Race to Post: White Hegemonic Capitalism and Black Empowerment in 21St Century Black Popular Culture and Literature Regina N
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2013 Race to Post: White Hegemonic Capitalism and Black Empowerment in 21st Century Black Popular Culture and Literature Regina N. Bradley Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES RACE TO POST: WHITE HEGEMONIC CAPITALISM AND BLACK EMPOWERMENT IN 21ST CENTURY BLACK POPULAR CULTURE AND LITERATURE By REGINA N. BRADLEY A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2013 Regina N. Bradley defended this dissertation on May 14, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were: David Ikard Professor Directing Dissertation Maxine Jones University Representative Maxine Montgomery Committee Member Leigh Edwards Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii Dedicated to Eugene and Sara Barnett. Paw Paw and Nana Boo, “here me.” iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin my acknowledgements by shouting out my dissertation director David Ikard. Dr. Ikard, I had no idea what I was in for when I knocked on your office door back in 2008. What an incredible journey! You helped me step my game up and transition from a graduate student to a scholar. Thank you for investing your time, your red ink, and your support into my project. The gangstallect is real! Many thanks to Maxine Montgomery, Maxine Jones, and Leigh Edwards for their time and insight at various stages of this dissertation. You are much appreciated. A special thank you also goes to Mr. Tim’m West for his kindness and generous feedback in the development stages of this dissertation. The completion of this dissertation would not be possible without the support of the Legion of Doom (those graduate students and junior scholars on the hunt). Many thanks to Matthew Morrison, Matthew Davis, Pete Kunze, Scott Poulson-Bryant, Roopika Risam, and Liana Silva for the extra push to get through a thought, a sentence, a chapter, and ultimately a dissertation. I never would have made it without my blood and chosen family. To my Paw Paw, the late Eugene Barnett Jr., and grandmother, Sara Barnett, this dissertation is dedicated to you. In the spirit of how I used to greet you as a little girl, “here me.” This dissertation is also dedicated to my daddy, the late Reverend Reginald K. Barnett. To Mommy, Aunt Dee Dee, your hugs, prayers, and support GOT me here. Shouts to my blood brothers Isaiah Washington and Jeremy Ingram and my chosen brothers Clifford Marcus, Warren Luke, Andre Mitchell, John Williams, Brian Dawson, Ellis Dumas, and Jonathon Lawrence. To my sister circle, words do no justice in describing the immense love and gratitude I have for you all. To Ebony Washington, Erica Bridley, Treva Lindsey, Tanisha Ford, Jessica Johnson, Bettina Love, Toni Arnold, Elizabeth iv Mitchell, Courtney Holman, Brittany Manson, Gabrielle Merideth, Sheena Burrus, and Erika Lawrence what else can I say but “I love you, sis. Thank you.” Lastly and certainly not least, to my rock and love of my life Roy Bradley, baby, we did it! Thank you for loving me through the revisions, the tears, and the triumphs. I’m here because you are my guardian angel. On to the next one! v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... vi 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 1 2. HIP HOP’S MESSY ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS ......................................................... 27 3. BLACK SATIRE, HIP HOP SENSIBILITY, AND RACIALIZED COMMON SENSE ... 51 4. BLACK CULTURAL TRAUMA, SLAVERY, AND HIP HOP SENSIBILITY IN THE KNOWN WORLD ................................................................................................................ 77 5. MESSY DIGITAL ACTIVISM AND THE DEATH OF TRAYVON MARTIN ............... 95 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 115 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ....................................................................................................... 120 vi ABSTRACT Race to Post examines the complex and varied negotiations of race and class in contemporary black popular culture from 1996 to the present. Examining a variety of texts, including rap music, novels, satirical performances, and new social media, I argue that these mediums reflect the obstacles to black empowerment and self-definition in this contemporary, ‘post-racial’ moment of American history. Specifically, I use rap music and African American satire to trouble black identity’s political and economic capital in authenticating discourses of blackness. It begins from the recognition that as these media clear space for marginalized blacks to be seen and heard they also make black pain and “realness” commodities to be bartered and sold. I examine this contradiction through a Gramscian analysis of class and organic intellectualism. I argue that black popular culture exhibits the tensions blacks in postracial America currently face: how to be socially respected, responsible to their race, and “get paid.” In the context of the current post-civil rights moment (post 9/11, post-Hurricane Katrina, and post-Obama), popular culture reflects the contradictory and ironic politics and economics of the black popular imagination. vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION The 2008 presidential election of Barack Obama marked for many a seismic change in race relations in the United States. Indeed, Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign slogan encouraged this exuberance, embodying the possibility, if not the inevitability, of a post-racial society. While the notion that we live in a post-racial society has been popular with whites for over a century, Obama’s presidency endowed it with new life and ideological vitality. Even many black folks—who have longed viewed such claims of post-racialism as ridiculous—began to buy into the idea, questioning whether there was perhaps something to this post-racialism after all if a black man could be elected to the highest office in the land As the country lays witness to Obama’s second presidential term, it has become undeniably clear from the ways in which blacks continue to experience stigmas and inhumane treatment that a far more complex set of racial variables were at play with a significant portion of whites embracing his candidacy. As existing racial inequalities, combined with the racial furor that has marked his candidacy, demonstrate – from the Henry Louis Gates’s controversy to the Trayvon Martin case – we continue to live in a radically raced society. This is not to say that Obama’s election to the presidency is insignificant where race relations are concerned. But rather, given the fact that black America continues to lose rather than gain ground on socioeconomic equality, his election reflects an adjustment to white hegemony; a shift in how white power is meted out rather than an unraveling of that power. David Roediger asserts that “if whiteness continues to confer substantial material advantages, and if large groups of Black and Latino people exist in grinding poverty, then the wholesale abandonment of older categories of racial categorization and identification seems unlikely” (11). Insofar as black self-determination is concerned, these new 1 and tricky racial politics demand that we rethink white hegemony and consider the extent to which variables such as gender, class, and social status inform the receptivity and experience of blackness. My project, Race to Post, explores these complex and varied negotiations of race and class in contemporary black popular culture from 1996 to the present. Focusing on a variety of texts, including rap music, novels, satirical performances, and new social media, I argue that these mediums reflect the obstacles to black empowerment in the contemporary moment. While Black America is, and has always been, extremely diverse, from sexuality to religious beliefs, racial oppression has historically dictated a level of solidarity around issues of race and racism. Blacks born in what Mark Anthony Neal calls the “post-soul” era – the late 1960s through 1970s – bucked this trend of solidarity partly out of rebellion for a failed civil rights campaign and partly to clear a space for their unique expression of blackness. Betram Ashe describes this post- soul phenomenon as “troubling blackness:”1 “they [artists and texts] worry blackness, they stir it up, touch it, feel it out, and hold it up for examination in ways that depart significantly from previous – and necessary – preoccupations with struggling for political freedom, or with an attempt to establish and sustain a coherent black identity” (614). I argue that this phenomenon of troubling blackness is as liberating as it is confining in a post-racial political environment that denies extant black suffering. It is also important to note that contemporary black suffering is as gendered as it is political. For example, T. Sharpley-Whiting troubles considerations of black suffering by inquiring into the alignment between rap and patriarchy that