Racing the Matrix: Variations on White Supremacy in Responses to the Film Trilogy

This article analyzes racialized readings of The Matrixtrilogy. Examining popular, academic, and vernacular sources, in print and online, it probes how commentators talk about race in the films and in turn how they use the films to talk about the racial politics of everyday life. It identifies two major interpretations: multiculturalist and White nationalist. It argues that despite obvious differences, together, these renderings of the trilogy must be understood as efforts to reconfigure racialized discourse in the wake of the civil rights movement, reworking white supremacy as they speak to, through, and against naturalized notions of difference at the start of the 21st century.