More Than Our Pain

Description

Confronted by a crisis in black American leadership, state-sanctioned violence against black communities, and colorblind laws that trap black Americans in a racial caste system, Black Lives Matter activists and the artists inspired by them have devised new forms of political and cultural resistance. More Than Our Pain explores how affect and emotion can drive collective political and cultural action in the face of a new nadir in race relations in the United States. This foregrounding of affect and emotion marks a clear break from civil rights–era activists, who were often trained to counter false narratives about protesters as thugs and criminals by presenting themselves as impeccably groomed and disciplined young black Americans. In contrast, the Black Lives Matter movement in the early twenty-first century makes no qualms about rejecting the politics of respectability. Affect and emotion has moved from the margin to the center of this new human rights movement, and by examining righteous rage, black joy, as well as grief and fatigue among other emotions, the contributors celebrate the vitality of black life while documenting those who have harmed it. They also criticize the ways in which journalism has commercialized and sold black affect during coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement and point to strategies and modes-of-being needed to overcome the fatigue surrounding conversations of race and racism in the United States.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: More Than Our Pain: Affect and Emotion in the Era of Black Lives Matter
Beth Hinderliter and Steve Peraza

Part I: Affect and Emotion in the Era of Black Lives Matter

1. Emotional Work and Care Labor in the Art and Politics of Black Lives Matter
Beth Hinderliter

2. The New Nadir: Decline and Despair in U.S. Race Relations
Steve Peraza

3. Emotion, Race, and Cultural Trauma in #BlackLivesMatter
Erin M. Stephens

4. Hoodrat Praxis in a Time of Love and Fury
Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez and Jessica Marie Johnson

Part II: Shaping Collective Protest and Speech through Affect and Emotion

5. The Hoodie Stands Witness: & Other Poems
Lauren K. Alleyne

6. "I can't breathe": Visual Economies of Resistance
Siona Wilson

7. "Stranger Fruit": Jon Henry in conversation with Beth Hinderliter

8.The Uses of Anger: Wanda Coleman's Poetry of Black Rage and #blacklivesmatter
Shanna Greene Benjamin

9. Bodies That Matter: Blackness, Social Symbolism, and the Affective Image
Derek Conrad Murray

Part III: Moving Forward: Overcoming Fatigue with Rage and Joy

10. A Eulogy in Two Parts and In response to the Question: If 2017 was a poem, what would it be called?
Dominique Christina

11. Puzzle Pieces on the Floor: Curriculum Gaps, White Fatigue, and Misunderstanding #BlackLivesMatter
Joseph Flynn

12. "We're Going to Have to Do It Ourselves": Banking Black in the United States
Andrew J. Padilla

13. Black Joy in the Time of Ferguson
Javon Johnson

Notes
About the Authors
Index

Sujets

• États-Unis
• History of the Americas
• Ethnic studies
• 21st century
• History of art
• United States of America
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438483122
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

