Palestine in Black and White: Race, Media, and Transnational Solidarity

Greg Burris
American University of Beirut
Wednesday, March 6, 3:00 pm, SSMS 2135

In 2014, many in the United States were indulging in viral media campaigns like the Ice Bucket Challenge and the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot movement. Both eventually went global, even reaching the Middle East, and while some Israelis took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge, a number of Palestinians held up signs of solidarity with the Black protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. Both groups were constructing global racial imaginaries, and if the Israelis were making a claim to whiteness, the Palestinians were instead making a claim to Blackness. This presentation examines the history of Black-Palestinian relations, analyzing linkages that have been fashioned through an array of media forms. Burris argues that these expressions of solidarity are not radical simply because they are Black or Palestinian. Rather, Black-Palestinian imaginaries should be considered radical precisely insofar as they manage to escape the exclusive identitarianisms of the white settler-colonialist projects they contest.

Greg Burris is a film and cultural theorist focusing on race, media, and emancipatory politics. A UCSB alum, he moved to Lebanon in 2015 where he is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the American University of Beirut. He is the author of The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination, Temple University Press.

Sponsored by the Mellichamp Global Dynamics Initiative and the Department of Film and Media Studies

burris flyer.pdf