About

Ralina L. Joseph is a Professor of Communication and an adjunct Professor of American Ethnic Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego, and her B.A. in American Civilization from Brown University. Dr. Joseph is the founding and acting director of the University of Washington’s Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity. Her scholarly work focuses on race and communication, with a particular emphasis on Blackness, multiracial identities, and media culture. She is an accomplished author, having published several books including 'Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial,' which critiques anti-Black racism in mixed-race African American representations leading up to the 2008 election. Her second book, 'Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media Culture, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity,' won the 2019 International Communication Association’s Outstanding Book of the Year Award and explores how African American women navigate postracial racism. Her other works include 'Generation Mixed Goes to School,' which centers the perspectives of multiracial children in education, and an upcoming book titled 'Moving through Racial Exhaustion: Critically Communicating Race to Interrupt Privilege,' scheduled for 2025. Her research has been published in numerous academic journals and edited volumes, contributing significantly to the fields of race, media, and communication.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Public relations
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Engineering
• Pedagogy
• Art
• Law
• Gender studies
• Medical education
• Internet privacy
• Medicine
• Literature
• Psychology

Selected publications

• “Radical Listening for Racial Exhaustion”

  International Journal of Listening · 2025-07-03 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• “How Do You Shift That?” Dialoguing Social Justice, Activism, and Black Joy in Media Studies

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-09-19

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract In this chapter we lovingly center Blackness as the space from which Black media studies scholars study, create, teach, and affect media. Through the practice of radical listening, the chapter spotlights dialogues between foundational, cross-genre, and genre-defying scholars in Black media and communication: Herman Gray and Jane Rhodes; John L. Jackson, Jr., and E. Patrick Johnson; Andre Brock and Kishonna Gray; and Robin R. Means Coleman and Beretta E. Smith-Shomade. Our conversations—on defining activism, committing to social justice, engaging methods for finessing boundaries, and unsettling anti-Blackness in media and academia—begin and end with Rhodes’ guiding question, “How do you shift that?” This chapter celebrates such a shift, of Black media studies scholars embodying joyful paths for justice and knowledge. We conclude with reimagining Black media studies as refusing to define, in the words of the late filmmaker Marlon Riggs’s last documentary, what “Black is … [and] Black ain’t.”

  PublisherDOI

• “What makes you think I’m African American?”: identity performance, code switching and the Strong Black Woman on <i>Love Is Blind</i>

  Critical Studies in Media Communication · 2024-08-21

  articleSenior author

  Reality TV show, Love is Blind, has captured the hearts, minds, and attention of audiences nationwide, igniting fervent and passionate discussions about romance. This show boasts that they provide a space for people to fall in love "not for their looks, their race, their background, or their income," but through emotional connection. Despite this promise, all these factors, especially, for Black women contestants, race, dictate success in the show. This Article explores concepts surrounding identity performance, code switching, and the Strong Black Woman (SBW) schema, which demands that Black women exhibit independence, resilience, and strength. We explore the many ways black women continue to navigate the show's cultural and linguistic contexts to negotiate their identities and interpersonal interactions. Through a comparison of a select few of the cast members' interactions with different suitors, this article strives to make sense of the nuanced strategies employed by black women on screen to adapt their behaviors and communication styles with potential male partners. This paper emphasized the fine line between how effective identity performance and code switching can lead to favorable outcomes on the show, while also highlighting the physical and mental burdens associated with these demands.

  PublisherDOI

• Estudos culturais Negros são interseccionais

  2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• “You’re the Whitest Black Person I Know”: Speaking Back to Microaggressions Through the Poetics of Interruption

  Women s Studies in Communication · 2022-02-10 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  Anti-Black and anti-woman animus is packed into brief and subtle communication exchanges including seemingly mundane moments like jokes and compliments. The lasting negative effects of microaggressions call for what we deem poetics of interruption, a Black feminist intervention that dynamically responds to interstices of oppression. Through the creative retelling of a conversation that leads up to and follows the microaggression “You’re the whitest Black person I know,” we demonstrate how the poetics of interruption holds interlocutors accountable to structural and interpersonal power imbalances through purposeful dialogue. Practicing a poetics of interruption refigures language with an anti-sexist, anti-racist aim to refute the passive-aggressive postracial language of microaggressions.

