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ABSTRACT
In Black colloquial culture, the practice of documenting and calling out injustices is known as “showing receipts.” The ongoing labor of collecting, communicating, and showing receipts is one way to highlight the hypocrisies embedded in racist structures and hold those in power accountable. As the receipts pile up in the form of viral videos of sexism, racism, and violence against Black bodies, accountability cannot be easily ignored. Showing receipts as a form of resistance, however, is both exhausting and never-ending. Thus, women of color need spaces of respite and community care where we can speak our stories and be heard. In this essay, we demonstrate one such space: digital storytelling shared between women of color. While reciprocal sharing provides women of color storytellers a respite from the labor of proving our worth and producing receipts, in recording our truths and sharing them online, we also create digital receipts as testimony to our experiences. Although there is no guarantee that those in power will listen, by producing, archiving, and disseminating these receipts, storytellers maintain hope that our words will make an impact.
Notes
1 Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE), “Radical Listening,” University of Washington, 2017–2018, http://ccde.com.washington.edu/radical-listening/.
2 Gloria, “I Address Race Because Race Addresses Me,” follow-up interview with Anjuli Brekke, May 2017, soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/i-address-race-because-race-addresses-me/s-JfJGi. The audio files are also available on this journal's website.
3 Ibid.
4 André Brock, “Black Technoculture and/as Afrofuturism,” Extrapolation 61, nos. 1–2 (2020): 23.
5 “Transcript: Whitney Houston: ‘I’m a Person Who Has Life,’” interview by Diane Sawyer, December 4, 2002, ABCNews, February 13, 2012, accessed September 22, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/transcript-whitney-houston-im-person-life/story?id=15574357.
6 Jumi Akinfenwa, “‘This You?’—How Black Twitter Turned Accountability into an Art Form,” Vice, June 3, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/v7gdvm/this-you-black-twitter-receipts.
7 Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Black Cyberfeminism: Intersectionality, Institutions and Digital Sociology,” in Digital Sociologies, ed. Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom (Bristol, U.K.: Policy Press, 2016), 211–32.
8 CCDE, “Radical Listening.”
9 Katy Waldman, “How ‘Show Me the Receipts’ Became a Catchphrase for How to Hold the Powerful Accountable,” Slate, July 21, 2016, https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/07/how-show-me-the-receipts-became-a-catchphrase-for-holding-the-powerful-accountable.html.
10 Allissa V. Richardson, “Bearing Witness While Black: Theorizing African American Mobile Journalism after Ferguson,” Digital Journalism 5, no. 6 (2017): 673–98.
11 Gloria, “Re-Act Mixdown,” follow-up interview with Anjuli, May 2017, soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/re-act-mixdown/s-4dEi6przfdP.
12 Robin M. Boylorn “The Storyteller Project: Introduction,” in “The Storyteller Project: Digital Storytelling for Women of Color,” ed. Robin M. Boylorn, Veralyn Williams, and Rachel Raimist, special issue, Liminalities 15, no. 4 (2019): 7 original emphasis.
13 Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson, and Theo Van Leeuwen, eds., Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).
14 This project was facilitated by StoryCorps (https://storycorps.org/).
15 CCDE, “Radical Listening.”
16 Pseudonym.
17 We did not impose a definition of racism on our participants, recognizing that people of color experience racism differently depending on their age, geographic location, class affiliation, etc. For more about how our participants spoke about their experiences of racism, visit http://ccde.com.washington.edu/radical-listening/.
18 Aisha S. Durham, Home with Hip Hop Feminism (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 3.
19 Ibid., 13.
20 Ibid.
21 Nadine Changfoot, “Creative Socialist-Feminist Space: Creating Moments of Agency and Emancipation by Storytelling Outlawed Experiences and Relational Aesthetic,” Socialist Studies 11, no. 1 (2016): 72.
22 Manoucheka Celeste, “Black Media Studies,” Feminist Media Histories 4, no. 2 (2018): 40.
23 Myra Washington, “Woke Skin, White Masks: Race and Communication Studies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2020): 261.
24 Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE), “Interrupting Privilege Seminar,” University of Washington, n.d., http://ccde.com.washington.edu/interrupting-privilege-seminar/.
25 bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, new ed. (London: Routledge, 2015), 6.
26 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: Routledge, 1991).
27 Shardé M. Davis and Tamara D. Afifi, “The Strong Black Woman Collective Theory: Determining the Prosocial Functions of Strength Regulation in Groups of Black Women Friends,” Journal of Communication 69, no. 1 (2019): 2.
28 Subrina J. Robinson, “Spokentokenism: Black Women Talking Back about Graduate School Experiences,” Race Ethnicity and Education 16, no. 2 (2013): 156.
