racial examines the visual rhetorics of racial backlash that emerged in response to both the Obama administration and the Black Lives Matter movement. Policing the Post-Racial tracks the ways in which the post-racial, a unique conjunctural moment emerging around the election of President Barack Obama, became subject to a variety of rhetorical strategies of visual policing. Situated at the intersection of rhetorical studies and media studies, this dissertation enquires into the role that visual, digital, and surveillant media play in the technological and symbolic formation of racialized structures of policing. I engage with four primary case studies: the visual rhetoric of the Blue Lives Matter movement, the 2012 film End of Watch, pro-and-anti Obama memes, and photoshopped Black Lives Matter protest signs. Policing the Post-Racial studies how visual rhetorics of policing mobilize images of black bodies to constitute ambivalent economies of affective attachment which adapt white supremacist visual rhetorics to the discursive constraints of the post-racial era. I argue that during the Obama administration, police officers became visual signifiers both of white sovereignty in decline and the reverse racism supposedly propagated by critics of police violence. Within visually saturated digital enclaves of white backlash, images and videos of police officers, critics of police, and victims of police violence, functioned as potent rhetorical resources for white audiences seeking to contain and police the threat of the post-racial. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I want to acknowledge my advisor Eric King Watts for the transformative conversations and pressing questions which helped make this project what it is. A big thank you to my committee members, Torin Monahan, Kumi Silva, Sharon Holland, and Chris Lundberg, for their generous contributions to this project. Thank you to all of the professors from my time at UNC Chapel Hill whose classes provided the intellectual foundation for this project: Carole Blair, Bill Balthrop, Mike Waltman, Lawrence Grossberg, Neal Thomas, Pat Parker, Mark Anthony Neal, Sarah Sharma, and Alvaro Reyes. Thank you to those at Baylor University who helped set me along my way in graduate school: Matt Gerber, Martin Medhurst, Dave Schlueter, Paul Larson, and Sam Perry. Special thanks to Leslie Hahner and Scott Varda for their continued mentorship and support. My gratitude to UNC’s Institute of African American Research, whose Graduate Student Summer Research Grant provided me with the time and financial resources to help complete this project. A big thanks to Kent Ono and the rest of the Rhetoric Society of America summer Seminar on Race and Rhetoric. The conversations that took place at that seminar were crucial to helping me cultivate this work. I would also like to thank a large list of friends whose support, mentorship, and labor helped me get through graduate school: Dustin Greenwalt, Paul Johnson, John Cook, Mike “Shooter” Weitz, Nate Ford, Amanda Luppes, Obie Lansford, Keiko Nishimura, Maggie Franz, Elizabeth Melton, Zac Parker, Eileen Hammond, Emily Brennan, Lucy Burgchardt, Wayne Rysavy, Nicole Castro, Drew Jenkins, Joe Koehle, Natalie Pennington, Jeff Roberts, Robert McDonald, Andrew Davis, Chris Dahlie, Adam Rottinghaus, Allison Schlobohm, Argus the Pug, iv and many, many more whose names I’m sure I’ve forgotten here. To the indispensable Atilla Hallsby and Emily Winderman, your friendship and support will never be forgotten. To my family: To Philly, who needs no introduction. Thank you for being a source of constant comfort. To Suzette Woods AKA Mama Bear, thank you for taking me into your family like one of your own, and for the lucky socks which have been crucial to getting me this far. To my grandmother, Mary McVey, who helped make me who I am today. You taught me how to read and write, and I still bear the marks of your handwriting in mine. To my mother, Dr. Pamela Ramsey. I owe everything I have in life to you. You gave me my strength and tenacity, my love of language and argument, my intelligence, my stubbornness, and my compassion. You have been my guiding light throughout my life, and I am so grateful for everything you’ve done for me. Finally, to Heather Suzanne Woods, my adventure partner. You inspire me every day to be the best me I can be. You remind me of all that is good and right in the world, and give me the strength to get through every day. Thank you for your love and support. I couldn’t have done it without you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS POLICING THE POST-RACIAL: VISUAL RHETORICS OF RACIAL BACKLASH .............. i ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER 1 – POLICING THE POST-RACIAL ......................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Defining the post-racial .............................................................................................................. 5 Review of Literature ................................................................................................................. 14 Racial Rhetorical Theory ...................................................................................................... 15 Visual Rhetoric and Representation ...................................................................................... 16 Black Visual Studies ............................................................................................................. 20 Policing, Media, and Rhetoric .............................................................................................. 26 Theory and Method ................................................................................................................... 28 Overview of Chapters ............................................................................................................... 42 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................... 46 CHAPTER 2 – BLUE LIVES MATTER AND THE VISUAL RHETORIC OF RACIAL BACKLASH ................................................................................................................................. 50 Erasure of Black Women’s Voices ........................................................................................... 83 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 90 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................... 92 CHAPTER 3 – END OF WATCH AND THE VISUAL RHETORIC OF POLICE SURVEILLANCE CINEMA ...................................................................................................... 100 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 100 v i Body-Mounted Police Cameras and Crises of Police Visibility ............................................. 103 Realism, Police Surveillance Cinema, and End of Watch ...................................................... 112 Close Reading ......................................................................................................................... 122 Opening Credits – Fate with a Badge and a Gun ................................................................ 122 Behind the Scenes at the LAPD - Surveillance and Intimacy ............................................ 124 Fighting Mr. Tre – Fragmented Visibility and Black Threat .............................................. 125 The Drive-By – Counter-Surveillance and Queer Deviancy .............................................. 127 Inside the Drug Den - Interracial Social Life, Monoracial Social Death ............................ 129 The House Party - Interracial Intimacy, Monoracial Queerness ......................................... 132 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 139 WORKS CITED ..................................................................................................................... 146 CHAPTER 4 - MEMEING THE BLACK PRESIDENCY: OBAMA MEMES AND THE AFFECTIVE AMBIVALENCE OF RACIALIZED POLICING .............................................