Publication Date

2020

Journal or Book Title

Race and Media: Critical Approaches

Abstract

The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has helped to call attention to longstanding racist attitudes and policing practices, using the tools of digital communication. While we often focus on its impact in the U.S., this movement has extended across the Americas in its call to fight anti-Blackness. Within North American Latinx communities, it has specifically provided a rallying point for Afro-Latinx individuals and communities who have long faced discrimination and racism, particularly within media. For instance, the selection of Ilia Calderon in November 2017 to replace María Elena Salinas after 36 years of co-anchoring with Jorge Ramos the national news program, Univision Noticias on the fifth largest network in the U.S., marked a historic change in Latinx media (Univision Communications Inc. Press Release, 2017). Univision’s hiring of Ilia Calderon by was very significant because she became the first Afro-Latina journalist to ever co-anchor a national evening news program on U.S. Spanish-language television, and the first person from Chocó, Colombia to achieve such prominence in North American Latinx media. Chocó is a coastal region in Colombia that is historically and dominantly Black, and an area that the rest of Colombia has generally treated with racist attitudes and stereotypes.

ISBN

9781479881376

Comments

Mari Castañeda, Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Applying Latina/o Critical Communication Theory to Anti-Blackness” in Lori Kido Lopez (editor), Race and Media: Critical Approaches. New York; New York University Press, 2020.

Pages

101-115

License

UMass Amherst Open Access Policy

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