Blackademic Clapbacks: How Black Women Scholars Navigate Right-Wing Media Attacks in the Age of Social Media

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

This year’s conference theme, “Hallowed Ground: Sites of African American Memories,” interrogates “what it meant to be Black during a specific historical period.” Our proposed roundtable panel will address how black women academics’ positions and lives must be a part of the exploratory process of defining both black identity and memory in the New Millennium. French historian Pierre Nora has argued that history and memory will always be contested because of the oppositional relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. The participants of “Blackademic Clapbacks” aim to dismantle the ideology of the black woman scholar as a singular object-subject within right-wing ideological framings and political assaults.

In the 21st century, black women academics have come under fire by right-wing internet-based “journalist” organizations because of politically charged comments they posted on social media platforms such as Twitter and the content of their academic publications that deal with contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter. Consequently, these black scholars, who represent a range of academic ranks and teach on campuses that are distinct from each other, have each experienced the dizzying effects of being targeted by internet-based conservative blogs and news sites. ASALH allows these four historians and activists to explain, defend, and examine how new millennium conservative tactics used to silence black women scholars, represent a longer tradition of discrediting and victimizing Black Progressives. By “clapping back” in a space that is ours, we speak into existence that we are “not tragically colored” and are powerful agents of our own images and lives.

Sub Unit

• 101st Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Chair

• Imani Cheers, George Washington University

Discussants

• Deirdre Benia Cooper Owens, Queens College, CUNY

• Stacey Patton, Morgan State University

• Noliwe Rooks, Cornel University

• Duchess Harris, Macalester College

• ASALH Audience, .