Set in Detroit in 1972, Abbott highlights how racist practices in journalism and academia help to exculpate police violence and support white supremacy. Specifically, I look to Abbott (2018), a five-issue series by Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä that has become increasingly relevant in the two years since its initial publication. By engaging with the critical facets of image and text, I demonstrate how the rhetoric of whitestream culture undermines activism through its investment in the status quo. Yet how does one condemn journalistic practices without falling into the uncritical rhetoric of “fake news” peddled by the likes of Donald Trump? Similarly, how does one criticize academic discourse without emboldening the anti-intellectualism of conservative movements? While I cannot fully answer those questions within the scope of this essay, those questions do inform my turn to the collaborative and hybrid form of comics-a form that is well-situated to interrogate the assumptions that undergird many writing professions. I employ the term “whitestream” intentionally here as Daniel Morley Johnson notes, “scholars have used the term whitestream when referring to the North American mainstream in order to underscore the reality that the dominant-dominating culture (the self-appointed ‘mainstream’) remains inextricably linked to whiteness.” In this essay, I reflect on how writing practices in academia and journalism help to construct and maintain whitestream culture.

Despite the importance of a free press to informed political discourse, it often appears that whitestream journalists are more invested in the “if it bleeds, it leads” strategy than in substantive coverage of civil rights uprisings. Critiques of news stories that painted protestors as violent emerged early and often and, as many were quick to note, this coverage often evaporated when protests continued without the violent presence of militarized police. As I compose this, concerns remain about media coverage of protests in response to the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and others. From Abbott #1 (January 2018).Īs a literary and media studies scholar-and a writer more broadly-it is hard to look at our contemporary moment and not reflect on the role that writing plays in maintaining white supremacy. The recent headlines from the Detroit Daily feature Elena’s article on the murder of a fourteen-year-old Black boy.

Abbott by saladin ahmed