On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination

Pinpoints

by Nicole R. Fleetwood

What meaning does the American public attach to images of key black political, social, and cultural figures? Considering photography’s role as a means of documenting historical progress, what is the representational currency of these images? How do racial icons “signify”?
 
Nicole R. Fleetwood’s answers to these questions will change the way you think about the next photograph that you see depicting a racial event, black celebrity, or public figure. In On Racial Icons , Fleetwood focuses a sustained look on photography in documenting black public life, exploring the ways in which iconic images function as celebrations of national and racial progress at times or as a gauge of collective racial wounds in moments of crisis.
 
Offering an overview of photography’s ability to capture shifting race relations, Fleetwood spotlights in each chapter a different set of iconic images in key sectors of public life. She considers flash points of racialized violence in photographs of Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till; the political, aesthetic, and cultural shifts marked by the rise of pop stars such as Diana Ross; and the power and precarity of such black sports icons as Serena Williams and LeBron James; and she does not miss Barack Obama and his family along the way. On Racial Icons is an eye-opener in every sense of the phrase.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Research, Race

144 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2015

About the author

Nicole R. Fleetwood is Professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University. Her work on art and mass incarceration has been featured at the Aperture Foundation and the Zimmerli Museum of Art, and her exhibitions have been praised by the New York Times, The Nation, the Village Voice, and the New Yorker. She is the uthor of On Racial Icons and the prizewinning Troubling Vision.

Reviews

[David Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicole Fleetwood’s new book, On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination is timely, insightful, and representative of the type of work we need inside and outside of academia. Exploring “how we – as a broad American public – fixate on certain images of race and nation, specifically the black icon,” (1) Dr. Fleetwood “focuses on the significance and value of key black political, social, and cultural figures and the meaning that the national public attaches to such icons” (1). Discussing Trayvon Martin, President Barack Obama, Diana Ross, LeBron James, Serena Williams, among others, Dr. Fleetwood reflects the contradictions and complexities of black icons as signs and symbols, indexes and narratives; she notes the many ways these icons are brought to life, their utility as sources of profit and ideological derision, evidences of racial progress and communal inertia. She elucidates how black icons exist as source of hope and reminders of the nightmares of white supremacy. The timeliness of the work is unquestionable.

“As examined through various examples, the racial icon occupies a special place in the nation’s imagination as a figuration and negotiation of a U.S. racial history, the democratic promise of ‘our country,’ and the ongoing struggle against racial injustice. Racial iconicity has served as a vibrational force – an effective energy – that leads to our valuation of the people we venerate and the devaluation of the lives of many others. The icon functions in relation to the polis (as in citizenry, the citadel, goverance) as national public and counterpublics continue to define, debate, imagine memorialize, and canonize its historical legacy” (111)

Her reflection on James and Williams, President Obama, Trayvon Martin, and #BlackLivesMatters is indicative of the book’s engagement with contemporary discourses and social movements. I found myself reflecting on how the book helps us understand The New York Times and its disgusting piece on Serena Williams’ body, or the emergent reflections of President Obama’s presidency. The work pushes readers forward, to think about the iconography of Bree Newsome or Sandra Bland. The book works with the dynamism of our moment, providing readers with the language and analytical framework to think through. It looks back, stands in the present, and looks forward.

While also calling for ‘deceleration’ (8) as a necessary intervention of the spectacle of hyper consumption and the technology of neolberalism, she offers readers the tools to engage and think through the daily circulation of black icons. Providing a bridge between conversations of black visual culture, historiography, black cultural studies, social media debates, #BlackLivesMatters, and our post-civil rights movement, On Racial Icons models the type of interdisciplinary and grounded work so essential for the moment. Rigorous and engaged with important theorists and commentators of our moment, it moves beyond the walls of the academy. It’s mission, especially in our current moment, is robust, offering the words, a model, and tools to move the conversations and transform the landscape.

[Ayanna Dozier · Rating 4 out of 5]

On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination by Nicole Imagination is an extremely accessible text about the way that iconicity shape Black individual's representation in society. Nicole Fleetwood examines Black iconicity in the United States is shaped by the peculiar brand of hypervisibility placed upon Black bodies in the States. This is to say, that Black bodies bear the presence of invisibility in society while subsequently being marked and targeted for erasure and violence.

Fleetwood examines the difficult racial and gender lines that Black icons have to navigate when thrust into the spotlight, with many of these lines being deeply entangled (and informed by) respectability politics. In her analysis on Diana Ross, Fleetwood details the careful racial politics of femininity that Ms. Ross needed to perform in order to not be perceived as a threat to white America, and by extension, white femininity (62). By contrast, Fleetwood provides an analysis on Serena Williams to demonstrate what happens when Black women's bodies are perceived as excess and threatening to white femininity (105). Although Fleetwood uses cultural and critical race studies to aide her argument, On Racial Icons is an accessible read and is clearly intended to be read by a wide, diverse audience. Fleetwood writes difficult and complex concepts in extraordinarily concise and coherent prose.

[Petty Lisbon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book. I really enjoyed the last chapter on Black athletes and the history of how the public treats them. I liked the conclusion as well.

[Nia Paz · Rating 4 out of 5]

insightful, moves away from iconography during some points and diverges into politics which was still a good read but not necessarily focused

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great and interesting read for my celebrity studies course.

[Curtis Chamblee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book read it off and on during the spring semester. Need a book that you can use with visual rhetoric and blackness this is a great starting point.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fleetwood looks at the formation and negotiation of racial icons. Very short, I would have liked to see her explore this negotiation more.