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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, few Canadian studies documented representations of racial minority groups in the media (e.g., Indra, 1979, 1981; Karim & Sansom, 1991; Scanlon, 1977; Tator, 1990; Ungerlieder, 1991). Much of this work was activist-based and accessible only through journals and community media with an explicitly progressive mandate, including Currents, a publication of the Urban Alliance of Race Relations based in Toronto, and the various publications of the Committee for Racial Justice based in Vancouver (e.g., Ginzberg, 1986; Khaki & Prasad, 1988; Mouammar, 1986; Tator, 1983, 1984). The federal government had issued its guidelines concerning the representation of minorities in government publications, and a government task force had examined the issue and made recommendations pertaining to all Canadian media (Canada, House of Commons, 1984; Canada, Secretary of State, 1988). Since then, there has been a proliferation of studies examining issues of racial representations in the Canadian media. Minelle Mahtani 's (2001) review of the literature in the area succinctly summarizes the major studies and relevant findings. Yet unlike in the 1990s, contemporary research is not as grounded in community activism nor explicitly linked to advocacy and social movements. Nevertheless, some of the issues that have been charted in contemporary media studies do tackle problems concerning racial minority representations from a political perspective - a perspective that to a certain extent is rooted in the growing concern over the media concentration that currently characterizes the Canadian media landscape and limits the exposure of subjugated and alternative discourses (Hackett, Gruneau, Gutstein, Gibson, & News Watch Canada, 2000; Winter, 1997, 2002).
One could argue that contemporary representations of minority groups have also shifted in keeping with the emergence of "modern" or "new" racism (Entman, 1990; Gilroy, 1991). Thus, contemporary racism has itself evolved into a more sophisticated form that can only be deciphered by referring to the inferential bases of the propositions being advanced. Stuart Hall calls this "inferential racism," which he describes as "those apparently naturalized representations of events and situations relating to race, whether 'factual' or 'fictional,' which have racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions. These enable racist statements to be formulated without ever bringing into awareness the racist predicates on which these statements are...