Blackness has become a political statement and a power dynamic—just like whiteness.
Dr. Koritha Mitchell, author of Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, joins Karen Hunter to discuss whether Blackness is just a social construct and whether it’s time to define what Blackness is once and for all.
About Dr. Koritha Mitchell
Dr. Koritha Mitchell, Ph.D. is an award-winning author, literary historian, cultural critic, and professional development expert. Her research focuses on African American literature as well as violence in United States history and contemporary culture. She examines how texts, both written and performed, help targeted families and communities survive and thrive. Her first book, Living with Lynching, won awards from the American Theatre and Drama Society and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Her second monograph, From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture, appeared in August 2020, was named a Best Book of 2020 by Ms. Magazine and Black Perspectives, and became a CHOICE Academic Title in 2021. She has edited Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), the first book-length autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman, as well as Frances E.W. Harper’s 1892 novel Iola Leroy. Her scholarly articles include “James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings the Blues for Mister Charlie,” published by American Quarterly, and “Love in Action,” which appeared in Callaloo and identifies similarities between lynching and violence against LGBTQ communities.
