Abstract
Using the deaths of James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard as case studies, the authors analyze these two hate crimes through a content analysis of newspapers to explore white racial framing. They argue that Shepard was portrayed in the media by his whiteness and middle-class status, rather than his homosexuality. In contrast, Byrd was either ignored or demonized as a lower-class criminal. Furthermore, Shepard’s killers came to epitomize the lower class, while Byrd’s killers came to epitomize white supremacy—a lesser form of whiteness. With these transformations, the news media essentially asserted hegemonic whiteness, privileging Shepard’s class and whiteness. The authors conclude by suggesting future research on hate crimes.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Adams, Josh and Vincent Roscigno. “White Supremacists, Oppositional Culture and the World Wide Web.” Social Forces 84, no. 2 (2005): 759–779. doi:10.1353/sof.2006.0001.
Ariès, Phillippe. Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books, 1962.
Austin, Lucinda L. “Framing Diversity: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Public Relations Industry Publications.” Public Relations Review 36, no. 3 (2010): 398–301. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2010.04.008.
Barrett, Jon. “Matthew Shepard Murdered: November 24, 1998.” Advocate. 24 November 1999.
Bertrand, Stephen J. “Matthew Shepard One Year Later.” Advocate. 12 October 1999.
Bérubé, Allan and Florence Bérubé. “Sunset Trailer Park.” In White Trash: Race and Class in America, edited by Annalee Newitz and Matthew Wray, 15–40. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Bravmann, Scott. Queer Fictions of the Past: History, Culture, and Difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Brooke, James. “Men Held in Beating Lived on the Fringes.” New York Times. 16 October 1998b.
Brooke, James. “Gay Man Beaten and Left for Dead: 2 Are Charged.” New York Times. 10 October 1998a.
Brooke, James. “Wyoming City Braces for Gay Murder Trial.” New York Times. 4 April 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/04/us/wyoming-city-braces-for-gay-murder-trial.html.
Castiglia, Christopher. Sex Panics, Sex Publics, Sex Memories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Cerulo, Karen A. Deciphering Violence: The Cognitive Structure of Right and Wrong. New York, NY: Routledge, 1998.
Curtis, Paul. “Matthew Shepard Murdered: November 24, 1998.” Advocate. 24 November 1998.
Daniels, Jessica. White Lies: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Deo, Meera E. et al. “Missing in Action: “Framing” Race on Prime-Time Television.” Social Justice 35, no. 2 (2008): 145–162. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768493.
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Duggan, Paul. “Racist Convicted in Texas Murder.” 24 February 1999. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jasper/guilty022499.htm.
Dunn, Thomas R. “Remembering Matthew Shepard: Violence, Identity, and Queer Counterpublic Memories.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 13, no. 4 (2010): 611–652. doi:10.1353/rap.2010.0212.
Entman, Robert M. and Andrew Rojecki. The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Fahs, Breanne. “Dreaded “Otherness” Heteronormative Patrolling in Women’s Body Hair Rebellions.” Gender & Society 25 (2011): 451–472. doi:10.1177/0891243211414877.
Feagin, Joe R. and Kimberley Ducey. Elite White Men Ruling. Who, What, When, Where, and How. Forthcoming. New York: Routhledge, 2017.
Feagin, Joe R. Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006.
Feagin, Joe R. The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Fernandez, Manny. “Racial Tensions Flare Anew in a Texas Town.” 21 June 2012. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/in-jasper-texas-racial-tensions-flare-again.html. Accessed 29 December 2016.
Fone, Byrne. Homophobia: A History. New York: Picador, 2000.
Gagne, Louise. Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media: An Annual Guide to Publications and Broadcasting Stations Including Newspapers, Magazines, Journals, Radio Stations, TV Stations and Cable Systems. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2000.
Grace, Andrew Beck and Van M. Cagle. Matthew Shepard and Billy Jack Gaither: The Politics of Victimhood. New York, NY: GLAAD Center for the Study of Media & Society, 2003.
Hartigan Jr., John. Racial Situation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1999.
