Race as Technology, through media

In “Becoming Media Subjects”, Rhodes writes “The Times found the Panthers irresistibly primitive and exotic, and the daring of Eldridge Cleaver and the charisma of Huey Newton gradually seduced writers for the paper. What we see are the nuances of racial ideology at work.”(89) This is a good example of one of the things we're looking for in this class: race being used as a technology. As Rhodes suggests, a large part of what made the Black Panthers so successful was their creation of an image for themselves that was able to draw attention - negative as well as positive, but attention nonetheless. They employed the existing stereotypes of the black male, rendered them theatrically, and used this to their benefit.

In this vein, media theorist Marshall McLuhan writes in his essay 'American Advertising', with respect to the repetition and blatancy of radio commercials, “...irritation has great 'attention-getting power' and... those irritated in this respect are reliable customers.” While not “irritation” per se, the Panthers's calculated generation of spectacle resulted in a flurry of media coverage that could be said to have similar success, through saturation of a potent image. In order to make their local message a global message, the Panthers required the help of news media to extend their reach. However, informative or impassioned messages often get lost in amidst noise, and are less valuable in this regard than constructing highly noticeable messages, when mass media is concerned. The Black Panthers took a route that many American advertisers would later take: transform the product or message into an (easily communicable) icon, and work to proliferate that as a figurehead.

Here, the ability to use race as a technology to achieve the end of popular understanding was only because of the technology of mass media itself. However, despite this positive aspect, how have the same media worked at the cross purpose? And would similar tactics work today, given the changes that have taken place in how mass media is consumed and created?