How to Live (after we die): On Protest, Social Media, and queer Black death

Introduction: The Viral Black Dead

My adolescence is marked by the viral Black dead as dead Black people dot chapters in my life and mar my psyche. Simultaneously, and perhaps equally correlated, my psyche is also transformed by the internet. These two have come together to greatly contextualize my understanding of myself and my position in this social order. I am not alone. The dead as social media stars have transformed the world. Over the past 15 years, the world has had to deal with the advent of the internet.

In my bookmarks of Black death, I start with Trayvon. I jump to Mike Brown. Then, Eric Garner and Sandra Bland. I jump to George Floyd. And for the sake of this essay, I land at O’Shae Sibley. I am aware that others have their bookmarks, but mine correspond to the way that each of these deaths represents different moments of my life, my organizing and political practice, and my growing internalization of technology. Again, I am not alone. Movement leaders, governments, corporations, and communities have their attachments to their own viral Black dead which has changed them and their practices, too. Despite how different our bookmarks might be, George Floyd’s death was placed at the center of all our lives. Amid the pandemic came a tragedy that catapulted the viral Black dead to a new stardom. By attracting millions of dollars, views, and supporters, chiefly through social media attention, Floyd demonstrated that a movement is not valid if not online.

Sibley and the 8/4 Protest

On July 29th, 2023, O’Shea Sibley was fatally stabbed by a 17-year-old teenager, Dmitriy Popov, who claimed Sibley’s vogue dancing and playing of Beyonce music was offensive to him. The incident occurred in Midwood, Brooklyn at a gas station after Sibley and his friends were confronted by a group of men hurling homophobic and anti-Black animus at them. Although the action of an individual/group is not the same as the state-sanctioned police killings like that of Eric Garner, Sibley’s death was emblematic of the collateral, senseless, and gratuitous violence that anti-Blackness elicits. Given that he died dancing while Black and queer, the ballroom community (Black queer and trans artistic community responsible for creating vogue dancing) mobilized to turn vogue dancing from an act of artistic expression to “an act of resistance” at a memorial ball/protest on August 4th at the gas station where he was killed. ^[1]Though performative, ballroom–like other Black cultural modes–can become ritual and sacred, developing a spiritual energy that binds community. ^[2] Whether trying to apprehend the energy of the ballroom community or responding to the anti-Black homophobia evident in killing someone for vogue dancing, the captive maternals who organized the gathering sought to use vogue as a tool to resist anti-Blackness. ^[3] For political philosopher Joy James, captive maternals are those whose resistance to the state stabilizes, rebirths, and fortifies the state’s capacity to commit violence. For James, captive maternals operate within various zones: the first is protest, the second is organized movement, the third is marronage, and the fourth is war resistance. In a post-Floyd world, we have learned that even when protests go viral and cause millions to hit the street our formations must do more to counter violence, they must reach other zones. It is not enough to create power in numbers. It is not enough to be on the streets. It is not enough for our protest to engage the allure of our culture. The 8/4 protest for Sibley illuminated the limitations of culture as a modality of resistance to anti-Blackness as well as the diminishing power of the use of technology within movement.

The vogue protest was fundamentally about spectacle. This isn’t novel; rather vogue protest joins a lineage of non-violent resistive tactics that function to produce a non-violent performance in contrast to experiences of brutalization. Emmett Till’s indisputable impact as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement was due to Mamie Till Mobley’s (his mother) decision to have an open-casket funeral. Images of Till’s mutilated corpse in Jet magazine and The Chicago Defender shocked the nation and continue to have lasting political resonance as it was seared into the minds of the American public.^[4] Nonviolent organizers of various sit-ins and marches, like the 1965 march from Montgomery to Selma, were aware of the impending violence that resulted in Bloody Sunday.^[5] Their confrontation with the state garnered media coverage as video and photographs documented their brutalization. From Mobley to the SCLC and SNCC, all of these people consciously sought to manipulate visual technology and media to document movement and engender change. Therefore, nonviolence was spectacle and performance, and subsequently, documentation of this spectacle became a logical outcome and standard of protest.

Within Ballroom culture, events called “balls” are organized into various competitive categories like runway, realness, performance, face, etc. At balls, communities of Black and brown queer people affectionately called “houses,” come together to challenge one another within the categories to garner respect and cash prizes. In his text, And the Category Is: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community, cultural critic Ricky Tucker aptly highlights that all balls are not community-centered as often ballroom will coordinate with corporations or celebrities as a way for folks to garner access, money, or potential professional opportunity.^[6] Thus, the ball is a performative gathering that can range from communal to corporate depending on who is in the audience. At its most potent, a ball is a community gathering— almost churchlike — whose spirit energizes and galvanizes. Though often breathtaking and moving, ballroom was not designed to foment war resistance. So when mobilized as protest at the 21st century post-George Floyd gathering, vogue invited various spectatorship because, if not actively dancing, one was left in the role of audience member or bystander. Especially as many present at the protest were not within or familiar with the ballroom community, the event lost its usual communal essence and power. Therefore, as a diverse protest “audience” of a 21st-century protest, phone and digital cameras gave the majority of protesters their only function: documentarians or social media influencers. Though not unique to this protest — as people have danced at many recent protests — this form of spectatorship at the vogue protest opened this performance of nonviolence to an array of questions surrounding the efficacy of the protest.^[7] Was documentation the highest leverage goal of the vogue-centered protest? Is the sole outcome of this documentation of non-violence views and visibility? Lastly (and most importantly), what function do people have in that type of formation outside of audience members?

