Module 2: Construction of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

Week range:
WEEK  6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Introduction to Module 2

This 6-week module on the construction of gender and race (and their intersections) builds upon the media analysis skills you have developed through Module 1. Module 1 introduced you to a number of concepts. Module 2 will help you apply them.  

UNIT 1 (1 week) begins with an examination of residual discourse. What are some examples of residual discourse? How much of this past discourse remains in current U.S. cultural discourse (the dominant discourse) of today? Where does residual discourse exist today–in mainstream media or on the fringes? By looking at specific examples, you will become more aware of how dominant discourse is always pulled between residual narratives of the past and the continually challenging emergent discourse (not new, but always pushing) of those less powerful voices who seek to be part of, and influence, the larger story.

UNIT 2 (2 weeks) focuses on representations of sex/gender. This Handbook will help you recognize, explore and analyze dominant representations of men/women and masculinity/femininity in contrast to residual discourses (the media from 100 or 50 years ago). You will look for examples of the dominant representations of people in U.S. media; you will find stereotypical tropes that media continue to rely on, and you will discuss (and learn) why this is. You will also examine  the repercussions of the current portrayals of people and masculinity/femininity. And finally, you will look for and discuss many of the ways today’s dominant U.S. media discourse is challenged by new representations.

UNITS 3 (2 weeks) focuses on race and ethnicity. How are people of the broad range of ethnic cultures in the U.S. and worldwide represented in media today? What is the context for these representations (in other words, what is the residual discourse that continues to influence current dominant portrayals of race and ethnicity?). You will examine residual discourse against the current (dominant) media landscape, and look for examples of emergent discourse that challenge dominant discourse. You will be invited to make connections as to how media messaging and power are linked.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER will ask you to create a comprehensive analysis of current media texts. The focus of Module 2 has been on sex/gender and race/ethnicity, however, the critical media skills in this Handbook can also be applied to the media representation of class, dis/ability, and other non-dominant social norms.

A Few Words on Analyzing Gender and Race Together

For the purposes of clarity, Module 2 begins with a discussion on sex/gender, and follows with a discussion on race/ethnicity. However, it’s also important to understand these ideas in tandem. This is why the concept of intersectionality is introduced at the beginning of this Module.  

Intersectionality and why it is important

Anti-discrimination law, like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, makes it illegal to discriminate against employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Although no person is ever just one of these things, U.S. courts are still prone to oversimplify and treat each of the categories as discrete.^[1] 

So, when a Black woman brought a suit for workplace discrimination, she was told that she couldn’t claim racial discrimination because Black men were hired (making this claim moot) and that she couldn’t claim sex discrimination because white women were hired (again making her claim moot). Because the law failed to see the way race and sex intersected, it failed to protect Black women who face forms of discrimination that emanate from the intersection of the two.

Lawyer and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) introduced the word intersectionality to name how the discrimination faced by Black women on account of the intersection of race and sex was distinct from discrimination solely from race or sex.^[2] Crenshaw realized the need to name the ways sex and race intersect after studying court decisions on employment nondiscrimination law. For an explanation of the concept, you can watch Crenshaw’s TED Talk, “The Urgency of Intersectionality.” Intersectionality is a theory of identity and of oppression that names the ways the various elements of a person’s identity and social location intersect.

Media representation and intersectionality

Intersectionality allows those who study not only law, but also media representation, to identify how “major axes of social divisions in a given society at a given time, for example, race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and age operate not as discrete and mutually exclusive entities, but build on each other and work together.”^[3] 

Although this Handbook has separate units on the media representation of sex and the media representation of race, like our earlier discussion, it is impossible to analyze one without analyzing the other. Women’s & Gender Studies professor Vivian M. May (2015) explained that intersectionality “approaches lived identities as interlaced and systems of oppression as enmeshed and mutually reinforcing.”^[4] So to study media representations of gender and race, you have to study how gender and race intersect.

For example, media representations of womanhood often presume white womanhood. As Chandra Talpade Mohanty, writing about depictions of womanhood in novels and newspapers from long ago, noted:

Ideologies of womanhood have as much to do with class and race as they have to do with sex. Thus, during the period of American slavery, constructions of white womanhood as chaste, domesticated, and morally pure had everything to do with corresponding constructions of black slave women as promiscuous, available plantation workers. It is the intersections of the various systemic networks of class, race, (hetero)sexuality, and nation, then, that positions us as “women.”^[5]

Even before the term intersectionality had been developed, people who analyzed the way power operated in society noted the way oppressions intersected. In 1974, the Combahee River Collective Statement from a group of Black feminists outlined how “the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” The Statement explained:

We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women's lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.^[6]

Particularly with media representations, an intersectional approach is necessary. For example, if you were to study the sexualization of women in media, you would need to recognize the fact that race intersects with sex and gender. Here is an example:

When news media cover missing persons, it’s important to note both who is represented and how they are represented.

