CS 112: Luvvie Ajayi and Black Blackface (Double-length) (08/26/2018)

We discuss the recent fiasco surrounding internet “comic” personality Luvvie Ajayi. We made this double length, so hopefully this makes up partially for the long break we had due to my operation and injuries.Mentioned in this episode:

• The NY Times profile of Luvvie https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/style/luvvie-ajayi-blogger.html
• A breakdown of the Luvvie vs. Tevin Campbell controversy that took over Black Twitter for a week https://thegrio.com/2018/08/18/tevin-campbell-aretha-franklin-tribute-twitter/
• Amanda Seales’s strawman filled rants on IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bmum4wUnbxL/?taken-by=amandaseales and also https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm5_wGGHVqE/?taken-by=amandaseales
• Luvvie’s rambling, circuitous, strawman-filled response essay claiming people were denying her blackness due to her being African https://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2018/08/about-blackness-africanness.html
• Twitter thread of an African conservative commentator on Twitter who used a Black liberal’s attack on her for being conservative as an excuse to launch into a totally unrelated rant bashing Black Descendants of American Slaves, and the Africans and white racists who jumped in her replies to cheerlead her https://twitter.com/obianuju/status/1031917218408411136
• My Twitter thread about the Luvvie controversy: https://twitter.com/RickyRawls/status/1032395205348155392
• Bozoma St. John, the Ghanian-American PR person who recentyl was appointed to help Papa John’s rebreand after a controversy involving it’s founder being racist and using the N-word: https://www.blackenterprise.com/bozoma-saint-john-is-helping-papa-johns-re-brand/. St. John has also been hired in the past to help rebrand Uber, another terrible corporate actor that had its own racism controversies even after hiring her. She also was hired as a human racism shield to help rebrand Apple’s image on diversity issues after they got in trouble for racism.
• Bozoma jumping in on Twitter to defend Luvvie, a fellow African-American, against slander in a way she never has for Black Descendants of American Slaves: https://twitter.com/badassboz/status/1030621722268057601. Note she even name drops and humblebrags meeting Tevin Campbell and attending the Soul Train Awards, even as she simultaneously joins Luvvie in shading him and by implication Black American culture.
• Bozoma St. John repeating the strawman that Luvvie and all her defenders kept saying, claiming that people were questioning Luvvie’s blackness due to her being African https://twitter.com/badassboz/status/1030632447527010304