Throughout United States history, “white” has been defined in contrast to “black.” That is, if something was said to be white, then it was necessarily not-black; conversely, if something was said to be black, then it was also notwhite. Indeed, “black” and “white” have come to represent the ultimate in mutually exclusive categories, an essential binary opposition. Despite the increasing raced complexity of US society, the terms retain a special social meaning (see Baldwin 1961; Hacker 1992): while “black,” describes the lower-most depths of the racial order, “white” describes the uppermost reaches; while “black,” signifies primitive, inferior and soiled, “white” signifies civilized, superior and pure.

This black-white divide, as we saw in chapter 3, is inscribed in the KTTV text. That is, “blacks” were presented as the event insiders (i.e., those who participated in the events and/or were in a position to affect them one way or another), while “whites” were depicted as event outsiders (i.e., those who watched the events, reported on them, and from time to time, fell victim to them). In short, “whites” were innocent bystanders to events that were “black” in nature. This observation, of course, fits neatly with another: in the white imagination, “black” is often associated with crime (Estrich 1989; Omi and Winant 1994).