The Soil That Nourishes Our Growth: Effects of Media Delegitimization on Black Women Activists
Link to the JSE December 2024 CECR Issue Table of Contents
Kennedy JSE Dec 2024 CECR Issue PDF
Abstract: Black women activists are scrutinized and discredited in the press which contributes to the withdrawal of support for their work and the deterioration of their well-being. This is particularly salient for Patrisse Cullors, the most public facing organizer connected to Black Lives Matter (BLM). Although Black women activists understand how sexism and racism contribute to their delegitimization, and though there is burgeoning research on journalism’s role in the demoralization of BLM, research that engages with methods centering Black women’s experiences is lacking. By using Black feminism as the main lens through which to consider Black women activists’ treatment, an analysis of scripted media tropes and news articles revealed four truths: 1) Black women activists are not allowed to thrive; 2) The media harms Black women activists in two ways; 3) False narratives don’t die; and 4) Optics are valued over truth. Some discoveries can be applied to Black women, Black activists who are not women, and activists who are not Black and not women. Further research is needed to assess how other intersections impact Black women activists, and future studies regarding trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming activists is necessary to determine media effects on the most targeted in activist communities.
Keywords: media, Black feminism, intersectionality, misogynoir, Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter
A tree Cannot grow in its parents’ shadows.
―Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Historically, Black women activists have been routinely and intentionally targeted and their political actions delegitimized by the media, resulting in the withdrawal of support for their movements and the destruction of their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. This pattern can be seen playing out in the press’s treatment of Patrisse Cullors who is a co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter (BLM), co-founder of the BLM Global Network Foundation, and the most public facing organizer connected to BLM. As BLM became part of everyday discourse, the rhetoric used by journalists echoed narratives present in the reporting of other Black women activists and in existing portrayals of Black women in scripted media. These similarities inspired this research as it is not simply individual players who are responsible for Black women activists’ delegitimization. Due to negative ideas embedded within the structures of social and cultural institutions, Black women organizers are consistently discredited. These ideas interlock, reproduce, and remodel themselves into updated versions, making them difficult to distinguish as inauthentic.
Mainstream investigative methods tend to uphold dominant perspectives while feigning objectivity which creates barriers to understanding the unique struggles of Black women activists (Collins, 2000, pp. 253-256). This makes it difficult to deepen knowledge and find solutions which is presumably what research aims to do. Conversely, methodologies in support of Black women challenge the systems that aids in our subordination (Collins, 2000, p. 9). Black feminism has something to say about this but so too do narrative theory and cultivation theory as these frameworks offer lenses through which to view how our individual perspectives influence our interpretation of the world. This research uses Community Engaged Critical Research (CECR) to discern the unique matters that create Black women’s experiences by engaging with activists and considering past studies that center Black and communal epistemologies. Through naming that knowledge born from personal experience is valid, and by uplifting this idea in the research itself, it is possible to see how dominant systems stifle understandings of Black women activists’ experiences while disallowing the discovery of any meaningful remedy to the issues that contribute to their plight.
This research also uses a framework that stresses the importance of the soil we plant our seeds in as this determines what, if anything, grows and blossoms (as cited in Saadeh, 2019). I apply this analogy to the relationship between culture and media; it is only through assessing the narratives present in our society and breaking down their influence on what information gets disseminated, how it gets interpreted, and what actions viewers take because of it that one can appreciate how this cultural soil fertilizes ideas and behaviors. If we continue to plant our trees in the shadows where the soil generated generations ago preserves exclusive, antiquated ideals, those trees will carry on reproducing those same values without disruption. As a Black woman positioned within the landscape of activism and the media industry, I navigate my way through shadows regularly, and I know something about the components of the soil that affect my growth. Through contemplating the previously mentioned theories alongside anti-Blackness, intersectionality, and misogynoir’s impact on Black women activists, and Cullors specifically, I hope to reveal a piece of what I know. Because, as the ingredients in the soil become more discernable, the opportunity to grow something new arises (Hemphill, 2020, 4:30).
