An audience perspective on the precarity of Black witnessing

Abstract

From slavery to police brutality, the Black struggle in the United States can be traced in the visual field. The online dissemination of disparate acts of violence against Black men first widely publicized when a witness recorded the beating of Rodney King on a cellphone in 1991, has evolved into a U.S. cultural phenomenon, culminating with the video of the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Insufficient attention has been paid to how audiences with lived experiences of systemic injustice bear witness to such videos. This paper seeks to understand how Black audiences engage with these sites of violence captured on cell phones and disseminated on social media platforms. The paper argues that instead of serving as a tool for accountability, the widespread dissemination of mediated Black suffering has engendered a ceaseless state of anxiety and somber acceptance of the precarity of the Black body in the United States.