Slavery to Liberation- The African American Experience, 2019a

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Chapter 13
Black Radicalism, Black Consciousness, Black History, and
Black YouTube: A New Age Revolution
Cheryl E. Mango
Virginia State University
INTRODUCTION
A new age Black revolution is currently waging on YouTube by passionate African
American social media personalities determined to help Black people defeat and rise
above White supremacy’s boundaries. 1 In recent years, social media sites like Facebook,
Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, BlogTalkRadio, and YouTube have reformatted Black
radicalism in the United States by providing zealous African American activists with an
online platform to boldly express their concerns and gain a following by using the
internet. As a result, significant shifts in Black revolutionary thought or consciousness
and new protest methods have developed in combination with the rapid growth in
human dependency on computer capabilities. 2 The new virtual home for Black
resistance to White-led racial oppression is rooted inside the Black radical tradition of
remaining committed to an idealized, Black liberationist goal of securing self-regulating
social, political, cultural, and economic freedom for people of African descent
worldwide.
Though many African Americans use social media to express their discontent
with racial oppression, the online Black resisters of focus are small in number, yet large
in influence. The Black YouTube rebels in this study are either a part of or affiliated with
the following YouTube channels: BlackNews102; SaNeterTV, BlackMagik363;
BabaTVEveryTimeFire; ZaZa; KnowTheLedgeMedia; YoungPharaoh; SiriusMindz;
1
Jonathan M. Cox, "The Source of a Movement: Making the Case for Social Media as an
Informational Source Using Black Lives Matter." Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11
(2017): 1847-1854.
2
Ibid.