Theories and Theoretical Frameworks
Since Black feminism was born in activist spaces by Black women and because narrative theory and cultivation theory examine storytelling and media effects, this combination covers issues of identity, activism, and media. Through analyzing these theories, the impact of anti-Blackness, intersectionality, and misogynoir on representation becomes tangible.
Black Feminism
Part of the complex combination of organic matter in our soil here in the United States pertains to the treatment of Black women which can be analyzed via Black feminism. Unlike dominant validation processes that reflect the interests of the white men who control them, Black feminism declares lived knowledge as expertise and strives to find ways to improve Black women’s experiences (Collins, 2000, pp. 31, 253). Black feminism also rebukes the inauthentic, negative, and stereotypical images of Black women and offers a Black feminist epistemology that opposes the truth of those representations while reframing what knowledge can and should be valued (Collins, 2000, pp. 1-3). Collins (2000) posited that Black feminism challenges Western systems of validating expertise as “ideas cannot be divorced from the individuals who create and share them” (pp. 251-262). Put another way, the soil in which we sow our seeds impacts how those seeds mature and grow. Cullors is represented in the media through what Rabelo et al. (2020) called the white gaze, a term popularized by Toni Morrison (Antisocial, 2024). Like mainstream research methods, the white gaze divorces Black women from their agency and core values (Rabelo et al., 2020, p. 1852). Where CECR decenters the researcher as the authority of objective knowledge and, instead, engages with the lived experience of the relevant community, mainstream processes privilege a Eurocentric perspective in which “ethics and values are deemed inappropriate” (Collins, 2000, p. 255). Therefore, the representation of Black women activists, when seen through the white gaze, does not account for their values and beliefs–a fundamental factor when interpreting motivations and actions (Collins, 2000, p. 265).
Anti-Blackness and The White Gaze. Anti-Blackness is a system of dehumanization and devaluation that works to maintain Black people’s subordination. In the United States, Black communities were stripped of humanity through white ownership and bodily evaluation based on economic value (Cooper, 2015, p. 23). As a result, “black women’s integrity was proven through the external, economic forces of the market that had no room for ethics,” which influences how Black women are viewed (Cooper, 2015, p. 29). One way Black women are devalued is via the white gaze which is a way of perceiving the world that “distorts how Black women are seen” (Rabelo et al., 2020, p. 1843). Unfortunately, this gaze is not an innocuous lens one can take on and off their camera, it is “a set of practices by which whiteness regulates people’s routines, rituals, rules, roles, and relationships” (p. 1842). Research as a practice is not immune to the narrow view of the white gaze, and, when researchers do not conform to mainstream methods, they can be viewed in the same light as Black women who fail (or refuse) to conform; both are assumed to be unprofessional, uneducated, and unworthy of respect (p. 1849). The white gaze guides interpretations of Black women’s character and behaviors based on intersecting identities while disallowing research that would engage our perspectives and transform our circumstances.
Intersectionality. Civil rights advocate and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) coined the term intersectionality. However, this understanding was first articulated by activists on the ground experiencing sexism within the Civil Rights Movement (Burnham, 2020). The Combahee River Collective (1977) described intersectionality when they said they “find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously” (p. 2). Although socially constructed, our identities shape how we move through the world as power and identity converge to create Black women’s subordination (Burnham, 2020; Crenshaw, 1989). Andersen and Collins (2016) analogized this convergence as peering through a camera where the dominant lens, which one might think of as the lens of the white gaze, causes a distortion or even omission of certain groups (p. 2). Comparably, Crenshaw (1989) described this merging much like being hit by multiple cars approaching from various directions while in the middle of a traffic intersection—the harm caused is real, yet it is not always obvious which vehicle, or identity, caused which injury. Because of this inability to articulate distinctly which identity prompted which wound, the trauma of Black women is often left unaccounted for (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 149). This trauma, due to interplays between power and identity, can also be caused by the unique interlocking of anti-Blackness with the contempt for and prejudice against women.
