Representative diversity in media can co-opt rather than defeat racism

Evidence

Television has participated in the co-optation of multiculturalism by portraying limited and acceptable versions of diversity, thus demonstrating again and again that an increase in diverse representations of Arab and Muslim identities does not in itself demonstrate a victory over racism. Gray has written that the evolving strategy of television networks since the 1980s—from containing the many difficult questions of race to superficial support of liberal pluralism— has had a nasty side effect: the elimination, repression, or incorporation of difference as part of the co-optation mechanism. Similarly, Hall has written that the spaces “won” for difference are “very carefully policed and regulated… . [W] hat replaces invisibility is a kind of carefully regulated, segregated visibility.” — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1416

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the familiar ‘diversity as containment’ argument found in critical media studies, and connects to Shannon’s earlier silence/corpse-politics framing of regulated visibility. — connects to: Media diversity and pluralism enable prejudice-immune critical opinion formation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 39; Diversity scholarship naturalises plurality and hides how racial distinctions are made — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 28
• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that more representation can be part of the problem rather than the solution is a genuinely counterintuitive mechanism worth sitting with.