This project examines how the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a large contemporary Black Nationalist group based in the U.S., uses alternative media spaces to make interventions into the dominant cultural memory and history. Combining cultural-critical studies methods with the ethnographic methods of participant observation and interviewing, I explore how the MXGM uses accounts of the past to reframe the present political and cultural terrain in ways that are meaningful to Black men and women born after the Civil Rights Movement. Since the 1990s, mainstream U.S. racial politics have been increasingly dominated by the neoliberal discourses of "colorblindness," and now many claim we have entered a "post-racial" era. Within this socio-cultural context, the MXGM uses media to re-envision the past, particularly the Black Power Movement, in ways that open space for discussion of and challenges to racism. Because they lack access to the mainstream media that have become increasingly important arenas for cultural memory, the Internet and Hip-hop function as crucial sites where the MXGM can engage in mnemonic work. In both, the MXGM rejects colorblindness and reasserts race as a central axis of social organization, community, and politics. From 2001 to 2010, the MXGM's website served to perform both an institutional and a racial identity. The site reframes the past, particularly the Civil Rights Movement, in ways that allow the rejections of neoliberal ideologies that obscure ongoing structural racism and limit political resistance. The MXGM's annual benefit concert, the Black August Hip Hop Project, serves to imbricate Black Nationalist memories/histories and ideologies with Hip hop. A large segment of young Black Americans now self-identify as the "Hip-hop generation," which tethers them to all things associated with the genre, good or bad. Thus, articulating Black Nationalist accounts of the past with Hip-hop is a potent means of preserving and perpetuating memories and histories. Further, the imbrication of Black Nationalist histories and ideologies with Hip-hop allows the MXGM to redefine Hip-hop in opposition to the violent, misogynistic, hyper-capitalist images of "Blackness" found in mainstream Hip-hop.
展开▼