Misogynoir. Moya Bailey (2016), a feminist, scholar, and activist, coined the term misogynoir to convey how anti-Blackness and misogyny conjoin and cause harm to Black women, particularly via visual representations in the media (p. 2). Carmichael and Madden (2023) spoke with Bailey about misogynoir’s role in the public’s response to Megan Thee Stallion after she revealed Tory Lanez had shot her. One of the most widespread ways misogynoir showed up for Stallion was in the public’s mistrust and disbelief of her experience. Black feminism says racism, sexism, and Western research methods sideline Black women’s knowledge of our experiences, and Cooper (2015) discussed how the ethics of Black women were disregarded in favor of an economic evaluation (pp. 22-29). This considered, it is not surprising that anti-Blackness and misogyny told Stallion she was not to be trusted and that this mistrust resulted in online attacks indicative of the violence Bailey (2016) contended often derives from misogynoir (p. 3).
Black feminism understands that anti-Blackness, intersectionality, and misogynoir reinforce one another by interlocking, reproducing, rearticulating, and maintaining Black women’s subordination: a process individuals and mainstream institutions representing Black women activists, whether intentional or unintentional, are perpetually engaged in.
Narrative Theory
Stories are an important way people make meaning of the world, and the stories we consume persistently signal who holds value within society and who does not. Peeling back the layers of media representation can unveil more about the portrayals of Black women activists. Puckett (2016) described the main contemplation of narrative theory when he said:
narrative theory focuses…on the necessary relation between two aspects of narrative: (1) the events, the actions, the agents, and the objects that make up the stuff of a given narrative and (2) the shape that those events, actions, agents, and objects take when they are selected, arranged, and represented in one or another medium. (p. 2)
Importantly, the focalization–the lens through which the story is viewed–determines how people, places, and things get interpreted (Puckett, 2016, p. 129). Like the contents of soil effecting the growth of what is planted, focalization is crucial as it can include the values and beliefs of someone outside of the story (Puckett, 2016, p. 130). Because representation shapes culture, how an author chooses to represent their characters works to determine the meaning that gets made about the individuals and communities in the real world who inhabit those same identities (Gerbner et al., 2007, p. 28). For Black women, these representations can be quite damaging because, when seen through the white gaze, we often appear as one-dimensional versions of ourselves based on stereotypes created to endorse our compliance. As Hall (1997) stated, “There have been many twists and turns in the ways in which the black experience was represented in mainstream American cinema. But the repertoire of stereotypical figures drawn from ‘slavery days’ has never entirely disappeared” (p. 252). Since Black women have been historically excluded from roles within media institutions privileged with constructing these representations, we are unable to transform them in any widespread and meaningful manner (Collins, 2000, p. 5). Hall (1997) named this as a form of symbolic violence which “includes the power to represent someone or something in a certain way” (p. 259).
Cultivation Theory
The power to decide how certain groups are portrayed in media is accompanied by the ability to shape societal worldviews about those groups. Cultivation theory is a framework within which one can analyze how television (TV) consumption shapes values, beliefs, and viewpoints (Shrum, 2017, p.1). Most research conveys that “total TV viewing is a consistent predictor of social reality beliefs regardless of whether viewing of specific programs is considered” (p. 4). Gerbner et al. (2007) emphasized that, for the most part, entertainment TV is the main provider of socialization in ways that legitimize and maintain the integrity of the current social order (p. 18). The oversaturation of Black people portrayed as violent criminals in news media is so powerful that “the cognitive association between Black people and lawbreaking is perpetually reinforced” (Pollock et al., 2021, p. 43). Further, Pollock et al. (2021) examined how the news disseminates the idea that Black communities create chaos and added that law enforcement personnel and victims are typically depicted as white (p. 43). Considering TV viewing is linked to support for law enforcement and conservative outlooks on criminal justice, Black women activists toil against consistent spurious messages that maintain societal norms regarding Black people as criminals, white people as victims, and law enforcement as heroes.
