'Doing good in blackface: a consuming story'

WhiteSpaces Learning Gatherings 2022 #2: Wednesday 30 March 2022

Join us for a conversation on the paper ‘Doing good in blackface: a consuming story’ (2021) by black feminist activist and political theorist, assistant professor at Geneva University (Switzerland) Noémi Michel.

Article summary

This article re-visits failed intervention. I consider the latter as a telling case for understanding racism’s renewal at the crossroads of neoliberal humanitarianism and persisting ideologies of racial innocence in contemporary Europe. Whereas dominant public debates and scholarship tend to locate anti-racism’s most urgent challenges in the struggle against far right-wing populism and extremist white supremacy, I claim that it is no less urgent to grasp how do-gooders’ (anti-)racism (exemplified here by the Swiss section of A.I.) hinders anti-racist efforts. In dialogue with critical race, queer of colour and Black feminist literature, I show that do-gooders take part in complex processes that consume – both by burning and…