Horrible White People

Horrible White People examines contemporary TV’s preoccupation with White people’s anxieties and fears. Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerway define what they call the Horrible White People cycle as a group of shows that emerged after the Great Recession between 2014 and 2016, mostly starring White actors in 30 minute comedies or satires. ~Ethnic and Racial Studies

Makes an important contribution to television and media studies, which is in the beginning stages of grappling with its own Whiteness. Cannily, Nygaard and Lagerwey focus on series that appear less nakedly racist, even liberal, to show how White supremacy is more common and insidious than most scholarship recognizes. Yet they never forget to attend to the nuances of representation, how race intersects with other indices of identity -- class, gender, etc. -- and how representationally groundbreaking series can simultaneously reinforce norms and obfuscate systemic privilege. This book fills a much-needed gap in media studies and will find a place in my syllabi for the foreseeable future. ~Aymar Jean Christian, author of Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television

A bold, insightful analysis of what Nygaard and Lagerwey identify as a key cycle of sitcoms: ‘horrible White people’ shows. With an insistently anti-racist and feminist lens, they connect this cycle to shifts in the contemporary media industry and U.S. culture in order to show how Whiteness, yet again, reinvents itself. ~Sarah Projansky, author of Spectacular Girls: Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture