Jonathan Markovitz's Racial Spectacles

In Jonathan Markovitz’s Racial Spectacles: Explorations in Media, Race, and Justice he defines and argues the existence of racial spectacled in our society today. Through the reading and the general understanding of racial spectacle, I define it as the events that take place in massive media that virtually touches every realm of communication and popular culture in society. Interpretations may vary based on the event. The concept of racial spectacle is related to how Michael Omi and Howard Winant define racial project in their article Racial Formation. From my understanding of the reading, a racial project is a task, action, or law that is set in place in order to shorten or widen the racial divide in society. Racial projects are both positive and negative and in

order to be interpreted as positive or negative an understanding of racial spectacled is needed once the images or project is projected out to the mass in society.
An example of a racial project that is discussed in Markovitz’s article is the idea of lynchings.

The racial project in this is, of course, a lynching. The racial spectacles are how lynchings are surfaced throughout the people. A lynching may be televised on television for people to watch. In addition, a lynching may be written in a local town’s newspaper for the people to read. Due to the fact that the lynching is carried out by so many people for this becomes a spectacle. The racial project of a lynching works towards the side of white supremacists because white people use it as a tactic to inflict their power over black people. MAny Klu Klux Klan members that lynched black people use religion as manner of justifying their actions. Former President Barack Obama reminded the nation back in February of 2015 when he was asked about Muslim intervention and the terrors that were used to justify religion. The president had this to say “Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of

Christ.”
An example of a racial project today is the Black Lives Matter movement. This is a racial project it is a platform to speak out against the injustices of police brutality on black people as well as the social inequities that black people face in today’s society. The marches that Black Lives Matter are viewed through racial spectacles through media outlets such as television, newspapers, social media, there are talk show hosts that interview Patrisse Cullors, of the women who coined the term on social media and others. Several others would also argue that the Black Lives Matter movement is a racial project that falls on the negative side of the spectrum. Anti Black Lives Matter would argue that Blue Lives Matter and the Black Lives Matter movement is a disturbing racial group of people that terrorize police officers and cause and disturb the peace in communities. Many argue that is a more problematic violence between blacks on black, but the reason why this argument is false I will save for another day. For the context of this paper, Black Lives Matter is a racial project and the media outlets that showcase and argue for or against the moment is the racial spectacle.