Wilmington, Aug 26, 2020 (Issuewire.com) - With the Black Lives Matters protest in full swing across the world, following the tragic death of George Floyd in the US, a new book brings staggering results showing that racism remains deep-rooted in society and besides, it has taken over social media platforms.
No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media by Luiz Valério P. Trindade examines the main ideological motivations and the embedded meaning of racist jokes on social media aimed at upwardly mobile black women.
Trindade argues that "disparagement humour on social media reveals the deep-seated colonial ideologies still present in Brazilian society". These ideologies, the author argues, "maintain and naturalise white privilege while undermining black women's upward social mobility".
Social media platforms grant these people a powerful mechanism for disseminating hate speech and attract many other like-minded users to engage in the spread of this racist rhetoric. Moreover, "social media allows for the racist discourse to be spread widely and instantaneously in the online environment and echoing for up to three years". The consequence, Trindade says, is the amplification of the negative impacts on the life of the victims.
In addition to that, the book also sheds lights on the main anti-racist discursive strategies championed mostly by black women on social media. On this aspect, the author says that "praising Afro hairstyle seems to represent one of the strongest symbols of resistance and empowerment utilised by black women to deconstruct discriminatory ideologies".
This book is of great interest to humanities and social science students and scholars but also to leaders of non-governmental organisations, human rights advocates, policymakers and educators.
About the author
Luiz Valerio P. Trindade holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Southampton (UK). His main areas of scholarship and research lie in the sociology of race and ethnicity, social representation of ethnic minorities in means of mass communication, critical discourse analysis, and hate speech on social media. He has been published by Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Discover Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Science Space, International Network for Hate Studies, The Conversation, amongst others.
About the book
Title: No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 978-1-62273-796-3
Number of pages: 230
Available at: https://vernonpress.com/book/861
Media Contact
Vernon Press
Source :Vernon Press
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