This Week in Blackness, the George Zimmerman acquittal, and the production of a networked collective identity

The night of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, This Week in Blackness (TWiB!) went livestreaming online with an unscheduled broadcast of their flagship podcast TWiB! Radio. To many, the verdict laid bare the systemic racism that the dominant neoliberal racial discourse of colorblindness works to obscure by emphasizing individual over collective racial identity. TWiB!, which functions simultaneously as both a broadcast-style network and a social media network, created an interactive, multi-media, trans-platform space where listeners and TWiB! staff came together to express their grief and anger. Drawing on longstanding Black traditions of both public and private counter-discourse production, TWiB! rejected colorblindness and reified a Black collective identity at a moment of racial turmoil.