  PublisherDOI

• “I address race because race addresses me”: women of color show receipts through digital storytelling

  Figshare · 2021-01-01

  datasetOpen access

  In Black colloquial culture, the practice of documenting and calling out injustices is known as “showing receipts.” The ongoing labor of collecting, communicating, and showing receipts is one way to highlight the hypocrisies embedded in racist structures and hold those in power accountable. As the receipts pile up in the form of viral videos of sexism, racism, and violence against Black bodies, accountability cannot be easily ignored. Showing receipts as a form of resistance, however, is both exhausting and never-ending. Thus, women of color need spaces of respite and community care where we can speak our stories and be heard. In this essay, we demonstrate one such space: digital storytelling shared between women of color. While reciprocal sharing provides women of color storytellers a respite from the labor of proving our worth and producing receipts, in recording our truths and sharing them online, we also create digital receipts as testimony to our experiences. Although there is no guarantee that those in power will listen, by producing, archiving, and disseminating these receipts, storytellers maintain hope that our words will make an impact.

  PublisherDOI

• Generation Mixed Goes to School: Radically Listening to Multiracial Kids (Multicultural Education Series)

  2021-03-19

  book1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• All intersectionality is not the same: Why Kamala Harris is our vice president and not Stacey Abrams

  Quarterly Journal of Speech · 2021-10-02 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  In his campaign for president, Joseph R. Biden emerged as a frontrunner after pledging to select a vice president who has a different identity than his own. As the most loyal demographic for the Democratic Party, choosing a Black woman as a nominee for vice president challenges previous understandings of presidentiality. Pressure to select a Black woman vice president also exposes how intersectionality can differ in political decision-making, as Kamala Harris's version of intersectionality stands out to Biden compared to others. This article examines two performative events: Kamala Harris’s election-night victory speech and Stacey Abrams’s non-concession concession speech, to understand why Harris’s brand of intersectionality, and not Abrams’s, resonated more with the Biden campaign. Representing two different forms of intersectionality, both speeches centralize race and gender, shifting how we understand the 2020 presidential election alongside a long tradition of racial exclusion. As we reflect on the implications of the previous presidency, remarks from both Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris remind us of the extent to which Black women have fought against a white supremacist system and how versions of intersectionality are not the same.

  PublisherDOI

• “I address race because race addresses me”: women of color show receipts through digital storytelling

  Review of Communication · 2021 · 11 citations

  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science

  In Black colloquial culture, the practice of documenting and calling out injustices is known as “showing receipts.” The ongoing labor of collecting, communicating, and showing receipts is one way to highlight the hypocrisies embedded in racist structures and hold those in power accountable. As the receipts pile up in the form of viral videos of sexism, racism, and violence against Black bodies, accountability cannot be easily ignored. Showing receipts as a form of resistance, however, is both exhausting and never-ending. Thus, women of color need spaces of respite and community care where we can speak our stories and be heard. In this essay, we demonstrate one such space: digital storytelling shared between women of color. While reciprocal sharing provides women of color storytellers a respite from the labor of proving our worth and producing receipts, in recording our truths and sharing them online, we also create digital receipts as testimony to our experiences. Although there is no guarantee that those in power will listen, by producing, archiving, and disseminating these receipts, storytellers maintain hope that our words will make an impact.

  PublisherDOI

• Prying the Doors Open: Women of Color Mentoring in the Field of Communication

  Communication Culture and Critique · 2021 · 6 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Public relations
  • Medical education

  Abstract For the past few decades mentoring has moved from being a buzzword in a few select programs into a major institutional goal. From large corporations to small universities, leaders recognize the importance of those with more experience guiding junior employees and students. Colleges and universities have taken the lead nationwide in mentoring efforts, with many having exemplary peer mentoring programs for undergraduates, and some institutions deploying mentoring to support faculty and students. The discipline of Communication has also begun to place more emphasis on mentoring. Yet, some populations, specifically women of color and other minoritized people, do not always have access to networks or programs and are left on their own to navigate institutions and processes. That few women of color faculty inhabit academic spaces in Communication departments, as in other departments across campuses, creates additional challenges for students and faculty, who often lack mentors and yet carry the additional burden of mentoring. This introduction to the special forum in CCC brings sets up the critical insights on mentoring our senior and emerging contributors offer.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Naheed Gina Aaftaab

  5 shared

• Helen Rosenboom

  University of Washington

  4 shared

• T. Locke

  Seattle University

  4 shared

• Anjuli Joshi Brekke

  St. Francis Xavier University

  3 shared

• Meshell Sturgis

  2 shared

• Marcus Johnson

  1 shared

• Jane Rhodes

  1 shared

• Meshell Sturgis

  University of Washington

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• 2019 winner of the International Communication Association’s…