The limits of representation activism: analyzing Black celebrity politics in LeBron James’ The Shop

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372199995
Author(s):  
Brandon Wallace ◽  
David L Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Basketball Player ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Positive Representation ◽  
Celebrity Politics ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

This discussion centers on a critical textual analysis of 10 episodes of The Shop: Uninterrupted, an HBO television series produced by and starring iconic Black American basketball player LeBron James. The aim is to provide a considered explication of representation activism: the anti-racist strategy keying on collapsing racial hierarchies through accenting positive Black representation, and so advancing greater Black inclusion, within mainstream media (Andrews, 2018; Gilroy, 2000; Godsil and Goodale, 2013). The politics and constructions of Blackness within The Shop exemplify the logical flaws, superficiality, and insipid practical outcomes of representation activism. Though The Shop proclaims to demonstrate Black liberatory representation, this analysis elucidates how The Shop’s centering of the Black celebrity elite as the agents of change falsely universalizes the experiences of everyday Black people; its pursuit of a mythological Black authenticity essentializes and romanticizes Black vernacular and identities; and its mediation through the White racial frame prohibits the articulation of an effective liberatory politics. The discussion concludes by challenging the possibilities of “positive” representation in capitalist media as a credible and sincere tactic of collective Black liberation (Hooks, 1992; Marable, 2015; Spence, 2015; West, 1994); instead, suggesting a grassroots-oriented approach prefigured on targeting the structural roots of racism.

Reifying Contemporary Versions of Liquified Racism: Black Representation in Competitive Swimming

2021 ◽  
pp. 019372352110121
Author(s):  
Anthony C. Peavy ◽  
Emilee T. Shearer
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Black People ◽  
Division I ◽  
Women's College ◽  
Competitive Swimming ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
Critical Content ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

Throughout history, water as a tool for racialized oppression has been in constant evolution. From utilizing water as a passage to transport slaves, to using fire hoses as a form of punishment toward Black people, liquified racism is a concept we coined to represent past and present racial discrimination through the use of water. In this paper, we conducted a critical content analysis of the USA swim team and the swim team pages of the top ten Division I men’s and women’s college swimming programs to uncover how liquified racism is prominent within these contexts. Findings suggest that Blackness is racialized, tokenized, and perpetually silenced on swimming websites. We argue that Black individuals lacking representation in this sport, along with discourse surrounding competitive swimming, ultimately promotes whiteness, racial hierarchies, and an illusion of postracism.

scholarly journals If You're Woke You Dig It

2021 ◽  
pp. 90-95
Author(s):  
Brianna Perry
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
Research Article

"If You're Woke You Dig It" is a research article and elegy for the popular AAVE term, "woke." I attempt to illustrate woke's early uses in the Black Atlantic in connection to its resurgence in the 21st century. I discuss it's usage among non-Black people and the absorption of Black Vernacular Englishes into popular consciousness and its usage by non-Black people. I argue that the "death" of woke is indicative of the lack of possession Black people have over cultural production and the importance of Black Vernacular English as a counter- hegemonic tactic. Black cultural production should be understood as key to global black liberation.

Hoodies on the Floor

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Matthew B. Platt
Keyword(s):  
Police Brutality ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Bill Sponsorship ◽  
History Of

This paper examines how black members of Congress (MCs) have recognized police brutality as an issue on the congressional agenda from 1973 to 2016. Using a dataset of every bill introduced by black members of Congress during the period of study, I show that, in general, police brutality has not been an important component of black MCs’ legislative portfolios. Instead, it is an occasional focus of bill sponsorship in response to discrete, highly salient incidents of brutality and murder. These findings are contextualized through a broader discussion of black representation as a tactic for black liberation and the similarities between the history of anti-lynching legislation and the contemporary fight against police brutality.

scholarly journals The black church as the womb of black liberation theology?: Why the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) is not a genuine black church?

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rothney S. Tshaka
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Critical Theology ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

This article sets forth a controversial thesis which suggests that the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa, although considered a black church, is in fact not a black church in the sense in which a radical black church is traditionally understood. A black church, it is argued, is perceived to be one that is a self-determined church which supports initiatives of ameliorating the depressive situations in which black people find themselves. References are made to black theology as a critical theology which was never accepted in the black church due to the dependency syndrome which was brought about by the white benevolence of the Dutch Reformed Church. This, it is argued, had become innate in the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa which still considers itself as a so-called daughter church of the white Dutch Reformed Church.

Visualizing a Black Future: Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Party

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-311
Author(s):  
Colette Gaiter
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Gun Carrying ◽  
The Us ◽  
Hero Archetype ◽  
Gun Culture ◽  
Black Panther

In the post-Civil Rights late 1960s, the Black Panther Party (BPP) artist Emory Douglas created visual messages mirroring the US Western genre and gun culture of the time. For black people still struggling against severe oppression, Douglas’s work metaphorically armed them to defend against daily injustices. The BPP’s intrepid and carefully constructed images were compelling, but conversely, they motivated lawmakers and law enforcement officers to disrupt the organization aggressively. Decades after mainstream media vilified Douglas’s work, new generations celebrate its prescient activism and bold aesthetics. Using empathetic strategies of reflecting black communities back to themselves, Douglas visualized everyday superheroes. The gun-carrying avenger/cowboy hero archetype prevalent in Westerns did not transcend deeply embedded US racial stereotypes branding black people as inherently dangerous. Douglas helped the Panthers create visual mythology that merged fluidly with the ideas of Afrofuturism, which would develop years later as an expression of imagined liberated black futures.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Welch
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
South African ◽  
Black People ◽  
White People ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Debt Recovery ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

