Are You Black?: Negotiating Racial Identity on Twitter

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Ethnicity and Race in Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

On Monday, June 15, 2015, Rachel Dolezal resigned from her post as president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP amid allegations that she had been lying about her race. Dolezal, her white parents claimed, had been “presenting herself as a black person when she is not.” This essay explores Black Twitter’s response to Dolezal’s “outing” as a white woman with particular emphasis on the #askrachel hashtag, to which users posted a series of questions intended to discern Dolezal’s “true” racial identity. While the hashtag has been alternately praised for its wit and critiqued for its cruelty, this essay suggests that both critiques underestimate the hashtag’s significance. This essay argues that the hashtag provided a site for the articulation, contestation, and negotiation of blackness, capturing larger cultural anxieties surrounding racial identity in a “post-racial” United States.

Authors

• Leslie Stevens, U of Richmond

• Nicole Maurantonio, U of Richmond