Discoveries
The previous theories and frameworks guided my textual analysis of press coverage regarding Patrisse Cullors and other Black women activists. They also influenced my consideration of media depictions centering Black women characters. The foundation of Black feminism led me away from an overemphasis on interviews which can trigger and retraumatize hypervisible organizers. Although I did conduct interviews with some Black women activists, an ethic of care reoriented me toward analyses of activists’ social media pages alongside podcast interviews. My examination of the media’s scrutinization of Cullors and her work helped me to understand how Black women activists are delegitimized, and I discovered four truths: 1) Black women activists are not allowed to thrive; 2) The media causes harm in two ways; 3) False narratives don’t die; and 4) Optics are valued over truth. In the following sections, I share what I have found; the matter that grows from the soil. Realities that existed somewhat in the shadows, unacknowledged as they pertain to Black women activists specifically, and which deserve to be named.
Black Women Activists Are Not Allowed to Thrive
The first notion I found growing from the soil is the refusal to see Black women activists as deserving of anything other than labor. Rabelo et al. (2020) described the white gaze as a way of viewing the world which results in the scrutiny and regulation of those who do not adhere to white ways of being (p. 1842). This scrutiny aims to contain Black women so we cannot thrive and, when we do, it reorganizes itself to pull us back down. Thriving can mean different things depending on one’s positionality. For my purposes, I regard three relevant definitions: “to grow vigorously,” “to gain in wealth or possessions,” and “to progress toward or realize a goal despite or because of circumstances” (Merriam-Webster, 2024). Although some of what I describe may seem like simply “living” as opposed to “thriving,” my terminology accounts for current economic circumstances and considers resources beyond those that fulfill the most basic of needs forms of prosperity.
When people with the power to represent Black women see us through the white gaze, their view is colored by the idea that Black bodies are a thing, valuable when we serve dominant desires but not when we serve ourselves or our communities (Cooper, 2015, pp. 22-25). This is particularly salient for Black women activists as their service is focused directly on their communities. I argue that common media portrayals of worthy victims as white is one reason Black women organizers’ safety is often dismissed; they are not recognizable within dominant societal definitions of people valuable enough to deserve such care (Pollack et al, 2021, p. 44). Thus, Black women organizers are not only forbidden from thriving, but they are also not allowed to be safe. Rabelo et al. (2020) stated what I refer to as this issue of value as “entitlement to Black women’s time, personal space, and bodies, often resulting in boundary violations” (p. 1850). For example, Sabriaya Shipley, a Black educator and community ethnographer, experienced a boundary violation when she was required to clean at her workplace even though it was not part of her job (S. Shipley, personal communication, October 25, 2022).
One way this lack of safety and entitlement to Black women’s bodies shows up for Cullors is in the ways journalists tear her down due to her audacity to thrive and find joy while fighting for social justice (Campbell, 2021). Cullors was pitted against another activist, Tory Johnson, who had used the BLM name and organized a counter-protest, a type of demonstration Cullors indicated BLM does not engage in due to safety concerns (Campbell, 2021). Campbell (2021) stated, “Around the time that Johnson was hurried into a private car and driven from the protest out of concern for his safety, Cullors could be found live on YouTube” (para. 6). Although Campbell is proving Cullors’ point about the potential dangers of counterprotesting–fortunately, Johnson was unharmed and the counterprotest was a success–Campbell used this juxtaposition to frame Cullors as undeserving of safety. By failing to discuss that there are a multitude of ways organizers engage in activism and that it is important to bring the community together during a long-waged movement, Campbell framed Cullors as less of an activist. As a general Google search proves, Cullors has participated in and organized multiple protests, repeatedly placing her body in danger, but that was of no consequence. How dare she be safe online on this day while others sacrifice their bodies for the cause? This idea that Black women activists’ bodies should be in danger to be deemed reputable and the subsequent demands for explanations when this is not the case is not only perpetuated by journalists. When author and activist Sonya Renee Taylor (2020) posted about her luxury car purchase, white people slithered into her comments section demanding explanations because “whiteness will show up and shame Black people for their joy” (00:04:15).
