IS THIS ENTERTAINING?

Accompanied by a section of “Black Pain as Entertainment” written by Oluwatayo Alewole

“Since the creation of Blackness as a subaltern social category, anti-Black violence has been about spectacle – the creation of a public show – for the entertainment of white people.”
“When slavery and colonialism ended (on paper), the use of anti-Black violence as entertainment didn’t cease, it just transformed. In the US, lynchings became a form of entertainment for white people; over 4,000 Black people were lynched between 1877 and 1950. Families would gather to cheer on the torture and murder of a Black person for crimes real, exaggerated and imagined – the truth didn’t matter because the purpose was to punish a Black person for existing, and make that punishment a spectacle.”