Mass media are everywhere. Race is elusive. Resistance is unclear.

For scholars who seek to study the interplay of mass media and race, these three assertions affirm the complexity of the enterprise. To begin with, mass media are so ubiquitous today that it is virtually impossible to distinguish the boundary of one medium from that of another. Defining meaningful boundaries of specific mass media texts is even more perplexing. Should we, then, just throw up our hands and theorize media influence on the basis of our paradigmatic allegiances? As relatively powerful? As relatively powerless? How might we empirically explode the compacted process by which real people respond to media?

Which brings us to a consideration of race. Race has played, and continues to play, a particularly significant role in the history of United States economics, politics and culture. Indeed, one of the first things we notice about people today when meet them is their race (Omi and Winant 1986, 1994). The perennial subtext, race invariably slips into our discourses, quietly organizing our commonsense understandings of the world and our place in it (Prager 1982). But the meanings associated with race (and various racial groups) continue to shift about us – in the media and in our interactions with others. This uncertainty over meaning makes it rather difficult to specify, in any given instance, the degree to which race (as opposed to other factors) shapes our thoughts and actions. Similarly, it complicates efforts to understand how and to what degree race intervenes when people respond to media.