More Than Our Pain
SUNY series in African American Studies

John R. Howard and Robert C. Smith, editors
More Than Our Pain
AFFECT AND EMOTION IN THE ERA OF
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Edited by
Beth Hinderliter and Steve Peraza
Cover image: Jon Henry, Untitled #31 , Wynwood, Florida. © Jon Henry.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hinderliter, Beth, 1973– editor. | Peraza, Steve, editor.
Title: More than our pain : affect and emotion in the era of Black Lives Matter / [edited by] Beth Hinderliter, Steve Peraza.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series: SUNY series in African American studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020029175 | ISBN 9781438483115 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438483122 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Black lives matter movement. | African Americans—Psychology. | Affect (Psychology)—Social aspects—United States. | Affect (Psychology)—Political aspects—United States. | Emotions—Social aspects—United States. | Emotions—Political aspects—United States. | African Americans—Social conditions—1975– | United States—Race relations—Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC E185.615 .M627 2021 | DDC 155.8/496073—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029175
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: More Than Our Pain: Affect and Emotion in the Era of Black Lives Matter
Beth Hinderliter and Steve Peraza
Part I Affect and Emotion in the Era of Black Lives Matter
Chapter 1 Emotional Work and Care Labor in the Art and Politics of Black Lives Matter
Beth Hinderliter
Chapter 2 The New Nadir: Decline and Despair in U.S. Race Relations
Steve Peraza
Chapter 3 Emotion, Race, and Cultural Trauma in #BlackLivesMatter
Erin M. Stephens
Chapter 4 Hoodrat Praxis in a Time of Love and Fury
Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez and Jessica Marie Johnson
Part II Shaping Collective Protest and Speech through Affect and Emotion
Chapter 5 The Hoodie Stands Witness: Other Poems
Lauren K. Alleyne
Chapter 6 “I can’t breathe”: Visual Economies of Resistance
Siona Wilson
Chapter 7 “Stranger Fruit”: Jon Henry in conversation with Beth Hinderliter
Chapter 8 The Uses of Anger: Wanda Coleman’s Poetry of Black Rage and #blacklivesmatter
Shanna Greene Benjamin
Chapter 9 Bodies That Matter: Blackness, Social Symbolism, and the Affective Image
Derek Conrad Murray
Part III Moving Forward: Overcoming Fatigue with Rage and Joy
Chapter 10 A Eulogy in Two Parts and In response to the Question: If 2017 was a poem, what would it be called?
Dominique Christina
Chapter 11 Puzzle Pieces on the Floor: Curriculum Gaps, White Fatigue, and Misunderstanding #BlackLivesMatter
Joseph Flynn
Chapter 12 “We’re Going to Have to Do It Ourselves”: Banking Black in the United States
Andrew J. Padilla
Chapter 13 Black Joy in the Time of Ferguson
Javon Johnson
Notes
About the Authors
Index
Illustrations Figure I.1 Andrew Padilla, Mike Brown protests led by a young girl in St. Louis, October 2014. Figure I.2 David Jackson, Emmett Till , 1955. Figure I.3 Mrs. Nettie Hunt and daughter Nikie on the steps of the Supreme Court, 1954. Figure I.4 Andrew Padilla, NYC #Hoodiesup protest for Trayvon Martin in the South Bronx, summer 2013. Figure I.5 Andrew Padilla, NYC #Hoodiesup protest for Trayvon Martin in the South Bronx, summer 2013. Figure 3.1 Twitter exchange “It’s an Epidemic.” Courtesy of Erin M. Stephens. Figure 6.1 Demonstration in Staten Island. Photo courtesy of Jay Arena and Danielle Yhap. Figure 6.2 Nona Faustine, From Her Body Sprang Their Greatest Wealth, Site of the Colonial Slave Market, Wall Street , 2013. Figure 6.3 J. T. Zealy, Delia (c. 1850). Figure 6.4 Author photograph of a reproduced postcard image of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana. Figure 7.1 Jon Henry, Untitled #15 , South Side Chicago, Illinois. Figure 7.2 Jon Henry, Untitled #11 , Buffalo, New York. Figure 7.3 Jon Henry, Untitled #24 , Birmingham, Alabama. Figure 7.4 Jon Henry, Untitled #6 , Parkchester, New York. Figure 12.1 Andrew Padilla, Justin Garrett Moore, lead organizer for Bank Black USA, 2017.
Acknowledgments
Lauren Alleyne’s “Heaven, for Sandra Annette Bland ” and “Elegy, for Tamir Rice ” were previously published in Lauren Alleyne, Honeyfish (Kalamazoo, MI: New Image Poetry and Prose, 2019); “The Hoodie Stands Witness, for Trayvon Martin ” was first published in Lauren Alleyne, Difficult Fruit (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2014); “Poetry Workshop after the Verdict, For the Trayvons ” appeared in One 6 (August 2015); and “Post-Verdict Renga, for Trayvon ” appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books , April 29, 2014, lareviewofbooks.org/article/national-poetry-month-post-verdict-renga-trayvon
Shanna Benjamin’s “The Uses of Anger: Wanda Coleman and the Poetry of Black Rage” was previously printed in Hecate 40, no. 1 (2014): 58–79.
Dominique Christina’s poem “In response to the Question ‘If 2017 was a poem what would it be called?’ ” previously appeared in “34 Poets of Color Summarize 2017 in Verse,” Huffington Post , February 28, 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/poets-of-color-2017-title_n_58b07eb6e4b060480e079dbf
Javon Johnson’s “ Black Joy in the Time of Ferguson ” was previously published in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 2, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 177–183.
Introduction
More Than Our Pain: Affect and Emotion in the Era of Black Lives Matter
BETH HINDERLITER AND STEVE PERAZA
In 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Black Lives Matter Global Network coalesced as a call to action demanding justice for Black Americans killed by police and vigilantes. As videos of black death scrawled across device screens in what felt like an unending feedback loop, more violence unfolded as protestors in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 were targeted with tear gas, rubber bullets, fists, batons, and tanks. The protestors’ grievances were largely dismissed in mainstream media coverage of the events. Black anger and hurt was manipulated in the nightly news as outpourings of collective anguish, grief, and righteous rage became media stories of individual looting and greed.
Using tactics to spectacularize death and criminalize victims and protesters, the media avoided root problems of racialized violence in the United States. As Brittney Cooper wrote in August 2014, “Nothing makes white people more uncomfortable than black anger. But nothing is more threatening to black people on a systemic level than white anger. It won’t show up in mass killings. It will show up in overpolicing, mass incarceration, the gutting of the social safety net, and the occasional dead black kid.” 1 Black Lives Matter activists and protesters called for an emotionally honest accounting of the racism and harm that African Americans face. Moreover, they provided a space for mourning and healing denied by the national media.
This volume More than Our Pain: Affect and Emotion in the Black Lives Matter Movement explores expressions of grief and rage as well as love and joy central to the movement from 2013 forward. In the streets, outpourings of grief met with collective indignation, a solemn funeral send-up, a registering of centuries of grievances, and a wave of love—these emotions knitting a shattered community together (see figure I.1 ). Black joy and love brought communities together when the weight of trauma, pain, and murder—historical and contemporary—was too much to bear. As poet Dominique Christina laments in part III of this volume, “I have forgotten how to cry in this country, I open my mouth, I capsize. I barely woman. I barely human. I wolf or something like it. I sugarcane and long memory. I cotton field and long blade. I eulogy. I suicide note. I manifesto. I rage. I grief. No tears left.”

Figure I.1. Andrew Padilla, Mike Brown protests led by a young girl in St. Louis, October 2014. © A. Padilla.
The plurality—as well as the potency—of these emotions calls into being important forms of national and international solidarity. Critical also at this moment was the work protestors and activists did to bring attention to the specific affects and emotions that pervade white supremacy, which largely presents them as rational and neutral. As detractors of the Black Lives Matter movement sought to dismiss its grievances and demands, the gap between differing emotional worlds, or what B. Cooper called sentient knowledges , became abundantly evident. How can a single event provoke such profoundly different emotional responses amongst different individuals and groups? As Erin Stephens writes in her chapter in this volume, Black Lives Matter organizers cultivated emotional resources for movement work, attempting to mitigate the ability of “White emotion” to undermine legitimate grievances and claims of social injury.