Race and the Digital: Racial Formation and 21st Century Technologies

Afropunk Analysis

Afro-Punk considers themselves a social movement that not only attacks the status que of “What Is Alternative”, but it also engages in social and political issues as well. It seems to primarily raise awareness to issues, of race, sexism, and alternative fashion

Their most recent critical action spreads light on an unjust sentencing of BlackLivesMatter activist, "Jasmine Richards" who was sentenced to serve jail time for a crime of "Felony Lynching". Felony Lynching was first established to help Black people; if any persons tried to attempt to take a black person out of jail to be lynched, they would face the charge. On that day, it was being exploited to jail Richards for attempting to rescue another activist from jail. Richards will be The First African American to ever be convicted of "Lynching"...




Beyond that, I initially came across this post through facebook; not through the actual Afropunk site itself. Afropunk has a very engaging facebook page which has a multitude of postings about Social issues, along with the fashion of Afropunk.

This is just one example of many postings and blogs Afropunk has on their sites.

I want to look at an outside source now which actually further supports the idea that Afropunk is a social movement that engages new media




From 3:00 to 3:15 in the video, Robert Marsh directly points to the fact that the Afropunk Movement in itself is a challenge to the status quo and belief that "Punk" is of White Culture. It is clear that the existence of Afropunk serves primarily to destroy the Stereo typical binary that sees "Blackness" as only such things as "Hip-Hop/Rap, R&B". Linking this back to the fashion; it's important to make note of the imagery of wear when defining Blackness as that too, has also fallen into a binary of what is "Black". 






 

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