Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age

By Raven Simone Maragh-Lloyd

Black Networked Resistance​ explores the creative range of Black digital users and their responses to varying forms of oppression, utilizing cultural, communicative, political, and technological threads both on and offline. Raven Maragh-Lloyd demonstrates how Black users strategically rearticulate their responses to oppression in ways that highlight Black publics’ historically rich traditions and reveal the shifting nature of both dominance and resistance, particularly in the digital age. Through case studies and interviews, Maragh-Lloyd reveals the malleable ways resistance can take shape and the ways Black users artfully demonstrate such modifications of resistance through strategies of survival, reprieve, and community online. Each chapter grounds itself in a resistance strategy, such as Black humor, care, or archiving, to show the ways that Black publics reshape strategies of resistance over time and across media platforms. Linking singular digital resistance movements while arguing for Black publics as strategic content creators who connect resistance strategies from our past to suit our present needs, Black Networked Resistance encourages readers to create and cultivate lasting communities necessary for social and political change by imagining a future of joy, community, and agency through their digital media practices.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Jan 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9780520390041

Raven Simone Maragh-Lloyd

Raven Maragh-Lloyd is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has appeared in Communication, Culture & Critique; Television & New Media; and Journal of Communication Inquiry; and in edited collections such as Studying Race and Media and The Handbook of Diasporas, Media, and Culture.

Book preview

Black Networked Resistance

Black Networked Resistance

STRATEGIC REARTICULATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Raven Maragh-Lloyd

UC Logo

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2024 by Raven Maragh-Lloyd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Maragh-Lloyd, Raven, 1990- author.

Title: Black networked resistance : strategic rearticulations in the digital age / Raven Maragh-Lloyd.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023028621 (print) | LCCN 2023028622 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520390027 (cloth) | ISBN 9780520390034 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520390041 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: African Americans and mass media—United States. | Technology and Black people—United States. | Internet and activism—United States. | Social movements—Technological innovations. | African Americans—Social aspects—United States. | African Americans—Political activity—United States. | Social media—Political aspects—United States.

Classification: LCC P94.5.A372 U5595 2024 (print) | LCC P94.5.A372 (ebook) | DDC 302.23089/96073—dc23/eng/20230816

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028621

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028622

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Whole World Is Going to See You, Boo: Karens, Black Humor, and Innocence

2. Do It for the Culture: Black Digital Historians Reimagining Access

3. Care as Resistance: Black Women Online

4. Cancel Culture and the Limits of Networked Resistance

5. The Black Delegation: Black Evergreen Networks and Futures of Resistance

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Figures

TABLE

1. Comparative Analysis of Resistance Strategies

FIGURES

1. Early Karen memes

2. #PermitPatty meme challenging respectability

3. #PermitPatty meme challenging the adultification of Black children

4. Aesthetic of Karen in meme culture

5. Black humor making Karen incongruous with victimization

6. Inversion of Karen as seen through the song N–ggas in Paris

7. Patricia McCloskey pointing a gun at Black Lives Matter protestors

8. Reproduction of a Dorothea Lange photo on Instagram

9. Image of Duke Ellington in the bath on Instagram

10. The profile @notyourmommashistory posts about Juneteenth

11. Centering Black folks on Juneteenth

12. New York Times ad on Instagram

13. Online call to cancel Cardi B

14. Example of the convergence of #SurvivingCardiB and existing online resistance movements

15. Example of #TheBlackDelegation releasing actor Jussie Smollett

16. #TheBlackDelegation as it intersects with politics

17. The profile @theblackdelegationnews on TikTok responds to the site’s algorithms

Acknowledgments

I wrote and conceptualized Black Networked Resistance in conversation and community with so many brilliant people to whom I extend my deepest thanks. My editor at the University of California Press, Michelle Lipinski, believed in some of the earliest iterations of this project and has shepherded it to completion. Thank you for your patience, insight, and transparency. Thanks to everyone from UC Press, from the design team to the marketing team. I am especially grateful to Jan Spauschus for her thoughtful copy edits. Thanks to the Humanities Digital Workshop and Dr. Joe Lowenstein, who, alongside my chair at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Shanti Parikh, organized a generative book workshop on my behalf. To Dr. Charlton McIlwain for your generous feedback and conversation, this book is so much better thanks to you. Thanks to Dr. Rebecca Wanzo for her insight and brilliance throughout the many phases of writing, from providing feedback on the book’s title to reading and providing revisions to multiple chapters. Thanks to the book workshop’s discussants: Drs. Jonathan Fenderson, Gabriel Peoples, and Ian Bogost, who read parts of the work and gave feedback that certainly made the work stronger and sharper. To my colleagues in African and African American Studies and Film and Media Studies who attended events related to this project, listened to parts I was working out, and offered support in so many ways, thank you. A special acknowledgment to my department mentors, Drs. Michelle Purdy, Rafia Zafar, and Ian Bogost. My writing group and work buddies, Drs. Karma Frierson, Sam Shearer, Robin McDowell, and Kenly Brown have also given me much intellectual community and support, and I am thankful for them. I have been lucky to be a part of a unique group, the Algorithm and Culture Research Group, and I wouldn’t be the researcher I am today without you all. Thank you for the words, the GIFs, and the scholarly community.

