A Digital Postracial Parity? Black Women’s Everyday Resistance and Rethinking Online Media Culture

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines and critiques digital media culture and its embedded postracial logics through the resistance strategies of Black women online. Specifically, I am interested in everyday resistance strategies as “seemingly innocuous” communication, which is understood from theorizations of “hidden transcripts” that black publics utilize to counteract dominance. In order to explore “everyday resistance” I employed focus groups with 20 Black women and present patterns of resistance strategies online, such as visual signifiers and posting news articles. Secondly, I interrogate how these resistance strategies “talk back” to and circumvent the underpinnings of digital media culture through the postracial logics of individuality and networked influence. Ultimately, Black women’s interconnected identities reveal the flaws of digital culture as postracial by demonstrating their resistance strategies that must work around any assumption of a “postracial parity.”