#CommunicationSoWhite: Race and Power in the Academy and Beyond (original) (raw)

2020, Communication, Culture and Critique

The debates and critiques of #CommunicationSoWhite have arisen as responses to troubling academic and political contexts, which are complexly intertwined. We are in the midst of widespread expansion and ascendance of white supremacy globally, as disturbingly evident in the trajectories, rhetoric, and actions of Donald Trump in the United States, the United Kingdom's Boris Johnson, and the Golden Dawn in Greece, alongside the growing power of right-wing and authoritarian regimes more generally: China under Xi, India under Modi, Brazil under Bolsonaro, and others. At this moment of such cultural and political crises, a critical mass of scholars, recognizing the centrality of media and communication in facilitating these shifts, is increasingly speaking back, intervening in, and reshaping our field. #Communica-tionSoWhite is an intervention that calls into focus the complicity of the academy in perpetuating existing racial and intersecting hierarchies. By drawing attention to race, inequality, and exclusion, we highlight the importance of engaging questions on power, identity, and politics in communication and media studies. Tensions and, in some cases, conflicts arising from our field's persistent inequities are urgent signs that our professional organizations, institutions, and the entire discipline must undertake transformative changes. One key moment: the experiences of multiple scholars of color who faced racism and white supremacist threats in May 2018 at the International Communication