And this does not only apply to women. When Black, queer, nonbinary, femme activist Ericka Hart (2023) purchased her first home she received direct messages calling her materialistic, capitalistic, and hypocritical. Hart unpacked this reaction in an Instagram post that delineated their castigator’s motivation as a need for Black labor to be in service to whiteness (00:01:12). This is reflected in Campbell (2021) when he described Cullors’ justification of how she was able to afford her home as “touting her many avenues for earning money,” as if she was showing off and not responding to demands for explanations (para. 26). These Black women and femme activists are not allowed to achieve material success because, not only are they working against the very capitalistic system that might provide them these things, but they also belong to a subordinate group. The boldness of Black women and femme activists who dare to be safe while fighting for others safety and who have been able to achieve success while doing this work are met with disgust and disdain because Black women and femme activists are not allowed to thrive.
The Media Harms Black Women Activists in Two Ways
The second item impacted by the soil that contaminates all that grows from it pertains to the ways in which media harms activists and their movements. The repetition of negative portrayals signals a pattern which Puckett (2016) asserted is evidence representations are deliberate (p. 81). These characterizations have great impact on societal behaviors because they are so common and, as Larson (2006) stated, “When messages on a topic are consistent over time and across media, they can be hard to resist” (pp. 87-88). Puckett (2016) encouraged audiences to ask what authors and journalists must believe about the world to have continually chosen the representations they have out of the many available to them (pp. 131-132). Connectedly, Black feminism says actions flow from values and beliefs and that individuals tend to choose representations that align with those beliefs (Collins, 2000, p. 262). Considering this, Black women activists are harmed by dominant narratives created to keep Black women in their subordinate position and which are disseminated via various forms of media.
Scripted Media. The negative images of Black women that Black feminism rebukes find their origin in the Jezebel, the Mammy, and the Sapphire. These characterizations continue to affect the soil from which ideas about Black women grow. Cooper (2015) asserted that slavery “laid the foundation for the commodification and dehumanization of the black body” (p. 21). The archetype of the Jezebel encompasses this ploy to deem the Black woman’s body as not her own as it was created to justify the forced public exposure of Black women at slave auctions as well as their rape by white plantation owners (Harris-Perry, 2011, p. 55). The Jezebel has no ethical backbone, rather, she is lubricious which is a perception that continues to be applied to Black women today. The power of this controlling image resides in the fact that one need not be lascivious to be regarded as a Jezebel. As an attorney and Harvard graduate, Michelle Obama does not fit the Jezebel archetype by any respects and yet Fox News referred to her as Obama’s “Baby Mama,” implying a promiscuity she does not exemplify (Pilgrim, 2023, p. 19). After the Jezebel came the deliberate design of the Mammy. Harris-Perry (2011) pointed out that after slavery “Black women who labored in white homes had to be reimagined. A seductive, exotic wench would threaten the stability of white families, but an asexual, omnicompetent, devoted servant was ideal” (p. 71). The archetype of the Mammy is subservient and satisfied in her role which Collins (2000) named as the “ideal Black female relationship” to whiteness (p. 72).
This idea that Black women were content in their devotion to white people is contradicted by confirmations of abuse and efforts to leave their situation (West, 2008, p. 289). Yet, the Mammy and her more modern iteration, The Magical Negro, are still embraced by dominant society. In 1923, a Mammy monument was almost erected in Virginia after an ordinance passed through the same Senate that had just denied an antilynching bill, demonstrating how Black women’s subjugation is more valuable than our safety (Harris-Perry, 2011, p. 73). This trope can be seen more recently in Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit as the character of Jolene, a Black woman, exists to support and aid in the white lead’s growth (Kayembe, 2021). Perhaps the reason this trope remains is because, as Puckett (2016) proposed, “it is sometimes more important…that a narrative be coherent and comforting than that it be true” (p. 78). Even Black women and femmes who are not activists are affected by negative representations of femme presenting Black people as these depictions can be embraced as genuine reflections of who we are. Consequences such as compensating for negative stereotypes by overworking and having psychiatric illnesses identified differently than white counterparts contribute to tangible harm (Harris-Perry, 2011, pp. 34, 89).
