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Herman Gray (born date) is american scholar of Black cultural studies whose work focuses on difference and race in media industries. Since 1991, Gray has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he is currently the Chair of the Department of Sociology. Gray’s research has addressed topics such as

Academically, Gray is best known for his work on the “politics of representation,” an area of study in which popular culture is viewed as an institution that produces and (re)inscribes widely held ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. He is the author of three books titled Cultural Moves: Culture, Identity and the Politics of Representation, Watching Race: Television and the Sign of Blackness, and Producing Jazz, the Experience of an Independent Record Company. He is on the editorial board of multiple journals including Cinema, American Quarterly, and the International Journal of Cultural Studies. Gray also contributed to the catalogue for the 1994 Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art.”

Watching Race: Television and the Sign of Blackness (1995, 2004)
First published in 1995, Watching Race focuses on the relationship between Black television programming of the 1980s and the cultural climate of that time period. The book includes chapters on TV programs such as such as Frank’s Place, In Living Color, and Cosby spin-off, A Different World. Gray argues that TV representations of blackness play a central role in creating dominant ideas about American nationhood such as whiteness, morality, and citizenship (Watching Race, introduction, p. xvi). His analysis is situated within the larger cultural context of Reageanism, Gray arguing that conservative control of national identity relied on the negative representation of Black individuals to create resentment and moral panic. However, Gray emphasizes that TV representations can also be a place for Black TV and film creators to challenge dominant ideas over the meaning of blackness (p. xiv).