#IfTheyGunnedMeDown: The Double Consciousness of Black Youth in Response to Oppressive Media

Abstract

Following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, at the hands of a white Ferguson police officer in 2014, a social media hashtag emerged drawing attention to the power (and potential bias) of the media in representing Black youth. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown asked the semi-rhetorical question, “Which picture would the media choose to represent me if I were killed by police?” and offered a choice between two contrasting images—one a presumably positive representation and the other stereotypically negative. Through a content analysis of 100 pairs of juxtaposed images from the first 24 hours of the hashtag, I examine the ways Black youth negotiate oppressive media representations and produce their own self-images. Through their strategic political response, the users of the hashtag demonstrate their “double consciousness” in a Du Boisian sense as well as their acute understanding of the specific symbols that mark a Black body as threatening and those that mediate the supposed threat. In doing so, however, they expose the limited number of templates available to them for performing an identity interpreted positively by the mainstream media and broader social world, as well as the continuing role of respectability politics in shaping public perceptions of Black youth.