Not only are Black women activists in direct opposition to the Mammy in their refusal to take a passive position to their oppression, but they also actively work to transform the very systems that produce these archetypes to justify that subjugation. Through the white gaze of Western media, this is expressed via the Sapphire trope which frames Black women’s anger at their oppression as “dangerous or funny” (West, 2008, p. 296). This archetype, whose contemporary is the Angry Black Woman, was first named in the TV series Amos n’ Andy and “emerged in the wake of Abolition, when white supremacy became seriously threatened for the first time” (Hamad, 2020, p. 49). As Black women activists use their anger at injustice as fuel toward liberation, their passion has historically and consistently been referred to in Sapphiric terms. Pilgrim (2023) explored the Sapphire as a form of social control used to “punish black women who violate societal norms that encourage them to be passive, servile, non-threatening, and unseen” (para. 1). In other words, the Sapphire’s function is to discipline Black women who do not adhere to the Mammy archetype which places Black women activists in the Sapphire’s line of fire. In exploring the connection between activists and the Sapphire, Pilgrim (2023) stated:
The Sapphire portrayal has been around for as long as black women have dared to critique their lives and treatment. Sojourner Truth was seen and treated as a Sapphire, as were Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Josephine Baker, Shirley Chisholm, Anita Hill, Alice Walker, Rita Dove, and bell hooks. (para. 23)
Like Black women activists today whose anger is often admonished, these women were seen as unjustifiably angry due to their steadfastness in challenging their status as subordinated members of society (Phillips, 2020).
Journalism. Like film and TV, the news teaches consumers how to view themselves and those around them through the repetition of particular representations (Larson, 2006, p. 14). Journalistic patterns that guide how press is created and disseminated alongside the implicit biases of the journalists impact how social justice movements and activists are represented (McLeod, 2007, p. 186). The effect of news media on communities is something Black people have been aware of for quite some time. The first Black press editorial in 1827 stated, “Too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentations of things which concern us dearly. From the press and the pulpit we have suffered much by being incorrectly represented” (Jackson, 2020, p. 102). In addition to being influenced by stereotypical portrayals in scripted media, the press is guided by negative views of Black people’s engagement with racial justice-oriented campaigns and crime depictions in the news. (Brown & Harlow, 2019; Jackson, 2020). Leopold and Bell (2017) connected news consumption and views of Black people as violent with fallacious portrayals in the press. Brown and Harlow (2019) found that reporters often used derogatory and delegitimizing frames when campaigns were geared toward civil rights, a phenomenon known as the protest paradigm (para. 4). This practice connects to the activation of what Broersma (2010) called cultural codes and McLeod (2007) named an “invocation of public opinion” and social norms. This activation can be seen in reporters’ use of the riot frame in their portrayal of protesters as deviants which is often partnered with a failure to disclose the injustices that spurred their actions (p. 187). Kilgo and Mourão (2019) used the protest paradigm to determine that coverage of BLM fit within this pattern, and Leopold and Bell’s (2017) research uncovered a new characteristic, blame attribution. Blame attribution is when looting, crime, or violence is attributed to those protesting regardless of whether there is evidence to back up this ascription.
Because Western cultures tend to use dispositional attribution (indicative of a person’s character) in favor of situational attribution (suggestive of external factors) to explain behaviors, I argue that the combination of blame and dispositional attributions impacts Black organizers (Buchtel & Norenzayan, 2009, p. 218). Additionally, I contend that this assertion, combined with the ways in which journalists frame protesters as deviants without context or verification, causes viewers to assume people within movements for racial justice commit violent acts, not because they are responding to their situation of injustice, but because they are bad people. I also posit that this is a possible outcome regardless of whether protesters are the ones causing damage and that those considered leaders within movements become targets of discourse concerning such actions.
Considering cultivation theory while looking at media and the Civil Rights Movement, there is historical precedent for my assertions. Although current understandings declare the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders were unanimously embraced and supported, the reality was that reporters focused on individual organizers while marginalizing movement goals as objectives became more radical (Jackson, 2020, p. 103). This practice resulted in material consequences for activists. Medgar Evers received regular death threats and was eventually assassinated by a white supremacist (Brown, 2023). Ida B. Wells had to relocate due to threats of lynching (Little, 2018). Rosa Parks developed ulcers and continued to receive death threats ten years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Kettler, 2020). Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed by a woman who felt he had caused trouble for Black people, and Malcolm X’s house was firebombed; both men were famously assassinated (Bates, 2020; Lentz, 1999, p. 40). Black social justice activists today experience similar threats that affect their safety, and the more they are portrayed negatively and inauthentically in the press, the more the threats come (Harkins, 2021; Lee, 2022). For instance, in 2021, Lex Scott had to step down from her leadership position in the Utah branch of BLM and move her family out of the state after she was inundated with death threats (Harkins, 2021).