Videos of the protest garnered views in the millions. Given the attention, the state recognized the incident as a hate crime and the suspect was eventually turned in but vogue vis-a-vis social media did not function to mount a response to violence.^[8]  This is not a condemnation of dancing and artistic creativity, but what would have happened if the gathering of the ballroom community resulted in a demonstration that trained self-defense? In that scenario, people move from gathering because they are connected to the dead through sympathy, grief, or identity formation/validation to an organized formation preparing to better respond to violence when it inevitably returns. But protesters did not leave more prepared. Protesters left with more gigabytes of protest footage to be posted. Though often seen as a useful organizing tool, social media is more often a tool of counter-insurgency. Social media and its omnipresence co-opt movement because it creates a simulacrum for democracy. These digital spaces for sharing media and conversation, act as a replacement for a democracy’s physical forum for debate or conversation. Instead of communicating in person, social media gives us the ease to digitally commune and organize. We reach millions in views and retweets but this digital forum is owned by corporations in coordination with capital accumulation and state surveillance. With algorithms explicitly designed for our addiction and greater intrusions into our privacy, social media grants access but also sets the terms for the potency of movement. ^[9] Under the terms and conditions of these platforms, they can determine who our community consists of and what becomes viral. With their proclivity toward surveillance, we often feel the eye of the state and its inevitable repression. Neoliberal tech thus disarms movements by engendering desires for visibility and safety over communal protection and freedom. Therefore, if social media is the greatest tool of a protester, the media company can project and dictate the outcome. Within this modality of protest, O’Shae Sibley only functions within the nexus of the viral Black dead. There is no transcendence for him.

In thinking about the conundrum of the vogue protest, Black Twitter Afro-pessimists mounted critiques on the days before August 4th. On August 2nd, one user wrote that “…you don’t fight militarized fascism by doubling down on your cultural creativity, even and especially when it looks like that is what they are attacking. you (sic) fight militarized fascism with guns, bombs, espionage, strategy. said (sic) with love.” ^[10] On the same day, also on X, another user wrote“…I know our instincts are to stabilize. But, ending the world for O’Shea Sibley is still an option.” ^[11] As often characteristic of Afro-pessimists, these thinkers aptly contextualize the totalizing nature of anti-Blackness within this world order. The community of protesters and those who organized the protest could not confront our world order with vogue dancing. The second thinker recognized the organizers of the protest as captive maternals because their resistive and (re)productive labor stabilized the state. This is because the protest only created enough rupture for the state to recognize the hate crime and find the suspect, which isn’t liberatory. At the same time, how can these critiques, levied within the forum of Elon Musk’s recent acquisition, be taken seriously? An online proposition for espionage is automatically compromised because you also “don’t fight militarized fascism” on Twitter. What community of people would end the world for Sibley as the second tweet suggests? It could not be a community created on social media because that is not a community; it is an echo chamber forged by an algorithm connecting demographic data. These thinkers are rightfully grounded in an understanding of ontological death, but outside of X, they are just words. Therefore, a call for the “ending of the world” becomes largely rhetorical. A call toward “guns, bombs, espionage, strategy” on X is also rhetorical. Though critically rich, these thinkers demonstrate yet another limit of social media’s ability to truly undermine anti-Blackness. O’Shea Sibley did not need rhetoric; he needed a thorough, grounded protection apparatus.

The ballroom community has developed a real community formation. Yet their response to violence must combine both art and militancy to develop a capacity for self-defense. The captive maternals who organized the gas station vigil might have developed strength in numbers with vogue but they only existed within the first zone of the captive maternal. Their agapic love created a community capable of gathering to respond to hate but our cultural community building must “return to the source” and be matched by sharper political acumen to reach the other zones.^[12]

Conclusion: How to Live (after we die)?

If I was confronted by a homophobic white supremacist with a penchant to kill, would I be ready to defend my life? In fact, as a Black queer person in proto-fascist America, am I allowed to defend myself from any violent homophobe? No. Though I know my personal experience is not representative of all Black queer people, I am not sure if the formations being created to resist violence are preparing anyone for real self-defense. With a rise in hate crimes, our response to violence can not be grounded in pleas to the state through performances for social media. The protesters chanted and danced, and then Sibley’s blood dried. Critics called for the end of the world, but the world remained the same and then the algorithm lost interest. The critics understood the stakes of overcoming anti-Blackness but Sibley’s blood remained dry as the state was unmoved by a public tweet calling for espionage. Why meet knives with dance and rhetoric?

