“White at heart”: making race in Marine Corps recruitment advertising

Focusing on interviews with advertising professionals, this article identifies racialized logics at work in the cultural production of United States Marine Corps recruitment advertisements and reads them as crucial contributors to the late-stage war on terror as a racial project. Characterized by the emergence of post-racial discourses, an ongoing commitment to warfare, and an embrace of diversity and inclusion within the U.S. military as hallmarks of American exceptionalism, the late-stage war on terror was represented in recruiting ads as a war fought by a racially representative Marine Corps dedicated to benevolence. Identifying primary themes through which race was constructed and contested in Corps recruitment advertising between 2012 and 2016, this article makes visible the processes through which racial ideologies manifest in cultural production. Though seemingly guided by a commitment to inclusion, the production of recruitment materials consolidated Whiteness while making limited space for the representation of a racially diverse military.