Looking After the Dead: The Collective Gaze in Representations of Anti-Black Violence

Abstract

This article addresses the role of the collective Black gaze in media representations of anti-Black violence in the U.S. Studies and critiques of these images have traditionally centered on harmed victims at the cost of overlooking living witnesses. The author therefore turns to the African American communities pictured in media images surrounding the murders of Emmett Till (1955) and George Floyd (2020). Placing images of Black community at the center of analysis shifts the focus away from Black death and suffering, toward the lasting impact African Americans have had on the circulation and reception of anti-Black violence in the media. Till’s funeral and Floyd’s death are pinpointed as marking a departure from earlier incidents of racial violence. This article introduces the concept of the collective Black gaze – a mode of looking historically practiced by African American communities in response to the hypervisibility of anti-Black violence. The collective Black gaze not only offers a framework for reconfiguring racialized modes of looking, but it also functions as an act of care through which a community looks after their dead.