Kelsey Klotz in The Common Reader:
In May 2018, Childish Gambino (Donald Glover’s musical alter-ego) dropped the single “This Is America.” ¹ Critics generated think piece after think piece dedicated to analyzing the video, which was laden with visual symbolism, including references to Jim Crow, the 2015 Charleston Church massacre, police brutality, hip hop tropes, James Brown, and global Black dance moves. What started as a seemingly clear statement—“This Is America”—resulted in a myriad of perspectives as to what exactly America was for Donald Glover.
The song was popular immediately after its release, and it had a resurgence in the renewed Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd. But the song came to my mind again after the January 6 riots at, and in, the United States Capitol Building. In the aftermath, politicians and others seemed to stumble over themselves, insisting one after the other that “this is not America.” It would seem they are correct: the United States boasts the longest-running continuous democracy in the world, and what the world witnessed at the Capitol—an extremist mob attempting to prevent by force the certification of election results—was fundamentally undemocratic. But amid those rushing to claim that “this was not America,” I (and so many others) wondered what America actually was, if not “this.”
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.