It is part of a pattern that as the movement of BLM grew, coverage became more negative for the movement as well as for Cullors; at one time embraced by the media, she started to be torn down (Huver, 2018; Campbell, 2021). The press’s utilization of the protest paradigm and their routine use of crime frames jeopardizes activists’ safety and invalidates their movement goals.
False Narratives Don’t Die
Negative and inauthentic narratives that justified enslavement continue to influence societal ideas about Black people (Cooper, 2015). In the Jack Johnson documentary, Unforgiveable Blackness, cultural critic Stanley Crouch referred to false narratives when he said:
For a group of people to be enslaved for hundreds of years, doing manual labor every day, and end up being called lazy, and not the people who were sitting on the porch drinking the mint juleps, that’s a real phenomenon in itself. (as quoted in Burns, 2004, 00:21:55).
In the book by the same name, Ward (2010) compared how certain skills when carried out by white boxers were deemed “clever” by the press, but when a Black fighter behaved similarly, it was viewed as laziness by those same critics (pp. 51–52). As explored in previous paragraphs, these inaccurate ideas about Black people continue to influence media characterizations that permeate society and influence beliefs and behaviors. Meaning, false narratives’ refusal to die is a theme woven throughout earlier sections. False narratives show up for Black women activists and their work in reporters’ use of crime frames but also in how financial discussions are constructed. Luhn (2023) offered data stating it is more difficult for Black entrepreneurs to obtain financial support from mainstream entities compared to other groups. In 2022, I spoke with Sophia Harris who studies the impacts of incarceration on communities and advocates for better policies. Harris shared that she once had to get a bank manager involved when a teller placed an unnecessary hold on a check she deposited (S. Harris, personal communication, November 7, 2022). Further, “I don’t trust that woman,” was the phrase said to me about Cullors by a Black woman colleague who communicated that repeatedly seeing negative headlines about BLM finances alongside Cullors’ name caused her distrust (A. James, personal communication, March 31, 2023).
The narrative that Black people are “scheming” influences views of Black women’s financial conditions and determines which organizations individuals and institutions are willing to invest in (Hall, 1985, p. 112). In combination with the more modern archetype of the Welfare Queen–a lazy yet materialistic Black woman who steals from the state instead of finding employment–this narrative contributes to how Black women activists’ motivations and financial decisions are scrutinized (Larson, 2006, p. 99). Parnaby (2023) used legitimate news from Cullors’ late October 2023 art show at University of California, Los Angeles to pull her back into the spotlight only to spend substantially more time rehashing past accusations of financial corruption than on the exhibit itself. Parnaby (2023) took an art show meant to uplift Black spiritual practice and healing and used it as a gateway to further dehumanize and delegitimize Cullors. These repeated narratives result in death threats and harassment of activists (Lee, 2022, 00:47:25). Therefore, while working to delegitimize activists and their work, pulling false narratives focused on the financial impropriety reflective of stereotypes about Black women back into the press negatively contributes to Black women activists’ physical, mental, and emotional well-being as well as support for their work.
