Read on Twitter
this is antiBlack. https://twitter.com/lilbabyraps/status/1287603804188205057
there are few theories of humor that might seem applicable for illuminating the antiblackness here but I think the most effective one is the incongruity theory. In _The World as Will and Idea_ (1818) Schopenhauer explains the incongruity theory in the following way:
“The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.”
Kierkegaard also followed the incongruity theory in _Concluding Unscientific Postscript_ (1846): “The tragic and the comic are the same, in so far as both are based on contradiction; but the tragic is the suffering contradiction, the comical, the painless contradiction...”
to replace the sagacious and beloved “Star-Spangled Banner” with—not any Black person, or any Black rapper, but—the Prince of mumble rap himself, trap rap’s finest, Lil Baby, for the National anthem is so contradictory, so incongruous it’s laughable.
it’s tantamount to making a monkey President. it’s the humor of talking babies and feisty chihuahuas.
I point this out because I think it’s important to be able to detect and explicitly name toxic positivity as where the jokes are always, finally on the Black.
I point this out because I think it’s important to be able to detect and explicitly name toxic positivity as where the jokes are always, finally on the Black.
it happens in boardrooms, seminars, greenrooms, bedrooms all the time and it is thought tolerable, if not entirely negligible because it’s not “nigger”, “cut your dreads”, “do you like fried chicken?”.
it’s not even a classic—yet terminologically useless—“micro-aggression”.
it’s not even a classic—yet terminologically useless—“micro-aggression”.
this is the toxic positivity of neoliberal work environments that diversity and inclusion Black people into slow death and sweet mutilations through “well-intentioned” jokes, solidarity-qua-collegiality politics, and “how to be an anti-racist?” emotional labor. don’t be fooled.
capitalism requires emotional manipulation/exploitation. the best worker is not the forced worker but the willing worker, the happy worker: the professional worker. toxic positivity is the affective coercion and premeditated gaslighting required to engineer that corporatized joy.
which is to say, don’t be that Black friend weaponized against other Black people when calling out the antiBlackness of collegial politics and carceral intimacy, where we are made to befriend our political enemy, at least in the name of “class solidarity” https://twitter.com/gzaidan72/status/1287770603190194183?s=21 https://twitter.com/gzaidan72/status/1287770603190194183
no one takes Black cultural work or radical thought seriously—I’ve taken enough classes outside department to know that—not to mention mumble or Trap Rap.
Lil Baby’s/Black music isn’t a joke. it’s intellectual labor.
for someone who takes Trap seriously follow: @ColonizedLocal
Lil Baby’s/Black music isn’t a joke. it’s intellectual labor.
for someone who takes Trap seriously follow: @ColonizedLocal
this is why I went in on this https://twitter.com/jatella/status/1273026751623503878?s=21
