6 Liquid Racism and Road Culture(s)
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Nathan Kerrigan
Abstract
This chapter focuses on ‘road culture’, a contemporary Black-influenced street/youth culture emanating from the UK’s urban centres. It explores how persisting inequalities and social exclusion, perpetuated by racist structures, are internalized as personal deficits by young people on road. These processes contribute to a sense of social malaise, which places the subject as the central site of a struggle to alleviate their suffering. This struggle is deeply ambivalent as the liquefied currents of historical racist structures flow through contemporary youth cultural practices, especially at their confluence with popular culture. This process highlights the ways in which an urban youth culture – of which Black youth often take centre stage – is celebrated and commodified while simultaneously and paradoxically maligned and feared. Analysis demonstrates the ambivalent ways young people resist their excluded status, while simultaneously reproduce the tropes underpinning the fears and desires, and power and fantasies connected to historical processes of racism. The chapter concludes by highlighting that this is not a straightforward process of individual agents reproducing the conditions of racism, but demonstrates the ways in which resisting racism is increasingly ambivalent, as the traction required to overcome private troubles often requires the commodification of problematic tropes in popular culture.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on ‘road culture’, a contemporary Black-influenced street/youth culture emanating from the UK’s urban centres. It explores how persisting inequalities and social exclusion, perpetuated by racist structures, are internalized as personal deficits by young people on road. These processes contribute to a sense of social malaise, which places the subject as the central site of a struggle to alleviate their suffering. This struggle is deeply ambivalent as the liquefied currents of historical racist structures flow through contemporary youth cultural practices, especially at their confluence with popular culture. This process highlights the ways in which an urban youth culture – of which Black youth often take centre stage – is celebrated and commodified while simultaneously and paradoxically maligned and feared. Analysis demonstrates the ambivalent ways young people resist their excluded status, while simultaneously reproduce the tropes underpinning the fears and desires, and power and fantasies connected to historical processes of racism. The chapter concludes by highlighting that this is not a straightforward process of individual agents reproducing the conditions of racism, but demonstrates the ways in which resisting racism is increasingly ambivalent, as the traction required to overcome private troubles often requires the commodification of problematic tropes in popular culture.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Introduction: Zygmunt Bauman, Liquidity and Racism 1
- Revisiting the Postmodernity/Liquid Modernity Debate 26
- Race, Postrace and the False Promises of the Postracial State 50
- Liquid Racism and Brexit 73
- Liquid Racism and Education 95
- Liquid Racism and Road Culture(s) 117
- Conclusion: The viscosity of contemporary racism(s) 149
- References 165
- Index 189
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Introduction: Zygmunt Bauman, Liquidity and Racism 1
- Revisiting the Postmodernity/Liquid Modernity Debate 26
- Race, Postrace and the False Promises of the Postracial State 50
- Liquid Racism and Brexit 73
- Liquid Racism and Education 95
- Liquid Racism and Road Culture(s) 117
- Conclusion: The viscosity of contemporary racism(s) 149
- References 165
- Index 189
