Hunting for "Racists" Tape Fetishism and the Intertextual Enactment and Reproduction of the Dominant Understanding of Racism in US Society
The dominant racial ideology in US society narrowly conceptualizes racism as individual bigotry. This conception is enacted and legitimated through a type of language game that recontextualizes prior words to invoke evidence of an individual's racist credentials. This paper examines the way CNN journalists engage in this language game as they recontextualize the 911 call made by George Zimmerman before he killed Trayvon Martin in 2012. The analysis illustrates how the recontextualization works to enact and reproduce the dominant ideological perspective on racism by establishing intertextual authority and engaging a wider audience in the "hunting for 'racists'" language game.