Author

Nadine Melanesia Black

OpinionPolitical Educationtechnology

On Media Literacy and Misinformation

by Nadine Melanesia Black
written by Nadine Melanesia Black

With an increase in people getting their news from biased sources through Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, or podcasts, there has been a dangerous wave of misinformation throughout the country. 

Relying on social media platforms as one’s main source of information makes us fall victim to dangerous echo chambers and biased media. Social media is inherently designed to continuously push content that it believes the user would want to engage with. When we only engage with content that satiates our agitations within the world without understanding the context and accountable actors that contribute to our dissatisfactions, we are no longer useful to our communities. Social media pushes us to see the worst within ourselves and to further look to scapegoat tokens of the oppressive empire and entertaining characters as opposed to forming a deep analysis of how every institution, political actor, and community member contributes to the state of our current world, including us. Social media pushes massive amounts of content to individuals in very short spans of time, designed to make people addicted to the dopamine rush they get from scrolling through potentially 15 minutes in just 5-10 minutes. We are intentionally being made ill and reliant in the face of our digital escapes.

Social media has also made it increasingly harder to get younger generations to turn to legitimate and factual news sources for information. The reality that it is incredibly easy to just turn to TikTok or X for quick “facts” from random accounts is ruining people’s media literacy. Hardly do individuals fact check information, especially if it aligns with what their previously held beliefs are, validated by social media posts. These platforms are specifically created to distract audiences through pushes of biased, shallow, and often falsified information. 

Social media also makes it incredibly easy for individuals to become isolated within their own echo chambers, constantly intaking political information from people online. This gives the illusion of communicating with people, leaving no incentive for some to engage in real-life community building.

Our inability to withstand the gruesome and often prolonged task of having researched and learned independently the realities of the world in which we live makes us ill-equipped to combat misinformation and form sustainable solutions to our transgressions. Furthermore, the internalization of instantly available and gratifying information leaves us vulnerable to manipulation by the empire. Through this lens, we understand how media literacy is imperative in navigating the terrains of ideological warfare and political competence. We are responsible for challenging ourselves to become more willing to take time in the slowness of learning through this world, we are accountable to truth and to the time it takes to uncover it.

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Black HistoryNewsPolitical EducationU.S.

A Politics of Performance

by Nadine Melanesia Black
written by Nadine Melanesia Black

The Constitution promises to protect fundamental rights and liberties for all citizens within Amerikkka, however this has continuously failed for Afrikans in Amerikkka. There are endless false promises of freedom of speech, freedom to protest, and the freedom to just exist within a country we and our ancestors have been forced to assimilate into. The government, especially the branch in charge of interpreting the Constitution, is a tool to continue to protect the privileges that come alongside being a white citizen in the United States. Being white in Amerikkka, or at least being perceived as white, opens the door to a wide array of benefits within society. Through the government’s eyes, whiteness must be protected no matter what. Ruling against whiteness and instead for those who are supposed to be disadvantaged takes away power from those in charge.

In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decided to rule to uphold the constitutionality of racial segregation laws as long as they were “separate but equal” accommodations. This ruling is a prime example of how the Supreme Court has worked to uphold whiteness and keep it away from the grasps of those who are deemed “not worthy” of the advantages of being white. Even with separate “equal” accommodations, the fact that Afrikan people need to be separated from their white counterparts shows how precious it is to keep distinct separation between the two.

Another example is within United States v. Cruikshank, with the Court showing their favoritism for protecting whiteness by jumping through loopholes. The Court did not want white militiamen to go to jail for murdering Afrikans who were attempting to protest. The white men had done exactly what the government had wanted, wanting to shut up outspoken Afrikans who went against the status quo. The Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment only applied to state action and not the action of private individuals, creating a way for those who murdered the Afrikans to get away with it. This was simply because these Afrikans protesting posed a huge threat to the typical social order of Amerikkka, therefore there was no reason to prosecute those individuals who committed this heinous crime.

Brandenburg v. Ohio continued to perpetuate hatred towards Afrikans by allowing a KKK leader to walk away from an Ohio court who had found him guilty of spewing hate speech. The Supreme Court ruled that his freedom of speech was violated by Ohio’s criminal syndicalism law since his speech did not incite a clear and present danger. It’s unfathomable to believe that speech from a KKK leader that calls for the removal of Afrikans from Amerikkka as if they were a parasite does not constitute speech that is a clear danger.

It is through the study of our legislative histories that we begin to undo the political amnesia that often gives us hope in surviving and reforming our political sphere. In reflections on these cases and many others, we are forced to begin challenging ourselves and the empire that suffocates us to radically change and therefore be destroyed.

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Arts & EntertainmentBlack HistoryCulturePolitical Education

Friend or Foe: Blaxploitation

by Nadine Melanesia Black
written by Nadine Melanesia Black

Before the 70s, it was rare for an Afrikan person to go to the theater and see a widely distributed movie that had a cast of all Afrikan people that did not center a white protagonist. The exploitation of Afrikan bodies in cinema allowed for Afrikan people to move up within Hollywood and receive representation, but also led to the damaging distribution of harmful Afrikan stereotypes. This genre was labeled “blaxploitation”, with the NAACP officially coining the term alongside the formation of the Coalition Against Blaxploitation. The NAACP, backed by other critics, flagged these movies for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about the Afrikan community in amerikkka.