Thank you to Meghan Drury, my developmental editor, who provided organizational revisions, and to the Ideas on Fire team for their indexing services. To Sam Modder, the brilliant artist who designed the cover, thank you for being in community with me and for combining our works for this project. This work was meant to highlight and take seriously the everyday efforts of Black folks online who change the circumstances around them. To that end, I am so thankful to my interlocutors from the focus groups for trusting and allowing me to record their stories. To the Black networks online, many of which I belong to, I hope this work does your creativity justice. The words in this book are enormously better because of forever friends who provided the space and encouragement for me to think through ideas; I am forever grateful to you, Kate Quinton, Lace Cline, and Dr. Melissa Click. Thanks to the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office at my previous institution, Gonzaga University, for providing funding for parts of the project. My thanks also to the American Association of University Women for its generous funding support for the focus groups and the collegiality of its members in the Seattle and St. Louis branches. I am grateful for the services of Chloe Brittain, my transcriptionist, and my ultra-smart research assistant at Gonzaga, Rhian Thomas.

This book is a broader reflection of a host of people, colleagues and mentors, who have invested time and energy in me as a scholar. Thank you to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Kembrew McLeod, for shepherding very early versions of this project forward. To Drs. Gigi Durham and Yong Volz, I got and stayed in this career because of your inspirations and am so grateful to each of you. To Dr. Racquel Gates for sharing so much about the book publishing process and more, thank you. Dr. Ralina Joseph, I am eternally thankful to you for sharing your professional wisdom and paving the way for junior scholars like myself to thrive and find our place. To Dr. Al Martin, thank you for sharing book proposal examples early on and for continually supporting me and my work. To Dr. Lori Lopez, your generous support of me as a scholar by extending your expertise in writing and networking over the years has given me the space to produce this book, and I am grateful to you. Thank you also to Drs. Sarah Florini, André Brock, Catherine Knight Steele, Meredith Clark, Kristen Warner, Safiya Noble, and so many more who have inspired me deeply with their own work and been so generous to share parts of the process of publishing and more.

To my family, my most constant well of support: My parents and parents in love have patiently listened and supported me through every iteration of this project, and I am forever thankful. My husband, Chris, has seen this project from a kernel of an idea all the way to its publication. Thank you for listening, thinking with me, giving feedback, and celebrating all the little (and big!) wins. To my girls, I love you. Thank you for cheering your mommy on and inspiring me more than you know. Your joy runs throughout the pages of this book, and I hope others can enjoy it too.

Portions of chapter 1 were previously published in 2021 in the American Journal of Play, 13(1–2). Parts of chapter 3 appeared in 2020 in Communication, Culture & Critique, 13(1). They have been reprinted with permission from The Strong and Oxford Academic, respectively.

Introduction

This is a book that comes out of almost ten years of research and writing to help make everyday Black digital practices legible. After the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, I began to see my own networks—mostly on Black Twitter—mobilize, but not necessarily in the ways traditionally represented. I saw folks saving the digital whereabouts of Black activists to keep the receipts and restore dignity to those activists should anything happen to them. My own friends and I would direct message (DM) each other funny memes with made-up scenarios of being stopped by the police where we were the ones holding the power. Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age is about everyday Black resistance strategies online. It’s about the histories of these strategies as various Black publics have strategically crafted, melded, and updated them to suit their needs across time periods and media platforms. Each chapter is grounded in or questions a resistance strategy—be it Black humor, archiving, care, cancelling, or imagination—so as to piece together the interconnected threads of resistance and the craftiness of Black media practitioners.

In 2020, I saw Black networks mobilize again, and I was struck by the diversity of resistance strategies. When twenty-six-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville, Kentucky, police officers in her apartment on March 13, 2020, thousands of online Black users organized to disseminate information about Taylor’s life, the conditions in which she was killed, and the ways that average citizens could hold the police officers accountable. Long before outlets like the New York Times deemed the killing a result of a botched raid, Twitter users were investigating and sharing by the minute and by the millions the suspicious circumstances around Taylor’s death and demanding accountability from the Louisville police department and indeed the nation. Some online posts simply read Breonna Taylor multiple times in succession, ensuring her name would remain at the top of algorithmically curated news. Other posts provided details about no-knock warrants and demanded that lawmakers take action to prevent police from entering people’s homes unannounced, an effort that was eventually successful. Such online endeavors swelled into a summer of unforgettable protests in which Black folks led the charge in demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others killed in state-sanctioned procedures.

