Alternative/Alternablack and my new love Jahcoozi

Not to go against my homie here but I’ve got a bit of a different approach to the whole Afrogeek/alternablack implied binary opposition.

Afrogeek, them’s be folks. Those who lay outside the habitual bounds of what modern culture considers Black. Maybe not the coolest kids on the block, the afrogeeks generally start on the fringes and get absorbed into dominant U.S culture when something that they’ve created can be integrated into the mechanism of capitalism, i.e. they make something that can be bought or sold. The product generally gets (hi)jacked while the culture of the black geek gets fused into popular images of blackness. Hip-hop is a prime example of third stage geek culture. I predict the same thing will happen with black speculative fiction, and anything that comes from the margins.

Alternablack is that which increases black. It arises concentrically with the afrogeek as it situates itself in improper relation to what the dominant culture considers blackness. If blackness performs its role as a culture, a race, and ethnicity, in polar opposition to Whiteness (“It’s black because its not white.”) then Alternablack functions as the inclusive element of humanity which refuses binary constructions. Just as the color black can absorb all other colors and still function as black, so too does the alternablack incorporate the seemingly non black in order to re-contextualize our notions of blackness.

WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST WRITE?

Simple the front woman of Jahcoozi, Sasha, in my mind is an alternablack because she is Sri Lankan and sings about being Black. She increases the capacity of blackness. Oh yeah, and she’s hotter than cayenne pepper on a demon’s ass. Yeah, she want’s to marry me. At least that’s my mental.