Racial contestations in the black lives matter movement: the memoir approach

Abstract

Extensive research has been conducted on racism in African American literature. Much of this literary scholarship has predominantly utilized a fictional approach, thereby marginalizing actual human experiences. This study attempted to fill the gap by examining racial contestations during the Black Lives Matter Movement through memoirs, specifically Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad and When They Call You a Terrorist; A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele. The study was guided by two objectives: To examine the memoiric techniques employed in the selected works and to investigate racial reception by the people of colour in the chosen memoirs. The investigation revealed how binaries range from general contrasts like light/dark and white/black to more complex and culturally significant elements such as man/woman, colonizer/colonized, and self/other. A postcolonial theoretical framework, particularly Edward Said's concept of Orientalism was adopted to examine racial contestations in the selected memoirs. This theoretical strand provided an interpretive framework to interrogate how white supremacists exercise dominance and hegemony over others. The literature review underscored the importance of this study, demonstrating that racial studies have historically subjected people of colour to stereotypes, necessitating the memoir as a tool to counter inherent hegemony. Being qualitative in nature, the study, relied heavily on close reading and analysis of the texts, supported by secondary sources such as journals, dissertations, internet sources, and other relevant materials. The study is organized into six chapters. The first chapter provides the background, outlining the problem, objectives, and research questions. Chapter two covers the literature review, critical reception of the memoirs under scrutiny and theoretical framework, while chapter three discusses methodology and ethical considerations. Chapter four examines the memoiric techniques, detailing the uniqueness of presentation in the memoir genre through truth telling, emotional Journey of the narrator and the first-person narrative voice. Chapter five explores the racial reception by the people of colour,arguing that the cradle of power lies with the hegemon due to white Supremacy and racial stereotyping. Chapter six presents the findings, showing that memoirs, through their unique techniques, diverge from fictional genres in recounting the experiences of people of colour. Furthermore, it demonstrated that the marginalization of the other persists due to white supremacy, which fosters white privilege. As such, future research should investigate how white-authored memoirs portray racial conflicts and explore whether Black Supremacy concept exists. This study is significant as it presents the memoir as an indispensable tool to present actual human experiences.