Drawing on the theories of identity formation in the writings of C. L. R. James (1978, 1993) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1967), Cameron McCarthy argues that contemporary film and television play a critical role in the production, coordination and channelling of suburban resentment and retributive morality onto their central target: the depressed inner city. McCarthy also looks at the discursive impact of resentment on the sense of capacity and agency among black school youth at a comprehensive high school (“Liberty High”) in Los Angeles. For this segment of the essay, he draws on ethnographic data collected at this Los Angeles high school some 6 months before the videotaped images of LAPD's police beating of Rodney King reverberated around the world. These developments deeply inform race relations in late-century American society. McCarthy ultimately contends that these race relations are conducted in the field of simulation as before a putative public court of appeal (Baudrillard, 1983).