#BlackExcellence and #BlackGirlMagic are for all of us: Black influencers’ rejection of neoliberal logics and post-feminist discourses of entrepreneurship

Situated within feminist media communication studies, this project uses critical technocultural discourse analysis to examine how #BlackExcellence emerges as a form of “digital Black practice” among Black women influencers and users. This study is framed within the context of the George Floyd protests in 2020 and 2021 as mainstream media outlets appropriated Black Excellence rhetoric in columns, listicles, and videos following this watershed moment. Analyses of popular press articles about Black influencers, discourse about race and labor on #BlackTumblr, influencer content on Instagram and YouTube, and interviews with Black influencers comprise the dataset. By leveraging intersectional platform affordances and racialized erotic capital, Black influencers subvert neoliberal and post-feminist logics undergirding digital labor by virtue of the racialized work they are expected to perform, challenging exceptionalist rhetoric. I argue that Black influencers’ uniquely racialized, gendered work contests the assumption that influencer labor is a natural outgrowth of neoliberal conditions.