Writing
Through books and articles, Ralina L. Joseph explores the complex intersections of race, media, culture, and everyday life.
Books that shape the conversation
Transcending Blackness examines how multiracial Americans are often portrayed as either caught between racial identities or symbols of a postracial future. Ralina L. Joseph challenges both narratives, arguing that they remain rooted in the racist idea that blackness is something to overcome.
Postracial Resistance explores how African American women celebrities, cultural producers, and audiences employ postracial discourse—the notion that race and race-based discrimination are over and no longer affect people’s everyday lives—to refute postracialism itself.
Generation Mixed Goes to School radically listens to and weaves together stories of mixed-race children and youth, teachers, and caregivers with perspectives and research from social and developmental psychology, Critical Mixed Race Studies, and education.
Racial Exhaustion challenges us to recognize and address the fatigue that racial discourse brings while offering practical strategies to foster more equitable and productive conversations. This book guides readers in transforming everyday interactions into opportunities for anti-racist change.
Articles
Essays and articles exploring race and the moments where conversations take shape.
All Intersectionality is Not the Same
Quarterly Journal of Speech
This article examines two performative events: Kamala Harris’s election-night victory speech and Stacey Abrams’s non-concession concession speech, to understand why Harris’s brand of intersectionality, and not Abrams’s, resonated more with the Biden campaign.
I Address Race Because Race Addresses Me
Review of Communication
Women of color need spaces of respite and community care where we can speak our stories and be heard. In this essay, we demonstrate one such space: digital storytelling shared between women of color.
Black Cultural Studies is Intersectionality
International Journal of Cultural Studies
This article argues that Black cultural studies must be understood as an intersectional intervention of praxis.