Optics Are Valued Over Truth
Harris-Perry (2011) discussed how the social rejection of Black women who do not conform to the white gaze results in experiences of shame which can influence daily and political behaviors (pp. 106, 119). As a result, she found that instead of fighting to sit straight, some will bend and adjust themselves to the tilt of the crooked room (p. 29). Harris-Perry (2011) argued that it is misrecognition caused by intersecting oppressed identities and the myths about them that get perpetuated in media that invokes shame (p. 49). This shame gets “deployed against whole groups based on identity alone” and, therefore, Black people must be hypervigilant or face collective punishment for the decisions and behaviors of the public facing few (pp. 108, 117). The threat of collective punishment can cause Black communities to distance themselves from disparaged groups and individuals which decreases support from the very movements and organizers that aim to get us closer to justice and liberation. Richardson and Bellamy (2022) discussed how a BLM supporter admitted not donating to any cause, including BLM, due to the potential for managerial decisions to play into narratives created by the opposition (para. 8). Because Cullors made organizational decisions based on Black activists’ safety and well-being, she did not adjust to the white gaze and Western systems of validation, and she has been chastised for how that has appeared to outsiders (Lee, 2022, 00:22:50). Misrecognition for Black women activists based on optics can result in withdrawals of support and public condemnations that fuel threats to their safety (00:48:11).
Conclusion
Through the lenses of Black feminism, narrative theory, and cultivation theory one can observe how anti-Blackness, intersectionality, and misogynoir continue to inform how Black women and femme activists are represented. Stereotypical tropes in film and TV convey Black women’s inferiority while journalists’ beliefs and institutional structures contribute to organizer’s delegitimization. As was discussed throughout, Black women and femme activists are not the only ones affected. However, Black women and femmes exist at the intersections of marginalized gender and racial categories and, as activists, they challenge the systems that produce and maintain their subordination. Therefore, Black women and femme activists are particularly vulnerable. Further, because BLM is a highly visible movement, there is a focused attempt to discredit Cullors and her work (Corley, 2021).
The idea that Black women and femme activists are in service to whiteness and should labor and suffer is spoilage that grows from toxic soil. These activists deserve the decency of representation not tainted by anti-Blackness and the white gaze. If the tainted components of the soil are extracted and replaced with ingredients that reveal deep and complex truths, perhaps the soil will stop fertilizing ideas and behaviors that contribute to Black women activists’ demise and can become the soil that nourishes our growth. Additionally, replacing research methods that deem Black women’s personal knowledge invalid with Community Engaged Critical Research can help ensure those closest to the issues are the main contributors of their remedies. This can only happen once we shift to a human centered and generative framework. Cullors likened this moment to art materials and said:
This moment feels like both…fertile ground, and it also feels like…destruction… If I were to compare this moment to…art materials, I would say that we’re all…holding a palette. We’re all…recognizing the differences of that palette and what the possibilities of the palette can have to canvas. And I feel like this moment is really handing every single one of us…a paintbrush and a palette and a canvas. (as quoted in Hemphill, 2020, 4:30)
Once we realize our power to paint a new vision and we are intentional and expansive in how we apply our paint to the canvas, we can transform the dominant narratives that negatively affect Black women activists’ well-being.
Future research that engages with the activists it means to support is necessary to recognize how class and sexuality impact Black women and femme activists’ representation, and studies which include convergences of race, gender, class, and sexuality on trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming activists is important to understanding media effects on the most targeted in activist communities. For now, as media professionals and viewers create and consume stories that define our culture, they should be inspired to meet stereotypical and repetitive narratives with curiosity. If the press were to abandon their habitual approach of reporting episodically by ignoring motivations, context, and potential solutions and instead adopt a Black feminist perspective, they might consider Cullors’ body of work and her values in their assessments and representations. This adjustment would influence how society thinks of and understands social justice movements while simultaneously transforming the treatment of Black women activists. We should all feel empowered to notice and challenge how frames and patterns, from the white gaze to the protest paradigm, influence Black women activists’ representation while deeply contemplating Black women’s perspectives regarding what we would like to create and grow in this moment and beyond.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Dr. April Ruth Hoffman (Prescott College) for providing guidance during this research, and for encouraging me to place myself within the narrative when my research speaks directly to my identity and lived experience.
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Marisa D. Kennedy graduated with a Master of Arts in Social Justice & Community Organizing from Prescott College, AZ in December 2023. Her research lies at the intersection of social justice and media studies. She is currently pursuing a second MA in Cinema & Media Studies from the University of Southern California. marisa (at) marisakennedy.com, https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3102-1381 
