“From Racial Profiling to Facebook Profiles: Hoods, Hoodies, and Keeping It Real in a Virtual World”
Codes of Conduct - Code Switching and the Everyday Performance of Identity - K. Merinda Simmons
Monica R. Miller [+]
Lehigh University
Monica R. Miller is Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Lehigh University (Fall 2013) and among other publications, author of Religion and Hip Hop (Routledge). Miller currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow with The Institute for Humanist Studies
(Washington, DC), is Co-Chair and founder of Critical Approaches to the Study of Hip Hop and Religion Group (American Academy of Religion) and member of the Culture on the Edge scholarly collective (University of Alabama). Miller is co-author of forthcoming volumes, Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain with Dr. Anthony B. Pinn and rapper Bun B (Bloomsbury Press), The Hip Hop and Religion Reader (with Dr. Anthony B. Pinn) (Routledge) as well as an edited volume on identity, Claiming Identity in the Study of Religion (Equinox). Her work has been featured in a host of regional and national print, radio, live video, and TV news outlets. She has presented her research at colleges, universities, and conferences throughout the U.S., Cuba and Canada.
Description
Wrapped up in the social fervor surrounding Trayvon Martin’s murder, Facebook and other online outlets were inundated with pictures of people wearing hoodies in a show of solidarity for the victims of racial profiling. Real life social problems were met with virtual appeals to authenticity. What was happening here as so many people cutting across social identities proclaimed support for one of those identities? Was the hoodie episode emblematic of a code switch? Do the hoodies of Facebook have any impact on the ’hoods where codes and their breaches are often met with violence as likely from police as vigilantes? And what does this episode suggest about the social maintenance of codes and whose codes count?