Whiteness and the Postracial Imaginary in Disney’sZootopia

Drawing from strategic whiteness and postracism as critical frames, and utilizing critical rhetorical analysis, this manuscript argues that the 2016 Disney animated hit film Zootopia is a postracial narrative developed by the White imagination to embody an ideal diversity that sustains whiteness. This project seeks to expose how, within the film Zootopia, whiteness toils as a strategic rhetoric to maintain its dominance, benefiting logics of postracism that hinder White liability and any possibilities for White ally-ship. This project offers two identified primary themes. First, the metropolis, Zootopia, is strategically constructed a postracial space of the White imaginary. Second, the film reinscribes racial “Otherness” on Black masculine bodies while centralizing whiteness and romanticizing racism through the common anti-racist White hero trope.