Black queer womanhood matters: searching for the queer herstory of Black Lives Matter in television dramas

ABSTRACT

Although the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) was created by three Black women, two of whom identify as queer, mainstream representations of the movement often erase the founders’ identities. This project works to counter the consistent and sustained erasure of Black (queer) women in the origin stories of social movements as well as in the larger cultural consciousness. We begin by locating the founders of BLM in a genealogy of (queer) Black women intellectuals who have repeatedly articulated the importance of analysis that acknowledges oppressions as multiple and interlocking. Then, using what we call a queer Black feminist critical lens, we analyze three drama television shows. Our analysis of episodes from Scandal and Orange is the New Black demonstrates how popular television dramas with majority-White audiences create a gender- and sexuality-neutral backstory for BLM, obscuring the movement’s innate queerness and original intentions around intersectionality. By contrast, Queen Sugar, a series on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) which has a much smaller and more diverse audience, acknowledges BLM’s queer history and offers a more complex view of the movement as a whole.

KEYWORDS:

• Black Lives Matter
• television
• Scandal
• Queen Sugar
• Orange Is The New Black

ORCID

Leland G. Spencer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7719-3221

Notes

1 It is important to note that while Cullors, Garza, and Tometi created the hashtag, BLM is now a global movement and includes many different organizations also founded and headed by queer Black women. Charlene Carruthers founded the Black Youth Project 100, which was also born in response to the acquittal of Zimmerman (Holliday, 2016). In Ferguson, after the murder of Brown, three queer Black women, Brittany Ferrell, Alexis Templeton, and Ashley Yates founded Millennial Activists United, a grassroots organization that came about as a result of their work in the streets feeding and providing first aid to protestors (Queen, 2015). Our argument intentionally engages with texts from the women widely recognized as the founders of BLM. However, we do not wish to diminish the boots-on-the-ground labor of the many queer Black women who have also been leaders within the movement for Black lives.

2 According to Nielsen, 68% of Scandal’s viewers are White (Rousell & Mancini, 2018). Netflix is notoriously secretive with their viewership demographics. However, a Morning Consult tracking poll found that while Black and White Americans subscribe to Netflix at similar rates, Netflix has more White viewers overall (2018). Nielsen also found that 10.2% of Black women watch Queen Sugar versus 0.2% of non-Hispanic White women (Rousell, 2017).