Communication Currents

New Series, Vol. 1, No. 7

Childish Gambino’s (a.k.a. Donald Glover) viral music video, “This is America,” received both praise and criticism upon its release on May 5, 2018 for its visual and political messaging and representation of unresolved Black pain and death. While many called the work “iconic,” critics described it as “sadistic” for its erasure of white people from infamous acts of, and general, white violence. Notably, the video is shot in a warehouse—a space inexplicably linked to the storage of commodities. Kesha James, however, contends that Glover smartly uses imitation to repurpose the white gaze (i.e., a racist orientation of viewing that dehumanizes people of color and ultimately reinforces white supremacy) and encourage viewers, especially white viewers, to take pause and reconsider their own consumption of Black pain, a major commodity of white America.  

Drawing on the works of scholars of rhetoric and racial discourse such as George Yancy, bell hooks, Laura Mulvey, Richard Dryer, Amanda Kay LeBlanc, and others, James analyzes how “This is America” strategically thwarts the white gaze, even if just for a moment, by disrupting and making strange familiar depictions of Blackness and Black pain. This analysis is framed by a theory of whiteness in the context of Black popular culture and how Black rap and hip-hop productions rhetorically challenge whiteness and the rhetorical strategy of imitation before providing a breakdown of the ways in which the video uses imitation to inhabit and disrupt the “fetishistic and sadistic violence of the white gaze that commodifies Black pain in the U.S.” The result, a satirization of what hooks famously coined the white gaze’s “eating the Other” and a viewing experience that causes consumers to question the normalization of and desensitization to Black pain and death in the U.S. 

Through social and material (re)production of whiteness, white supremacy logic is repeatedly invested in and upheld through norms which make whiteness appear invisible, when it is in fact a strategic deployment of power and privilege. However, by studying, naming, and creating an awareness of the presence of whiteness, it can be exposed, just as Glover does in his music video, as well as other Black artists before and after him. While white corporations benefit from and promote harmful racial stereotypes, such as criminality in Black men, Black artists use a variety of strategies to subvert racism and disrupt dominant racist discourses but at the same time must contend with their industry’s dependence on racist consumer culture, the white gaze, and continued commodification of Black pain. 

Imitation, a crucial component of Glover’s “This is America,” is used to disrupt and corrupt (racist) practices and images effectively problematizing the original(s) and related assumptions. Through imitation, the familiar practice or image is still recognizable but encourages viewers to see the practice or image through a new lens, exposing its contradictory and problematic nature, and ultimately challenging it. In “This is America,” imitation is used to repurpose the white gaze, in three ways, as identified by James: 1) initially activating the white gaze through strategic use of stereotypically racist images, 2) corrupting these images through imitation, and 3) encouraging the viewers to interpret these images in a new way. What “This is America” makes strange is the commodification of Black pain in the U.S., and how it is used to benefit white America, and white fetishization of Black im/mobility especially as it relates to Black masculinity.  

James tracks Glover’s movement throughout the warehouse, and how it signifies the ways in which the white gaze restricts the free movement of Black men in public spaces to purposes of appropriation and labor or arrests it altogether, a phenomenon that Lisa Flores calls “corporeal politics of stoppage.”  Throughout the video, Glover represents this by performing two racialized scripts of Black masculinity: Thomas Dartmouth Rice’s “Jumping Jim Crow” and the Stagolee. The “Jumping Jim Crow” is a racist imitation of Black pain that was widely circulated at its inception to the benefit of white America (i.e., in terms of entertainment and class mobility) in which white men wore Blackface, sang nonsensical “racialized ditties,” and made exaggerated, contorted movements and facial expressions such as the heel-toe posture, bugged eyes, winks, wide-mouth grins, and high-stepping. Glover performs these movements throughout the video while surrounded by (again, familiar) images of Black pain, chaos, suffering, and death, continuously moving in ways condoned by white supremacy and “relegat[ing] violence and pain to the literal background.” 

The Stagolee, also known as the “dangerous [B]lack killer,” reflects the racist assumption that Black men are dangerous and need to be segregated and restricted, an assumption that was historically, and still is, used to develop public policy criminalizing behaviors associated with Black men. Glover embodies the Stagolee by imitating infamous, but slightly altered, acts of white violence, such as George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin and Dylan Roof’s massacre of the Charleston Nine, featuring himself as the perpetrator of these heinous acts of violence, effectively portraying the invalidation of these (and other) events through whitewashing proclamations of Black-on-Black crime. In the frames immediately following, Glover is briefly immobilized before returning to his performance of the “Jumping Jim Crow,” symbolizing the white gaze’s desire for Black immobility in larger society. Moreover, after these murders, Glover delicately places his weapons on red cloths to be carried carefully away while Black bodies are carelessly dragged off-screen or shown only briefly before the camera pans away as Glover declares, “This is America,” highlighting both the violent, but distant, consumption of and sadistic erasure of Black death in white America. In another scene, Glover makes a symbolic gun gesture with his hands as school children frantically flee, reflecting racist assumptions that Black men are “always already violent, dangerous, and criminal” despite posing no actual threat. In the final scene, Glover relinquishes his “Jumping Jim Crow” performance, trading it for another form of excessive mobility: running for his life from an angry, white mob, representing his confinement as a Black man in America despite his continued commercial success.  

Communication Currents Discussion Questions 

1. The essay discusses the omission of white people from infamous acts of violence in “This is America.” Can you think of other, more recent, notorious acts of white violence where stereotypes of Black men were relevant? How do these stereotypes continue to shape narratives around race in America? How can you use what you’ve learned to confront issues of race, stereotypes, and white supremacy in your own community? 
2. Reflecting on the stereotypes discussed in the essay, can you identify any subconscious racist stereotypes that might influence your perceptions? How might these show up in the media you consume (TV, movies, music)? Can you think of examples where these stereotypes are reinforced or subverted? In what ways can we resist or push back against the consumption of Black suffering for entertainment? 
3. Can you think of other works by BIPOC artists that might serve as tools for confronting whiteness and challenging racist ideologies? How do these works affect you personally, and in what ways might they provoke reflection on race and identity? What are some ways we can expose whiteness in our daily lives, and what challenges might we face in doing so? 

For additional suggestions about how to use this and other Communication Currents in the classroom, see: https://www.natcom.org/publications/communication-currents/integrating-communication-currents-classroom  

About the Author 

Kesha James is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Affiliate Faculty in the Institute of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. 

This essay, by R. E. Purtell, translates the scholarly journal article, Kesha James (2024): “This is America”: repurposing the white gaze through imitation. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 110(1), 7–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2023.2260565