The relationship between blackness and technology
The Curious Obsession with the #BrownTwitterBird
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
Farhad Manjoo’s recent Slate article, How Black People Use Twitter, is yet another example of mainstream culture’s fascination—even obsession—with the ways that Black people have utilized technology. Whether presented as a “digital divide” or the Black use of hashtags on Twitter, the conversation essentially remains the same; What are those Negroes up to now? Perhaps this is as it should be; Black folk are in the unique position of having once been cutting edge technology—the kind of technology that helped drive the United States into advanced capitalism and global domination. Such intimacies have historically manifested themselves in innovative and quirky uses of technology.
Perhaps the most curious thing about Manjoo’s article is the fact that anyone would spend any amount of time studying the advent of a particular hashtag on a given day, let alone the racial component of its origins. Indeed it seems weird that anyone Manjoo stay up late at night monitoring—some might call it surveillance—the twittering activities of Black folk. If white folks were once asking “Booker, what are the drums saying?” (an Adolph Reed classic), they seem to be asking now, “Manjoo, 'what are the tweets saying?'"
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
The Curious Obsession with the #BrownTwitterBird
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
Farhad Manjoo’s recent Slate article, How Black People Use Twitter, is yet another example of mainstream culture’s fascination—even obsession—with the ways that Black people have utilized technology. Whether presented as a “digital divide” or the Black use of hashtags on Twitter, the conversation essentially remains the same; What are those Negroes up to now? Perhaps this is as it should be; Black folk are in the unique position of having once been cutting edge technology—the kind of technology that helped drive the United States into advanced capitalism and global domination. Such intimacies have historically manifested themselves in innovative and quirky uses of technology.
Perhaps the most curious thing about Manjoo’s article is the fact that anyone would spend any amount of time studying the advent of a particular hashtag on a given day, let alone the racial component of its origins. Indeed it seems weird that anyone Manjoo stay up late at night monitoring—some might call it surveillance—the twittering activities of Black folk. If white folks were once asking “Booker, what are the drums saying?” (an Adolph Reed classic), they seem to be asking now, “Manjoo, 'what are the tweets saying?'"
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
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