Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0312214448, Paperback)

The two sections of Channel Surfing, dealing respectively with youth culture and racial politics, may not appear to have much in common with each other at first. But Henry A. Giroux has an underlying class critique that binds them together. Young people are being barraged, he argues, by consumer culture messages that consistently identify them as alienated outcasts. They are also being assaulted by racial messages "targeting black youth as criminals while convincing working-class white youth that blacks and immigrants are responsible for the poverty, despair, and violence that have become a growing part of everyday life in American society." Although the balance between academic jargon and pop culture is somewhat precarious, Giroux's thesis is packed with the consideration of detail that marks useful cultural criticism.