In this political moment, movement has arisen not because of the death of its leaders but because of the viral death of ordinary people. Our intimacy with technology has birthed the viral Black dead. Now we manage the undeniable attention connected to the virality of every gratuitous Black killing. Attention in this world order thus has a political economy. Arts organizations, news media, and others only recognized Sibley as a talented dancer in the fame of his death. Many did the same with others within the viral Black dead. This opportunism and perverted desire, a necrophilia of sorts, is part of our modern problem.

Essex Hemphill in his poem, “Heavy Breathing” wrote, “Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?” Our current tactics have us walking very pleasantly toward annihilation. ^[13] We live in the wake of continuous violent death that becomes infamous, subsequently humiliating us and then paralyzing our response. All we offer to the dead is 15 seconds of fame. All we give to the living is more distraction. In the face of violence, it is important to reclaim our attention and uncover new ways of overcoming violence. In this, it is not fear that we overcome, as that’s impossible. It is a lack of preparation. While either materially dead or ontologically dead, how do we live (after we die)?

Bibliography

Alfonseca, Kiara,  Aaron Katersky, and Meredith Deliso, “Teen charged with murder as hate       crime in killing of NYC dancer O’Shae Sibley,” ABC News, August 5, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-charged-murder-hate-crime-killing-nyc-dancer/story?id=102027718

Bhargava, Vikram R., and Manuel Velasquez. “Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction.” Business Ethics Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2021): 321–59.          doi:10.1017/beq.2020.32.

Cabral, Amilcar. Return to the Source: Selected Speeches by Amilcar Cabral. ed. Africa Information Service. New York. NYU Press, 1973.

Hemphill, Essex. “Heavy Breathing,” Ceremonies. New York: Plume Books, 1992.

James, Joy. “The Womb of Western Theory: Trauma, Time Theft, and the Captive Maternal.” Carceral Notebooks 12, no. 1 (2016): 253-296.

Kryn, Randall. “James L. Bevel The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement,” in We Shall Overcome, Volume II, ed. David Garrow (New York: Carlson Publishing Company, 1989).

Mulkey, Jordan (@jatella). “I’m going to say this: you don’t…”, X, August 2, 2023, https://twitter.com/jatella/status/1686774155981602823.

Native Son (@nativesonnow), “Justice For O’Shae Sibley!!! Vogue As An Act of Resistance.” Instagram, August 2, 2023. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvd7B2asHz9/?img_index=1.

Rosner, Elizabeth, and Natalie O’Neill. “Protester twerks at cops during Occupy City Hall demonstration,” New York Post, July 1, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/07/01/nyc-protester-twerks-at-cops-during-occupy-demonstration/

Tucker, Ricky. And the Category Is…: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2022), 77.

Whitfield, Stephen J. A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 23.

Wilcox, Rebecca (@_rawilcox). “I know our instincts are to stabilize…”, X, August 2, 2023, https://twitter.com/_rawilcox/status/1686896855760703488?s=12&t=A7aaOTCZu9dPXhKst-Bovg

^[1] Native Son (@nativesonnow), “Justice For O’Shae Sibley!!! Vogue As An Act of Resistance.” Instagram, August 2, 2023. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvd7B2asHz9/?img_index=1.

^[2] Ricky Tucker, And the Category Is…: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2022), 77.

^[3] Joy James. “The Womb of Western Theory: Trauma, Time Theft, and the Captive Maternal.” Carceral Notebooks 12, no. 1 (2016): 253-296.

^[4] Stephen J. Whitfield. A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 23.

^[5] Randall Kryn, “James L. Bevel The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement,” in We Shall Overcome, Volume II, ed. David Garrow (New York: Carlson Publishing Company, 1989).

^[6] Tucker, And the Category Is…, 68.

^[7]  Elizabeth Rosner and Natalie O’Neill, “Protester twerks at cops during Occupy City Hall demonstration,” New York Post, July 1, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/07/01/nyc-protester-twerks-at-cops-during-occupy-demonstration/

^[8] Kiara Alfonseca, Aaron Katersky, and Meredith Deliso, “Teen charged with murder as hate crime in killing of NYC dancer O’Shae Sibley,” ABC News, August 5, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-charged-murder-hate-crime-killing-nyc-dancer/story?id=102027718

^[9] Vikram R. Bhargava and Manuel Velasquez, “Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction.” Business Ethics Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2021): 321–59. doi:10.1017/beq.2020.32.

^[10] Jordan Mulkey (@jatella), “I’m going to say this: you don’t…”, X, August 2, 2023, https://twitter.com/jatella/status/1686774155981602823.

^[11] Rebecca Wilcox (@_rawilcox), “I know our instincts are to stabilize…”, X, August 2, 2023, https://twitter.com/_rawilcox/status/1686896855760703488?s=12&t=A7aaOTCZu9dPXhKst-Bovg

^[12] Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches by Amilcar Cabral. ed. Africa Information Service (New York. NYU Press, 1973).

^[13]Essex Hemphill, “Heavy Breathing,” Ceremonies. (New York: Plume Books, 1992), 4.