Black women in “Améfrica Ladina”

metaphors of reverse racism in online comments about the black Ariel

Abstract

This work analyzes comments posted on Twitter (nowadays X) about the film adaptation: The Little Mermaid, 2023, starred by Halle Bailey, a black woman. The goal is to examine how the metaphors of the myth of reverse racism produce effects of meaning in comments about the black actress who plays the film’s protagonist. To develop the theoretical-analytical framework, we establish a dialogue between materialist Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux, 1988 [1975]; Orlandi, 2005; Cestari, 2017; Modesto, 2021) and discussions on race relations promoted by the social sciences (Gonzalez, 1984; 1988; Carneiro, 2011; Del Priore, 2020; Akotirene, 2020). The relationship between these theoretical fields contributes to the investigation as far as it allows us to: (i) read gender and race intersectionally; (ii) articulate language, subject, and ideology; and (iii) understand how historicity frames the production of meanings that signify the black population in general, and black women in particular. Finally, the analyses reveal that the myth of reverse racism produces the effect of a false symmetry, suggesting that black and white subjects are affected by the same matrix of racial oppression.