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In this paper, we consider how news stories about one area of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, further propagate notions of a region filled with people characterized as dangerously noncompliant with American ideals of citizenship, prosperity, and security. Using Ethnographic Content Analysis, we conducted a systematic analysis of Valley, state and national mainstream news media stories from 2010-2016 about health or health care in the Rio Grande Valley. Ethnographic research with Valley leaders, residents, and journalists completed the media analysis. We argue that the Rio Grande Valley is framed as both an unruly internal colony as well as a racialized periphery, due to its proximity to Mexico. We detail how these news stories are received and acted upon by seasoned local journalists who use their trade to offer different scripts, rooted in actual lives and experiences of residents. We conclude with alternative versions of the U.S.-Mexico border region from borderlands scholars to reflect on how dominant media representations of places and people can be weathervanes for political discourse that shape state and national action about 'the border.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public discourse narrative positions Detroit's post-bankruptcy revitalization as a rapid process of business and investment descending upon the city. In spite of this narrative, Detroit today remains a city of intense poverty and inequality. Between 2009 and 2013, an estimated 39 percent of Detroit residents were living below the Federal Poverty Line. This figure renders Detroit as statistically the poorest city in the country. In addition to a mythical narrative of rapid-fire investment, popular media representations of Detroit are peppered with racialized references to white business investment. These references position whiteness as 'saving' Detroit and center whiteness in the urban process. This racialized narrative is false and divisive in a city that is upwards of 83 percent African American. In this paper, we map the disparity between the racial politics of Detroit and the anti-black public discourse narrative currently surrounding the city. We demonstrate that the public discourse valorization of a profit-driven urban process results in an anti-black prioritization of whiteness in Detroit's post-bankruptcy redevelopment process. This narrative, if unchecked, will have serious consequences in the city's present and future. As such, we propose a re-centering of the blackness of the city and the racial politics of generations that have shaped current conditions, toward a more equitable recovery process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]