scholarly journals Black Lives Matter! Nigerian Lives Matter!: Language and Why Black Performance Matters

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Adelakun
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black Performance ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Original Production

This essay explores performance as a language by looking at its appropriation by other cultures, and the associated history of the crafted phrases that are borrowed along. I start by noting that to create awareness of the massacres that have recently occurred in some parts of Nigeria, commentators, both in and out of the country, and activist-cum-protesters created the term “Nigerian Lives Matter.” They appropriated from “Black Lives Matter,” the American-originated advocacy movement that campaigns against violence and brutality against black people. I show that these forms of lexical interchange are possible because of non-Americans’ familiarity with America’s racial history, and black performance liberation expressivity, which they have been acculturated into as a result of their long exposure to American culture. Beyond phrases however, I argue that black performance itself is a language that has a global resonance among minorities. To illustrate this further, I do a close reading of This is Nigeria, a recent music video released by Nigerian lawyer turned artist, Folarin Falana (Falz), alongside a version of the original production, This is America, also recently released by Donald Glover (Childish Gambino). Both songs continue in the older tradition of African and African American transatlantic political relations through music, the shared understanding of the similarities of anti-black oppression, and the formation of aesthetics that mediate the advocacy of black liberation. The songs are also a pointer to how black advocacy might continue to unfold in contemporary era.

Black Lives Matter and the Struggle for Freedom

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Brian P. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black President ◽  
Black Movement ◽  
New Phase

In late April 2016, at a town hall-style event in London, President Obama complained about the rising movement against the state-sanctioned murder of black people often referred to as Black Lives Matter. Activists, he admonished, should "stop yelling" and instead push for incremental change through the official "process."… The spectacle of the first black president scolding black activists in the context of a rising rate of police murder (as of this writing, the police have killed 630 individuals, at least 155 of them black, nationwide in 2016) speaks volumes about the state of black politics today.… For those trying to understand the emergence of a new black movement—or, perhaps more accurately, a new phase of a longer, older movement—on the watch of the first black president, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's new book, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is an essential starting point.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Psychology and Black Liberation in Richard Wright’s Black Power (1954)

2018 ◽  
pp. 198-210
Author(s):  
Dorothy Stringer
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Freudian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Psychic Life ◽  
Travel Writings ◽  
Black Resistance ◽  
History Of

In his travel writings on the Gold Coast/Ghana, Richard Wright drew on two psychological theories—Freudian psychoanalysis and the implicit psychology of African American literary tradition—to describe the relationships among colonialism, state power, racial identity and psychic life. Dorothy Stringer’s essay notes that while Wright’s rationalism and belief in modern progress often prompted him to question, and even condemn, the local cultures and political systems he encountered, his emphasis on actual and historical trauma (above all the traumas of the slave trade) also allowed him to understand daily life, quotidian relationships and minor economic transactions as political in nature, as continuous with a broad history of black resistance, and as tools for projecting a different future for black people.

Prison Power

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site

Prison Power centers imprisonment in the history of black liberation as a rhetorical, theoretical, physical, and media resource as activists developed movement tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. In highlighting imprisonment as a site for both political and personal transformation, Prison Power underscores how imprisonment shaped movement leaders by influencing their political analysis and organizational strategies. The book suggests that prison became the critical space for the transformation from civil rights to Black Power, especially as southern civil rights activists faced setbacks in achieving equality. In centering the prison as a locus of political inquiry, Black Power activists produced autobiographical writings, essays, and letters about and from prison beginning with the early sit-in movement. Prison Power introduces the critical optic of the “Black Power vernacular” to describe how Black Power activists deployed rhetorical forms in their writings that invented new forms of black identification and encouraged support for black liberation from prison. In using Black Power vernacular forms, imprisoned activists improved their visibility while simultaneously documenting the racist abuses of the judicial system. This new vernacular emerged to force various publics to acknowledge and end the massive brutality perpetrated against black people in prison and in the streets in the name of law and order thereby helping to shore up support for Black Power organizations and initiatives.