Around the same time and around a seemingly separate series of events, Black folks online were also crafting a narrative of Karens. These posts largely included hilarious memes highlighting and exaggerating the visual aesthetics (the short hairdo, the scowling face) of white women calling the police on Black individuals for simply existing. Using humor replete with visual cues and linguistic dexterity, Black users reframed the ways that people understood the systemic and historical privilege of whiteness, and white women in particular: You could die, and some soccer mom named Karen will still ask you to RSVP to Kevin’s birthday party. Of course, the relationship between trauma and humor, or tragicomedy, as Glenda Carpio writes in Laughing Fit to Kill, is not new for Black publics. Yet the widely creative range of Black online users’ responses to varying forms of oppression brings into focus the cultural, communicative, political, and technological threads uniting resistance online. I argue that these Black users’ responses to two seemingly unrelated, yet entirely connected, items—Breonna Taylor’s murder and white women calling the police—demonstrate the strategic malleability of resistance online. Each chapter in this book centers on a particular resistance strategy, demonstrating the ways that Black publics reshape—or rearticulate—strategies of resistance over time and across media platforms. In focusing on these strategies, I not only link singular digital resistance movements, but I argue for Black publics as strategic content creators who shift, shape, and connect resistance strategies from our past to suit our present needs. I ultimately argue toward Black networked resistance as a historically enriched, connective, and iterative digital practice that intervenes in- and outside of online culture.

CONTRIBUTIONS

I make three central contributions to the fields of critical digital media studies and Black studies. First, I emphasize and connect the historically rich traditions of Black resistance strategies to contemporary iterations of digital culture, which Black networks not only inhabit but, in many ways, sustain. I examine these users’ methods of communication online, analyzing profile curation, hashtags, case studies, and interview data. The book draws a through-line from historical methods of resistance, such as archival memoirs, to digital strategies like visual narratives of Juneteenth on Instagram. Such connections demonstrate the meticulous ways that Black folks have reshaped resistance strategies through specific media tools.

Several works have called for this kind of historical mapping of digital culture or performed such analyses in other contexts. In Digital Black Feminism, for example, Catherine Knight Steele (2021) uses the history of the beauty shop as a metaphor for Black feminist technoculture. She argues that Black women have long created sites of entrepreneurship within a system that does not equally disperse loans, provide capital, offer formal business training, or provide education in marketing and development (pp. 47–48). Black women lifestyle bloggers and influencers, Steele continues, curate a loyal clientele online using similar tools of engagement as Black beauty shops do, such as building rapport using shared cultural experiences, language, and influences. I engage with Steele’s work throughout the book as I think about resistance as affirming and generative for Black users.

Anna Everett’s (2009) important analysis in Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace links Black historical media engagement to the digital through case studies of the Black press, the 1997 Million Woman March, and other developments. By tracing African and African Americans’ engagement with technologies throughout the centuries, Everett pushes back against the long-worn myth of Black diasporic people existing outside of technology. In Black Software, Charlton McIlwain (2020) explores the history of digital racial justice activism by chronicling the long relationship that Black folks have had to computing technology. McIlwain’s work is particularly useful in thinking about the limitations and possibilities of the digital regarding racial justice activism, a theme I explore through the case study of cancel culture in chapter 4. These and other works are foundational to my efforts to trace historical Black resistance and media strategies and to argue for a model of digital culture and resistance that is connective, iterative, and indeed reliant on the processes of Black strategic rearticulations.

My second contribution makes a larger argument about resistance itself. Using the theoretical anchor of rearticulation, I examine how Black online publics not only respond to oppression, but how they strategically reshape specific resistance strategies to suit their current needs and channels of communication. I demonstrate that resistance, which is strategic and multidimensional, is ultimately an agentic, creative, and even joyful process for Black folks, both on- and offline. I make this argument about the rearticulations of resistance primarily by framing resistance in terms of Black publics’ media use. Although resistance could certainly be understood outside of the confines of media, this focus allows me to connect digital networks to previous media, such as the Black press. In my focus on black resistance networks, I draw from Sarah Florini’s (2019) excellent analysis of Black digital networks. Florini explores major networks online—from podcasts to Black Twitter—and argues that long before public exigencies propel these folks into the mainstream, Black networks strategically sustain themselves by articulat[ing] their experiences, cultivat[ing] community and solidarity, [and] mobiliz[ing] political resistance (p. 2). Building on this transplatform approach, Black Networked Resistance focuses not only on what digital Black publics are resisting, but also how digitally reconfigured strategies reveal a set of broader, connective characteristics of resistance.

In #Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (2020), Sarah Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brooke Welles employ a multimodal networks approach to provide an understanding of the interconnections of raced networks online. The authors use network theory to pinpoint central nodes, such as