Race, Sexuality, and Television Julia Himberg, editor, Spectator 31:2 (Fall 2011): 5-11. 5 Race, Sexuality, and Television Editor’s Introduction Julia Himberg favor of Prop 8 and this bias was broadly attributed to cultural and religious beliefs that frmly opposed homosexuality and the right of lesbians and gays to marry. Critics such as Te Nation’s Richard Kim, Te Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Te San Francisco Chronicle’s Matthai Kuruvila quickly published critiques of this claim, re-framing and re-contextualizing Prop 8’s passage. 4 Just twelve days after the vote, Kuruvila wrote: “demographers say the focus on one race not only disregards the complexity of African American identity but also overlooks the most powerful predictors afecting views on same-sex marriage: religion, age and ideology, such as party afliation.” 5 Critics in the popular media who ofered more complex analyses of the factors contributing to Prop 8’s passage often gestured toward theories of race and sexuality developed by scholars including Jasbir Puar, Barbara Smith, Roderick Ferguson, and Patricia Hill Collins among others. Popular interventions into the assertion that Prop 8 passed because of black voters, for example, echoed Puar’s concept of “homonationalism,” which describes the ways that the “good” U.S. citizen depends on the consolidation of a normative homosexuality based on categories of race and class in particular. 6 Despite these nuanced critiques, national TV news commentators from ultra-conservative Bill O’Reilly (Fox) to ultra-liberal Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) used Prop 8 as a platform for discussing On November 4, 2008, the same day that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, California voters passed Proposition 8, a statewide ballot initiative that limited marriage to the union of a man and woman only. 1 While the Presidential election inspired jubilation over the nation’s frst black President – the event was seen by many as proof that racial diferences had been overcome – Prop 8’s passage instead provoked public outcry for being “a dangerous and discriminatory step backward,” especially in a state with such a progressive reputation. 2 Te coincidence of these two events revealed triumph on the racial front concurrent with the powerful renunciation of lesbian and gay rights. Black comedienne Wanda Sykes, who publicly “came out” during the Prop 8 campaign, articulated this paradox in her 2009 HBO stand-up special: “Tat night was crazy. Black President – yay! Oh Prop 8 passed, shit, now I’m a second-class citizen.” 3 In this socio-political environment, discussions about racial and sexual identities have dominated U.S. media, especially television. Media coverage about the fght for the marriage rights of lesbians and gays has underscored, exaggerated, and reinforced social and religious conficts between sexual and racial identities. For example, when Prop 8 passed by a slim margin, media reports attributed its adoption to black voters; exit polling indicated that seven out of ten blacks voted in