Black cyberfeminism was born out of the desire to elevate the innovative, cultural production of Black users inside techno-culture. Black folks are often touted as poster children for the digital divide, but we are not interested in exploring reasons for the digital divide in this article. Why? Because this approach begins from a deficit mode, never having interrogated how marginalized folks may engage with technology differently. The technical capabilities of Black folks are often overlooked because they don’t always fit within traditional modes of engaging with technology. One size does not fit all, and Black folks are often punished for it.
Hybrid Infrastructures
Moving away from this deficit model of what people don’t have, it is necessary to explore the ways Black users create hybrid infrastructures, recognizing the importance of physical and digital spaces in their technological innovativeness. Let’s engage with this quote from a young human named Darius, given during an interview with me [Kishonna L. Gray] in a Chicago Public Library: “Ain’t no internet at home. Ain’t no Wi-Fi. I stole this Galaxy [Android cell phone]. If I wasn’t here [public library], there’s no telling what I’d be doing. Dam sho’ wouldn’t be Fortnite.”
Upon hearing or reading these words, what might you first direct your attention to? Given additional context that this youth is a Black boy. He’s from Chicago’s southside. He’s from a single parent household. His older brother recently died from gun violence. Traditional methods of researching would automatically pathologize his experience. The deficit model would want to engage with the individual reasons for his family’s realities. Maybe a concerned researcher would engage with the structural barriers leading to his exclusion. Some scholars would totally ignore his actual realities and say, “He needs access to the internet,” thinking that would solve his problems. Some may focus on the criminal aspect of stealing and try to find resources so he can avoid a life of crime.
Many would turn on that white savior complex and activate white guilts and feel bad for this kid because of his disadvantaged status. What the public would fail to do is to explore how—in spite of all this—this young human has found a way to still participate and engage in a space that gives him a temporary break from his realities. The question we immediately asked ourselves when hearing this youth make this comment is “What could we learn from him—from what he has created and designed and constructed? This question allows us to engage with his realities: the structural barriers, institutional oversights, and neglect that inform his experiences. It also forces us to engage with his intersecting identities, which is a core facet of Black cyberfeminism.
Black Cyberfeminism as Black Digital Praxis
Black cyberfeminism concerns itself with three major themes: (1) the social structural oppression of technology and digital spaces, (2) intersecting oppressions experienced in both physical and digital spaces, and (3) the distinctness of marginalized communities in hybrid realms (connecting the digital and physical). Through this framework, we explore the ways identities intersect with technological tools, artifacts, and systems that have been mobilized to draw connections between digital and physical spaces and realities. In this essay, we explore how Black users engage with physical, visual, textual, and oral practices to illustrate how gaming, in particular, can be used as a catalyst for educating and supporting other users of digital technologies (Gray 2020). Gaming, as a medium often outside conversations on Blackness and digital praxis, is becoming a more visible, viable, and legible tool for making sense of Black technoculture. It implores us to make visible the force of discursive practices that position practices within (dis)orderly social hierarchies and arrangements. The explicit formulations of the normative order are sometimes in disagreement with the concrete human condition, as well as inconsistent with the consumption and production practices that constitute Black digital labor, pleasure, and desire.
The development of Black cyberfeminism was invigorated by two simultaneous movements that impacted Black women’s lives in dramatic ways: Gamergate and #BlackLivesMatter. During these movements, Black folks utilized their digital platforms in ways to support women who were advocating for people targeted by harassment campaigns during Gamergate and who were raising awareness about Black lives being targeted by police violence. Using the words of Black creator Kahlief Adams, 2014 was the proverbial back-breaking straw.
I felt like both the gaming space and the real world had hit this level of toxicity that was unsustainable and for the first time in a long time I didn’t know what or how to express how I felt about them. So I sat down, thought about what good could we do in the gaming space and how we could affect change in whatever small way we could as an entity. Then the Eric Garner incident happened and it was the proverbial back breaking straw (Gray 2016 para. 8).
Many Black game players and creators often remark that they have a moral obligation to serve their community and mobilize their platforms for community support even though they “just play games.” Take the killing of Eric Garner by the New York City Police Department, for example. Garner succumbed to a state-sanctioned choke hold by officer Daniel Pantaleo for selling loose cigarettes. His death, captured on video, catapulted the already invigorated #BlackLivesMatter movement, often signaled by the phrase “I can’t breathe.” There was a plethora of responses to the unarmed Black man dying at the hands of the police, including responses from gaming communities. Kahlief Adams, cocreator of the video game podcast Spawn On Me, stated that he wanted to use his gaming and podcasting platforms to bring awareness to deaths of the unarmed by the police. His #Spawn4Good initiative was one of the first to center gaming technologies on discussing #BlackLivesMatter.
Adams used Twitch to stream messages about the experiences of women targeted by Gamergate and the racist treatment of Black people by law enforcement, and he generated funds to help Garner’s family cover burial costs. His efforts were the subject of constant backlash and resistance by gamers who suggested that Twitch was not the platform to express support for #BlackLivesMatter.
While in our previous research we explored how the toxic elements of gaming culture negatively impact the marginalized, it is necessary to get beyond the deficit model to be able to analyze how users like Kahlief use their platforms in positive and uplifting ways. Gamers who livestream may experience racism and harassment, but they also are able to create networks of Black gamers, streamers, and others, ultimately demonstrating the innovativeness of Black digital practices in gaming contexts. From console to mobile gaming to multiplayer and streaming, these spaces have become increasingly transmediated, incorporating visual, oral, and textual media across technological forms of media.
Toward Transformative Games
Take the game Hair Nah as an example. Created by Momo Pixel, Hair Nah is about a Black woman who is tired of people touching her hair. It allows a player to customize an avatar who can then swat away the hands of people trying to touch the avatar’s Black hair. The game quickly resonated with players and went viral. It captured a convergence of powerful contemporary racial and gendered dynamics and histories, from Black hair politics to the history of white supremacy as it relates to the hyper-policing and surveillance of Black women’s bodies. Yet the game’s power stems from its rejection of these histories and its embrace of a virtual and physical clap back. By centering on Blackness and embracing resistance, the game embodies a refusal of erasure. From its conception to reception, Hair Nah exemplifies the yearning for transformative games. By centering the experiences of Black women, the existence of such a game is disruptive in itself. It illustrates the power and potential of using video games, online technology, and game culture to highlight the experiences of Black women and other marginalized communities, while also resisting and otherwise challenging dehumanizing representations.
Hair Nah embodies Black cyberfeminism and the importance of space (both digital and physical). Space does not simply exist as a given but is constructed and affects (and is affected by) those with the most power. In this way, space is not just a passive backdrop to human behavior and social action but is constantly produced and remade within complex relations of culture, power, and difference.
It is this rejection where Black cyberfeminism offers a more critical, constructionist notion of space. In an attempt to make plain the importance of space in the creation and construction of Black women’s identities, this methodological reflection explores how Black women make sense of spaces they occupy that are not traditionally crafted or constructed for them. By interrogating the actual back and forth travel from digital to physical spaces within which Black women engage, we are able to see how they sustain their identities and support social movements both online and off.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the authors and not the American Sociological Association.