Scared Sheetless

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Newton ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Ku Klux Klan ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
White People ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The U.S

The ideology of white supremacy is alive and well in the U.S. This paper argues that those attempting to understand how white supremacy works should delve into recent justifications of anti-black violence rather than simply waiting to spot the white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan. Doing so requires scholars to disabuse themselves of taking for granted the descriptions of what may be characterized as a U.S. Christian-White imaginary and to observe the dynamic, discursive shifts that Jean-Franc̜ois Bayart calls “operational acts of identification.” Drawing on incidents from antebellum slavery to the Black Lives Matter era and beyond, it is argued that white people have long been able to justify anti-black violence by appealing to a biblicist “Negrophobia,” wherein black people are rendered as frightening, even demonic creatures that must be stopped for the good of God’s kingdom. This paper presents a critical history of violence in America that is representative of a devastatingly effective strategy that continues to fortify the functional primacy of whiteness despite popular rejections of racism.

Black Politics but Not Black People: Rethinking the Social and “Racial” History of Early Minstrelsy

2013 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Jones
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Black People ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Race

Although American blackface minstrelsy in its early period (1829–1843) esteemed the anti-authoritarian potentiality of black alterity, the form's performers and most influential public (the white working class of the urban northeast) spurned actual black people. In minstrelsy they fashioned “blackness,” a new “race” with which to distinguish themselves from socioeconomic elites as well as African Americans.

scholarly journals State Racism, State Violence, and Vulnerable Solidarity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myisha Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Law

What makes #BlackLivesMatter unique is the implication that it isn’t only some black lives that matter, that is, not only the mostly commonly referenced male lives. Rather, the hashtag suggests that all black lives matter, including queer, trans, disabled, and female. This movement includes all those black lives who have been marginalized within the black liberation tradition, as well as in greater society. The movement highlights the ways in which black people have been traditionally deprived of dignity and human rights. State racism and state violence are sustained together. The law creates a “subrace” out of those whom white society fears and holds in contempt. This leaves not only black Americans, but all citizens vulnerable. A way to fight this form of racism is not only to create a solidarity among the oppressed members of the subrace but to create a solidarity with all members, in “vulnerable solidarity.”

scholarly journals Do Black Lives Matter in Post-Brexit Britain?

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G. Reddie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Liberation Theologian

This article speaks to existential challenges facing Black people, predominantly of Caribbean descent, to live in what continues to be a White dominated and White entitled society. Working against the backdrop of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that originated in the United States, this article analyses the socio-political and cultural frameworks that affirm Whiteness whilst concomitantly, denigrating Blackness. The author, a well-known Black liberation theologian, who is a child of the Windrush Generation, argues that Western Mission Christianity has always exemplified a deep-seated form of anti-Blackness that has helped to shape the agency of Black bodies, essentially marking them as ‘less than’. This theological base has created the frameworks that have dictated the sematic belief that Black bodies do not really matter and if they do, then they are invariably second-class ones when compared to White bodies. In the final part of the article, the author outlines the ways in which Black theology in Britain, drawing on postcolonial theological and biblical optics, has sought to critique the ethnocentrism of White Christianity in Britain in order to assert that ‘Black Lives Do Matter’.

Visualizing Christ Our Redeemer, Man Our Brother

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kymberly N. Pinder
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Black Public Sphere ◽  
History Of

This book explores the visualization of religious imagery in public art for African Americans in Chicago between 1904 and the present. It examines a number of case studies of black churches whose pastors have consciously nurtured a strong visual culture within their congregation. It features examples of religious art associated with some of Chicago's most historically significant black churches and art in their neighborhoods. It considers how the arts interact with each other in the performance of black belief, explains how empathetic realism structures these interactions for a variety of publics, and situates public art within a larger history of mural histories. It also highlights the centrality of the visual in the formation of Black Liberation Theology and its role alongside gospel music and broadcasted sermons in the black public sphere. Finally, the book discusses various representations of black Christ and other black biblical figures, often imaged alongside black historical figures or portraits of everyday black people from the community.

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.

LET'S GO TO FRENZY A Brief History of New Zealand Music TV and Music Video

Perfect Beat ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Bruce Sheridan ◽  
Philip Hayward
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Music Video ◽  
History Of
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