Screenshot, CNN coverage of Gabby Petito, who went missing in 2021, causing a media frenzy. Her boyfriend killed her and later took his own life.

When young, attractive, white women disappear, media coverage typically explodes. For example, when 22-year-old Gabby Petito was reported missing by her family in 2021 after her fiancé Brian Laundrie returned from a road trip and she did not, ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC news, the New York Post, Fox News, Buzzfeed, Washington Post and USA Today were among the media that featured the story numerous times that week. Commercial media were not the only drivers of the story. The story became “a national sensation, in large part because of the awareness generated by people who are watching it unfold on social media.”^[7] The disappearance and murder of Petito was tragic, and deserved attention. However, so does the disappearance of any person.

Unfortunately, not all disappearances warrant this scope of media coverage: “Certain people who disappear – typically White, conventionally attractive, innocent, female, young, and rich – are overrepresented in media coverage, whereas missing persons from racial minority backgrounds tend to be underrepresented,” according to a study by criminologists.^[8] PBS journalist Gwen Ifill named this the “missing white woman syndrome.”^[9] The fact that there is media coverage of one disappearance alone is not enough to prove media cover disappearances differently. But comparing the coverage of Petito’s disappearance to the coverage of others does illustrate the way sex and race affect media representation.

An analysis of media coverage of disappearances in Wyoming, where Petito disappeared, is illuminating. In 2021, the Wyoming Survey & Analysis Center (2021) conducted a comprehensive analysis of media coverage of disappearances in Wyoming over the last decade. Its findings made clear there were differences in who received media coverage and how they were represented. Media reported on 51% of white homicide cases, but only 18% of cases involving missing indigenous women. When media did cover missing and murdered indigenous women, “the newspaper articles . . . were more likely to contain violent language, portray the victim in a negative light, and provide less information as compared to articles about White homicide victims,” the study reported.^[10] 

The lack of media attention is why groups like MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) have formed. Although news media coverage of missing women of color continues to be deficient, fictional stories of missing and murdered indigenous women have finally started to receive attention in television shows like ABC’s Alaska Daily and Prime Video’s Three Pines.

A screenshot of the homepage of MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) https://mmiwusa.org/

What is true of Wyoming media is true in other states across the country. Researchers studied media coverage of 247 disappearances of teens in California and New York. The result: media covered 34% of White teens’ cases, but only 7% of Black teens’ and 14% of Latinx teens’ cases.^[11] The researchers concluded, “Missing White women and children are more likely to garner media attention than missing minority women.”^[12]

Again, particularly with media representations, an intersectional approach is necessary. The purpose is not to point out a person’s personal biases. In fact, because it studies broad systems, like law and representations, the approach shifts “preoccupations with intentional prejudice and toward perspectives grounded in analysis of systemic dynamics and institutional power.”^[15] Expectations attached to gender are inflected by race, sex, class, sexual orientation, citizenship, and all the other elements that make up a person’s identity. So, to study sex and gender, you need to study race, and to study race, you need to study sex and gender.

Module 2 Breakdown

This Module consists of five units.

Unit 1 (Week 6): Explaining Residual Discourse

• Explain how representations of gender and race have changed over time
• Explain how a “residual” ideological media text at the beginning of this unit can be used as a convenient touchstone throughout Module 2

Unit 2 (Week 7): Construction of Sex/Gender: Masculinity

• Explain how masculinity (as opposed to femininity) is constructed in the media
• Explain possible connections between media violent behavior and real violent behavior
• Explain residual, dominant, and emerging discourses of masculinity

Unit 2 (Week 8): Construction of Sex/Gender: Femininity

• Explain how femininity (as opposed to masculinity) is constructed in the media
• Explain residual, dominant, and emerging discourses of femininity
• Explain the historical context of masculine/feminine gender construction: captivity narratives (the first stories Americans told themselves) and the male gaze

Unit 3 (Week 9) Construction of Race and Ethnicity

• Explain the historical context of media construction: captivity narratives and justifications for slavery as an acceptable economic and social practice

Unit 3 (Week 10) Construction of Race and Ethnicity

• Explain how race and ethnicity is constructed in the media

Putting it together: CREATIVE PROJECT

Compare The Searchers to a current-day Captivity Narrative and apply a gender and race analysis that demonstrates an understanding of residual, dominant, and emergent discourses. Present this analysis as a creative project.