Although originally produced by Afrikan people, featuring Afrikan people, for Afrikan people, the greed within Hollywood took advantage of what they saw as a profitable genre to exploit, leading to white influence seeping into the production of afrikan films: blaxploitation. Despite the exploitation from white Hollywood, Afrikan stories were somewhat finally able to be told to a larger audience through these films, including Afrikan social issues that were previously censored from mainstream media which was monumental for the 70s. 

As a sacrifice for working in these roles, Afrikans had to depict stereotypes in these movies, which was then fed to the rest of Afrikan amerikkka, who undoubtedly were drawn to these movies as they were the only representation at the time. This perpetuated an endless cycle of creating these movies to please the audiences, and the audiences only being able to turn to these films for representation.

Despite being impactful in terms of pushing Afrikan actors into the spotlight and giving actors roles that extended beyond subservience to their white counterparts, it did so by exploiting Afrikan stereotypes using Afrikan labor. Blaxploitation assisted in using harmful stereotypes for entertainment, essentially forcing Afrikan actors into another role of servitude. This time, the role of servitude is one that is disguised and repackaged to be sent off to Afrikan moviegoers.

Acknowledging its controversial impact in amerikkkan culture, we must also accept that this allowed for cinema to reach a new audience. The featuring of Afrikan actors as the lead characters in movies such as Super Fly and Blacula, influenced more Afrikan people to turn to the cinema for entertainment. The question we must ask is if this “inclusion” was harmful or helpful to shaping our futures, imaginations, and capacity for struggle.

The controversy surrounding blaxploitation reveals a deeper issue within Hollywood, a fundamental contradiction that allows for a severe lack of representation and an inability to be free within a “creative space.” Hollywood was never meant for everyone. When blaxploitation began to become more popularized, it came at a time when Afrikan actors could hardly find work in the industry. Afrikans were able to be featured in movies in roles that weren’t second to their white costars and could be featured in a film with only other Afrikan people.

Blaxploitation generated inspiration among the Afrikan creative community, specifically in terms of its cinematic style, with future generations leaving behind most of the heavy harmful stereotypes and adopting a focusing on Afrikan life. 

To move forward from the harmful representation of Blaxploitation, we must divest from the external validation of white Hollywood. We must create room within our own communities that allows for Afrikan producers, directors, and actors to pursue work that is meaningful and tells real and raw stories, helping to influence future generations of Afrikans. Hollywood is not responsible for saving us as the mainstream entertainment industry and media function to legitimize the state and the status quo: oppression, degradation and violence against Afrikan people. Understanding this, we are provided with new opportunities to recenter ourselves and redefine what creativity, success and storytelling should look like within our own communities.

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CampusCommentaryNewsWorld

Hypocrisy and Censorship

by Nadine Melanesia Black
written by Nadine Melanesia Black

An oppressive silence fills classrooms when students bring up topics surrounding Palestine and the encampment to almost any UCLA educator, dancing around the topic anytime it is mentioned in relation to what we are learning in class, which has left me puzzled as this is a glaring contradiction.

On Sept. 5 UCLA outlined a “Four Point Plan for a Safer, Stronger UCLA” that claims to focus on “enhancing community safety and well being, fostering a culture of engagement, learning and dialogue across difference, prompting freedom expression in line with University of California policies, and continuing to evaluate how to support our diverse community.” Through these four points, UCLA admin is further repressing students’ freedom of expression by regulating how one expresses themselves under the guise of creating a “safer campus environment.” Even within UCLA’s mission statement they claim to want to “ensure freedom of expression and dialogue, in a respectful and civil manner, on the spectrum of views held by our varied and diverse campus communities” and to have an “open and inclusive environment that nurtures the growth and development of all faculty, students, administration and staff” through debate and critical inquiry.

The hypocrisy of the facade that UCLA puts on for admitted students who are eagerly awaiting to attend a university to have fulfilling discussions and debates on current topics in comparison to the reality of silencing their student population is jarring. 

How is it that Palestine is a central part of the current global political discourse, yet this is rarely talked about in the classes of the Amerikkka’s “#1 public university”? In emails regarding the encampment, why is it that the former Chancellor Gene Block dedicated only a measly sentence about the immense suffering of Palestinians but claims to not take a side?

Students are being punished for exercising what they have learned at this school, including ideas surrounding how social norms can be challenged to gain more rights for marginalized people, with courses relaying acts of resistance throughout history via both physical and online spaces. The absence and censorship of educational safe spaces for conversations surrounding Palestine disallows for any growth or learning for students.

Monitoring and censoring what is being said in classrooms won’t stop student’s ideas and hunger for change, but only further highlights UCLA’s compliance with the mass killings in Palestine.

UCLA admin cannot continue to ignore the pleas of their students. Cries against the oppressive system of white supremacy that UCLA benefits from are drowned out in favor of maintaining the UC’s tidy and rule-following facade. If this school wants to truly comply with their mission statement, they would need to allow for students to express themselves in and out of the classroom.

At the bare minimum, discussion and dialogue around Palestine is essential in educational spaces, and banning this exchange just shows what UCLA stands for, whether they explicitly say it or not. However, a conversation alone is not enough to elicit true change against an oppressive system. Continuous resistance against the status quo and forcing the administration and government to hear our voices must be practiced as a collective community.

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