Is Respectability a Component of Respectability?

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In the book, i make the pithy claim that rachetry and racism are the components of respectability. I don't want to say it's necessary, but its one response couched in survival terms on what we need to do in order not to be subjected to terroristic nature of whiteness. The idea f social media in particular, but anything that is not a microso teams orzoom or emal, is deemed inappropriate behavior because it does not advance the productivity and efficiency aims of american techni culture of labor capitalism. So i mean in its most extreme form, not black respectability.

Paris Marx is joined by André Brock to discuss the history of Black people’s online activity, the internet’s association with whiteness, and what Black Twitter can tell us about the centrality of Black people to digital culture.

André Brock is an associate professor of media studies at Georgia Tech. He writes on Western technoculture, Black technoculture, and digital media. His award-winning book, Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures, theorizes Black everyday lives mediated by networked digital technologies. You can get if from NYU Press, and it’s available through open access. Follow André on Twitter at @DocDre.

🚨 T-shirts are now available!

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald did portraits of the Obamas, while Kara Walker made “A Subtlety” at the Domino Sugar Refinery.
Achille Mbembe is a Cameroonian philosopher and social theorist.
Janelle Monáe, Sun Ra, and John Jennings are notable people engaging with Afrofuturism.
Books mentioned: Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter by Charlton D. McIlwain and Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich.

Support the show