29 Ibid.
30 Knut Lundby, ed., “Introduction: Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories,” in Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-representations in New Media (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 2.
31 W. Lance Bennett, Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Henry Jenkins et al., By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2016).
32 Kishonna L. Gray, “‘They’re Just too Urban’: Black Gamers Streaming on Twitch,” in Digital Sociologies, ed. Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom (Bristol, U.K.: Policy Press 2016), 359.
33 Brock, “Black Technoculture and/as Afrofuturism,” 23.
34 Herman Gray, “The Feel of Life: Resonance, Race, and Representation,” International Journal of Communication 9 (2015): 1108–109.
35 Donna J. Haraway, Manifestly Haraway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 9.
36 Gray, “The Feel of Life.”
37 Craig Jenkins, E. Alex Jung, and Dee Lockett, “Videos, Blackouts, and the Times: A Roundtable Discussion on a Chaotic Week in Social Media,” Vulture, June 5, 2020, vulture.com/2020/06/social-media-protest-blackouts-black-lives-matters.html.
38 Catherine R. Squires, “Running through the Trenches: Or, an Introduction to the Undead Culture Wars and Dead Serious Identity Politics,” in “What Is This ‘Post-’ in Postracial, Postfeminist … (Fill in the Blank)?” by Catherine Squires et al., forum, Journal of Communication Inquiry 34, no. 3 (2010): 213.
39 Gloria, “Drinking from the Forbidden Fountain,” excerpt from StoryCorps interview, May 2017, soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/drinking-from-the-forbidden-fountain-mixdown/s-MCLA8hmVDO5.
40 Gloria, “We Have to Keep Telling the Stories,” audience discussion during Ralina Joseph et al., “Interruptions, Talkbacks, and Silences: Sharing Stories of Racism” (roundtable, Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, June 24, 2018), soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/we-need-to-take-a-b/s-JRqBV.
41 Oluwadamilola Opayemi, “Digital Storytelling and Private Disclosure: From the Perspective of an Outsider Within,” in “The Storyteller Project: Digital Storytelling for Women of Color,” ed. Robin M. Boylorn, Veralyn Williams, and Rachel Raimist, special issue, Liminalities 15, no. 4 (2019): 3.
42 Gloria, audience discussion during Ralina Joseph et al., “Interruptions, Talkbacks, and Silences.”
43 Gloria, “And When They Say Ivory Tower, They Mean Ivory Tower,” excerpt from StoryCorps interview, May 2017, soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/and-when-they-say-ivory-tower-they-mean-ivory-tower-1/s-F7H3wE9UPSF.
44 Ibid.
45 Gloria, “I Knew She Understood,” follow-up interview with Anjuli, May 2017, soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/i-knew-she-understood/s-CRHbWA5zD39.
46 Sophia, “Holding Back Tears Mixdown,” follow-up interview with Anjuli, June 2017, soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/holding-back-tears-mixdown/s-2rivFaSrDu6.
47 Ibid.
48 Gloria, follow-up interview with Anjuli, May 2017.
49 Ibid.
50 Tammy, follow-up interview with Anjuli, June 2017.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., “This Is a Big Deal Mixdown,” soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/this-is-a-big-deal-mixdown/s-SGUvf14F2pj.
53 Jinho, follow-up interview with Anjuli, June 2017.
54 Tammy, “To Be the Witness,” follow-up interview with Anjuli, May 2017, soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/to-be-the-witness/s-svcUp.
55 Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 1983), 115 original emphasis.
56 Ibid.
57 UW Communications, “Activism through the Ages,” n.d., soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/uw-communications/activism-through-the-ages.
58 “Resisting the Angry Black Woman Stereotype,” soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/resisting-the-angry-black-woman-stereotype/s-k8jCXNhaXwY.
59 Ralina L. Joseph, Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 77.
60 KUOW Public Radio, “How to Point Out Racism without Being the ‘Angry Black Woman,’” facebook.com, December 17, 2017, accessed May 2, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/kuowpublicradio/posts/10156025303358139.
61 Puget Sound Public Radio, KUOW Business Plan 2017–2021 V13 (n.p.: July 2016), http://www2.kuow.org/reports/BusinessPlan20161021.pdf.
62 Tammy and Jinho, “I’m Not the Submissive Asian Woman You Think I Am,” soundcloud.com, https://soundcloud.com/user-731730890/im-not-the-submissive-asian-woman-you-think-i-am/s-y0FpYSNaPqe.
63 Tammy, follow-up interview with Anjuli, June 2017.
64 Jinho, follow-up interview with Anjuli, June 2017.
65 Tammy, audience discussion during Ralina Joseph et al., “Interruptions, Talkbacks, and Silences: Sharing Stories of Racism” (roundtable, Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, June 24, 2018).
66 Tammy, follow-up interview with Anjuli, June 2017.