Hoffman, Scott W. “Last Night, I Prayed to Matthew”: Matthew Shepard, Homosexuality, and Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America.” Religion and American Culture 21, no. 1 (2011): 121–164. doi:10.1525/rac.2011.21.1.121.
Hunter, Margaret. “Shake It, Baby, Shake It: Consumption and the New Gender Relation in Hip-Hop.” Sociological Perspectives 54, no. 1 (2011): 15–36. doi:10.1525/sop.2011.54.1.15.
Kevorkian, Jack. “Religion.” Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. 5 December 1998.
King, Joyce. Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas. New York: Pantheon, 2002.
Leavy, Patricia and Kathryn P. Maloney. “American Reporting of School Violence and ‘People Like Us’: A Comparison of Newspaper Coverage of the Columbine and Red Lake School Shootings.” Critical Sociology 35, no. 2 (2009): 273–292. doi:10.1177/0896920508099195.
Levine, Judith. Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002.
Loffreda, Beth. Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Lofland, John, David A. Snow, Leon Anderson, Lyn H. Lofland, Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis. New York: Cengage Learning, 2005.
Louwanda, Evans. Cabin Pressure: African American Pilots, Flight Attendants, and Emotional Labor. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.
Lyman, Rick. “Second Man Convicted in Dragging Death.” New York Times. 21 September 1999.
Mogul, Joey, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock. Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. New York: Beacon Press, 2011.
Moore, Lisa Jean and Matthew Allen Schmidt. “On the Construction of Male Differences: Marketing Variations in Technosemen.” Men and Masculinities 1, no. 4 (1999): 339–359. doi:10.1177/1097184X99001004001.
Newitz, Annalee and Matthew Wray. “Introduction.” In White Trash: Race and Class in America, edited by Matthew Wray and Annalee Newitz, 1–14. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Orr, David. “Homosexuality Issue Could Backfire at Trial.” Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. 10 October 1999.
Ott, Brian L. and Eric Aoki. “The Politics of Negotiating Public Tragedy: Media Framing of the Matthew Shepard Murder.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5, no. 3 (2002): 483–505. doi:10.1353/rap.2002.0060.
Petersen, Jessica. Murder, the Media, and the Politics of Public Feelings: Remembering Matthew Shepard and James Byrd. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.
Reinert, P. and Richard Stewart. “Parents of White Supremacist Plead for Son’s Life, Embrace Victim’s Family.” Houston Chronicle. 1999.
Shanks-Meile, Stephanie L. and Betty A. Dobratz. “‘Sick’ Feminists or Helpless Victims: Images of Women in Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party Literature.” Humanity and Society 15, no. 1 (1991): 72–93.
Shenitz, Bruce. The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Father. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2002.
Shoop, Tiffany J. “From Professionals to Potential First Ladies: How Newspapers Told the Stories of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama.” Sex Roles 63, no. 11 (2010): 807–819. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9858-3.
Silin, Jonathan G. Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1995.
Temple-Raston, Dina. A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder, and a Small Town’s Struggle for Redemption. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2003.
“Two Towns of Jasper.” Filmmakers, Whitney Dow and Marco Williams. PBS. 22 January 2003. http://www.pbs.org/pov/twotownsofjasper/.
Wicke, Thomas and Roxane Cohen Silver. “A Community Responds to Collective Trauma: An Ecological Analysis of James Byrd Murder in Jasper, Texas.” American Journal of Community Psychology 44, no. 3 (2009): 233–248. doi:10.1007/s10464-009-9262-8.
Wingfield, Adia Harvey and Joe R. Feagin. “The Racial Dialectic: President Barack Obama and the White Racial Frame.” Qualitative Sociology 35, no. 2 (2012): 143–162: doi:10.1007/s11133-012-9223-7.
Wingfield, Adia Harvey and Joe R. Feagin. Yes We Can? White Racial Framing and the 2008 Presidential Campaign. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009.
Wray, Matthew. Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Walther, C.S., Embrick, D.G.T. (2017). White Trash and White Supremacy: An Analysis of the James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes. In: Thompson-Miller, R., Ducey, K. (eds) Systemic Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59410-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59410-5_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59409-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59410-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)