Celebrity activism on racial justice during COVID-19: the death of George Floyd, the rise of Naomi Osaka, and the celebritization of race in pandemic times

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the development of celebrity activism on racial justice in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Extending from efforts to provide support in relief efforts, celebrity activism during the first year of the pandemic dramatically turned to matters of racial justice in the wake of the video-taped police killing of George Floyd. Based on a constructionist perspective of celebrity, I analyze the patterns and dynamics of this celebrity activism regarding racial justice in terms of the motives and objectives on the part of the celebrities and the reception thereof by the public and in the media. I will thereby focus on the activism of Naomi Osaka as a particularly successful effort because the tennis star’s advocacy on racial justice has enabled her to acquire a central position in the world of celebrity activism. I show that the racial justice activism embraced widely among celebrities during the COVID-19 pandemic developed in function of the dynamics of celebrity culture rather than as an exponent of contemporary racial justice currents. Racial justice itself thereby became an object of celebrity culture, the widespread and enduring nature of which both scholars and advocates of racial justice today need to recognize.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity
• celebrity activism
• COVID-19
• pandemic
• racial justice

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Logan Hickey for her great research assistance and invaluable help in the writing of his paper. An earlier version was presented virtually at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association for American Studies, Keio University, Tokyo, June 5, 2021. I am grateful to Yuki Maruyama for helpful comments at the meeting. I also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers of the present journal for their useful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper was supported by a COVID-19 Research Initiative Grant (#135300-20-54087) and a Racial Justice and Equity Fund Award (#135300-22-59455) provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of South Carolina.

Notes on contributors

Mathieu Deflem

Mathieu Deflem is Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina. His research and teaching interests include law, social control, popular culture, and social theory. He is the author of four books, including Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame (Palgrave, 2017), co-author, with Anna S. Rogers, of Doing Gender in Heavy Metal (Anthem Press, 2022), and editor of over a dozen anthologies, including The Handbook of Social Control (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), Music and Law (Emerald, 2013), and Popular Culture, Crime, and Social Control (Emerald, 2010). He is presently working on a book about celebrity culture in (post-)pandemic times, and is conducting research to develop a transnational-comparative perspective on popular culture, with an emphasis on the United States and Japan.