Research Catalog

Title

Blasian invasion : racial mixing in the celebrity industrial complex / Myra S. Washington.

Author

Washington, Myra S.

Publication

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Series Statement

Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series

Uniform Title

Race, rhetoric, and media series.

Subject

• Multiracial people
• Multiracial people > Ethnic identity
• Celebrities
• African American celebrities
• Black people > Relations with Asians
• African Americans > Relations with Asian Americans
• Popular culture > United States > 21st century
• United States > Race relations

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 129-159) and index.

Contents

Theorizing Blasians -- Birth of a Blasian -- Modeling race : refashioning Blasianness -- "Because I'm Blasian" : Tiger Woods, scandal, and protecting the Blasian brand -- Sporting the Blasian body -- Conclusion : en-Blasianing the future.

Call Number

Sc E 17-1614

ISBN

• 9781496814227
• 1496814223

LCCN

2017025393

OCLC

983697872

Author

Washington, Myra S., author.

Title

Blasian invasion : racial mixing in the celebrity industrial complex / Myra S. Washington.

Publisher

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2017]

Description

xi, 167 pages ; 24 cm

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series

Race, rhetoric, and media series.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 129-159) and index.

Summary

"Myra S. Washington probes the social construction of race through the mixed-race identity of Blasians, people of Black and Asian ancestry. She looks at the construction of the identifier Blasian and how this term went from being undefined to forming a significant role in popular media. Today Blasian has emerged as not just an identity Black/Asian mixed-race people can claim, but also a popular brand within the industry and a signifier in the culture at large. Washington tracks the transformation of Blasian from being an unmentioned category to a recognized status applied to other Blasian figures in media. Blasians have been neglected as a meaningful category of people in research, despite an extensive history of Black and Asian interactions within the United States and abroad. Washington explains that even though Americans have mixed in every way possible, racial mixing is framed in certain ways, which almost always seem to involve Whiteness. Unsurprisingly, media discourses about Blasians mostly conform to usual scripts already created, reproduced, and familiar to audiences about monoracial Blacks and Asians. In the first book on this subject, Washington regards Blasians as belonging to more than one community, given their multiple histories and experiences. Moving beyond dominant rhetoric, she does not harp on defining or categorizing mixed race, but instead recognizes the multiplicities of Blasians and the process by which they obtain meaning. Washington uses celebrities, including Kimora Lee, Dwayne Johnson, Hines Ward, and Tiger Woods, to highlight how they challenge and destabilize current racial debate, create spaces for themselves, and change the narratives that frame multiracial people. Finally, Washington asserts Blasians as not only evidence for the fluidity of identities, but also for the limitations of reductive racial binaries."-- Provided by publisher.

Local Subject

Black author.

Research Call Number

Sc E 17-1614