Black plaintiffs in civil suits remain a little known aspect of the legal history of the slave South. African Americans were not only observers of trials, informal participants, defendants, or objects of regulation: trial court records reveal them to be prolific litigators as well. They were parties to civil suits in their own interests and directly active in legal proceedings. They sued other black people, certainly, but they also sued white people. What is more, they often won. This is a phenomenon that has largely been overlooked by historians. But it ought not to be, because it speaks to the heart of the ways we understand the operation of power, of law, and of racial hierarchies in the slave South. The black legal experience in America cannot be reduced to white regulation and black criminality. Examining African Americans’ involvement in private law reveals a different picture. Black people appealed to the courts to protect their interests. They exploited the language of rights and property, thus including themselves within an American narrative of citizenship and privilege in advance of formal emancipation. When black litigants made such claims at law, they expected the courts to validate and execute those claims. Indeed, they sought accountability. Thus, seemingly mundane civil actions like debt recovery suits complicate our notions about the sources of rights and their relationship to civic inclusion.

Black Consciousness as an Expression of Radical Responsibility: Biko an African Bonhoeffer

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 28-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornel du Toit
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Black People ◽  
The Self ◽  
Black Consciousness ◽  
Black Liberation

AbstractThe article reflects on the ongoing relevance of Biko's thought 30 years after his death. It is not so much a comparison between Biko and Bonhoeffer's thinking as it is a focus on one aspect of Bonhoeffer's thinking, namely the insistence on independence and self-responsibility in your own situation, which is a premise of Biko's thinking. As the father of Black Consciousness in South Africa, Biko laid the foundation for black self-understanding and self-responsibility. The value of his thinking lies in a hermeneutics of consciousness, which he established and which is a presupposition of his ideals of self-responsibility and self-emancipation. Biko's hermeneutics of the self is considered with reference to the forces that kept black people captive. Although Black Consciousness is seen as a historically contingent phenomenon, the challenge of black liberation remains. Biko's legacy is vital for the establishment of a hermeneutics of poverty and freedom, which is presented as a condition for African liberation in the 21st century.

Black Spirituals: A Theological Interpretation

1972 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-69
Author(s):  
James H. Cone
Keyword(s):  
Black Power ◽  
Black People ◽  
New Age ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Popular Opinion ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Freedom Songs

“Contrary to popular opinion, the spirituals are not evidence that black people reconciled themselves with human slavery. On the contrary, they are black freedom songs which emphasize black liberation as consistent with divine revelation. For this reason it is most appropriate for black people to sing them in this 'new' age of Black Power. And if some people still regard the spirituals as inconsistent with Black Power and Black Theology, that is because they have been misguided and the songs misinterpreted. There is little evidence that black slaves accepted their servitude because they believed God willed their slavery. The opposite is the case. The spirituals speak of God's liberation of black people, his will to set right the oppression of black slaves despite the overwhelming power of white masters. … And if 'de God dat lived in Moses' time is jus de same today,' then that God will vindicate the suffering of the righteous black and punish the unrighteous whites for their wrong doings.”

Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Black Art ◽  
And Gender

Through its analysis of film, drama, fiction, visual culture, poetry, and other cultural -artifacts, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights offers a fresh examination of how the historical paradox by which unprecedented civil rights gains coexist with novel impediments to collectivist black liberation projects. At the beginning of the 1970s, the ethos animating the juridical achievements of the civil rights movement began to wane, and the rise of neoliberalism, a powerful conservative backlash, the co-optation of “race-blind” rhetoric, and the pathologization and criminalization of poverty helped to retrench black inequality in the post-civil rights era. This book uncovers the intricate ways that black cultural production kept imagining how black people could achieve their dreams for freedom, despite abject social and political conditions. While black writers, artists, historians, and critics have taken renewed interest in the historical roots of black un-freedom, Black Cultural Production insists that the 1970s anchors the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates that animate contemporary debates in African American studies. Black cultural production and producers help us think about how black people might achieve freedom by centralizing the roles black art and artists have had in expanding notions of freedom, democracy, equity, and gender equality. Black cultural production continues to engage in social critique and transformation and remains an important site for the (re)making of black politics.

scholarly journals Black Religious Studies, Misogynoir, and the Matter of Breonna Taylor’s Death

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 621
Author(s):  
Ahmad Greene-Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Black People ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Black Religion ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Central Claim

This article reflects on the matter of state-sanctioned death in Black religious studies, with the murder of Breonna Taylor as its central focus. It examines how scholars of Black religion engage with the issues of state-sanctioned murder, antiblackness, and misogynoir, and it endeavors to underscore ways for Black male* scholars of Black religion to respond to the religious experiences and deaths of Black women and Black people of all gendered experiences. This article’s central claim is that if Black male* scholars of Black religion continue to underscore how Black religion has been a catalyst for Black liberation without attention to how cisheteropatriarchy functions as antiblackness, then we ultimately will be unable to speak the name of Breonna Taylor in earnest.

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