The Black Profile: Race and Media Technocultures in the United States

Abstract

This document examines the experience of being Black online in the United States. Updating Adorno and Horkheimer’s theory of the culture industry, my project “The Black Profile: Race and Media Technocultures in the United States,” examines the ways platform capitalism and digital culture are racialized and decentralized. Although scholars like Ellis Cashmore have shown the racial logics subtending the culture industry, Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of the American culture industry does not adequately address the role of media as a tool for hegemonic messaging. Additionally, such analysis has not been applied to media products following the digital revolution. How has the rise in social media affected the circulation, othering and abuse of Black cultural products? “The Black Profile,” historicizes the ways media selectively exclude, reintroduce, appropriate and oversaturate audiences with particular images and perspectives on race, similar to Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of the United States during the 1940’s and the “bleak sameness” within every cultural product. Focusing on digital blackface, social dance and the development of online vernacular languages, I explore how digital media has de- and recontextualized Black images, dances and language and to create forms of cultural exchange ultimately devoid of meaning. While my dissertation makes a great critique of the negative outcomes of cultural appropriation, I also explore the ways in which online profiles are giving Black creators agency to participate, protest and even create new narratives of cultural blackness. In addition, I explore how open channels with audience affect the way Black creators actively express their Black identity. American media, from minstrelsy to the internet has capitalized on and made a commodity of Black perspectives, subjectivity and culture. More than that, Black agency, Black subjectivity and Black creativity have shaped how social media is used at large and potentially what platforms are used to consume Black culture.