Racechange Is the New Black: Racial Accessorizing and Racial Tourism in High Fashion as Constraints on Rhetorical Agency

This essay argues that racial performance in high fashion functions as a disciplinary visual rhetoric which severely constrains objections to the myth of postraciality and enables claims that race is no longer a meaningful category of analysis. Racial performances limit the rhetorical agency of marginalized groups in two ways: They reduce racial identity to a mere accessory and they frame racial interaction as a short‐lived tourist encounter. Treating race as an accessory equates Black and White bodies, creating an illusion of equality, while fashion tourism reduces race to spectacle at the expense of the voices of marginalized groups. Racechange in high fashion thus functions as part of a postracial “common sense” that limits the rhetorical agency of persons of color.