Ethnic Studies

In Death 24x a Second Laura Mulvey argues that cinematic images belie the deathlike qualities of still photography because of their ability to invoke the appearance of life through motion. This essay examines film and video projects that use found footage and still images from the Black Power era by redeploying them in experimental film and digital formats. Often highly

In 1985, 108 of every 100,000 U.S. residents were incarcerated in some form of prison facility (county, state, federal). Despite continuous national declines in crime, by the 1997 that figured had nearly doubled to 212 of every 100,000 U.S. residents (DOC). These statistics, shocking enough in their own right, are even more shocking when read in relation to the rest of the world. The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world possibly as much as half a million more than Communist China (Schlosser). In states such as California that lead the United States and the world in the creation and development of a prison industrial complex and implementation of an oppressive "law and order" culture, that figure is expected to grow astronomically into the new millennium. The case for prisons as a growth industry in California simply cannot be overstated. A report written in December 1998 states: California now has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world, a system 40 percent bigger than the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The state holds more inmates in its jails and prisons than do France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands combined. The California Department of Corrections predicts that at the current rate of expansion, barring a court order that forces a release of prisoners, it will run out of room eighteen months from now. (Schlosser)

On February 15 2013, George Zimmerman's brother appeared on an episode of the television show "Real Time with Bill Maher" to exonerate his brother. He did so on the basis that his brother, as a Latino, was not capable of racism because he and his family were not only descendants of slaves but were also victims of and sensitive to anti-Latino racism. In an age of "colorblindness" that seeks to put a history of anti-Black violence under constant erasure, we have to be very clear that the case of Trayvon Martin is not simply about racism. Instead we must view it in the context of a history of anti-Black violence in the US that is very long and continues to be incredibly pervasive. In order to fully understand the ways in which anti-Black violence has been and continues to be a fixed component of American life, even in an era of "colorblindness," it is necessary to consider the ways in which visual culture helps to create an ideological environment that can transform an unarmed, baby-faced teenage boy into a criminal so dangerous that his mere presence justifies the use of deadly force.

We should be careful ibout using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms "faggot" deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people, such as Richard lell. Homosexuals are not enemies ofthe people.

This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negotiate criminalization and the current situation of what Richard Iton rightfully characterizes as "hyperincarceration." It will explore the ways in which contemporary African American visual culture is engaged in negotiating between the literal material realities and consequences of mass incarceration and aesthetic constructions of violence. While mass incarceration is increasingly becoming understood as "the New Jim Crow" for African American political organizing, Black criminality has become the key lens through which questions of masculinity, class exclusion, gender, and selfhood get negotiated in African American visual culture. This essay will argue that the "subtext of ongoing Black captivity" is the pretext for much of what drives Black action genres and African American representation in general as a key signifier of a racialized identity and as an indicator of a Black subjectivity fraught with complexities of non-belonging.

On February 15 2013, George Zimmerman's brother appeared on an episode of the television show "Real Time with Bill Maher" to exonerate his brother. He did so on the basis that his brother, as a Latino, was not capable of racism because he and his family were not only descendants of slaves but were also victims of and sensitive to anti-Latino racism. In an age of "colorblindness" that seeks to put a history of anti-Black violence under constant erasure, we have to be very clear that the case of Trayvon Martin is not simply about racism. Instead we must view it in the context of a history of anti-Black violence in the US that is very long and continues to be incredibly pervasive. In order to fully understand the ways in which anti-Black violence has been and continues to be a fixed component of American life, even in an era of "colorblindness," it is necessary to consider the ways in which visual culture helps to create an ideological environment that can transform an unarmed, baby-faced teenage boy into a criminal so dangerous that his mere presence justifies the use of deadly force.

In 1985, 108 of every 100,000 U.S. residents were incarcerated in some form of prison facility (county, state, federal). Despite continuous national declines in crime, by the 1997 that figured had nearly doubled to 212 of every 100,000 U.S. residents (DOC). These statistics, shocking enough in their own right, are even more shocking when read in relation to the rest of the world. The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world possibly as much as half a million more than Communist China (Schlosser). In states such as California that lead the United States and the world in the creation and development of a prison industrial complex and implementation of an oppressive "law and order" culture, that figure is expected to grow astronomically into the new millennium. The case for prisons as a growth industry in California simply cannot be overstated. A report written in December 1998 states: California now has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world, a system 40 percent bigger than the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The state holds more inmates in its jails and prisons than do France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands combined. The California Department of Corrections predicts that at the current rate of expansion, barring a court order that forces a release of prisoners, it will run out of room eighteen months from now. (Schlosser)

Damaso Perez Prado, who would later be internationally dubbed the “King of the Mambo” after the success of his music in the US market, was both diminutive and dark, an unlikely symbol for sex and sensuality in the postwar US culture that created the very blonde Doris Day and very tall Rock Hudson (6’5”) as cultural icons. When he shot to stardom in 1955 with his version of the song “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” occupying the number one spot on the music charts for ten straight weeks—it seemed unprecedented. However, the transnational dance and music craze that would be called “Mambomania” was the culmination of years of African American and Afro-Caribbean cultural exchange, which drew on the groups’ shared Africanity but was also fraught with racial politics.