Open AccessIn Defense of #blackAF's Celebration of Mediocrity
Author(s) -
Aharon Joseph
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
new sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2563-3694
pISSN - 2563-3686
DOI - 10.25071/2563-3694.95
Subject(s) - mediocrity principle , ideology , politics , fell , everyday life , aesthetics , sociology , history , media studies , literature , art , gender studies , political science , law , geography , cartography , physics , astrobiology
This article explores how television and film writer-producer Kenya Barris’ Netflix series #blackAF disturbs and seemingly upends Black millennial woke cultural assumptions about the good life. This, I contend - not discounting the valid classist and colourist critiques of the show - is the animus for Black millennial discontent with #blackAF. Specifically, I reveal the hashtags #blackexcellence and #supporteverythingblack to be ideological blankets covering the unfortunate reality of everyday Black life. These hashtags, which do the ideological work of covering over reality, are made unstable and incoherent by #blackAF’s apotheosizing of mediocrity as a grand cultural accomplishment. In one fell swoop #blackAF manages to give the death knell to Cosbyian respectability politics, which have hitherto been operating in the guise of the hashtag #blackexcellence.