Black Lives Matter: The Emotional and Racial Dynamics of the George Floyd Protest Graffiti

Abstract

Political Protest Graffiti is an increasingly visible form of rhetoric that provides a democratizing space to enable its disenfranchised peoples to articulate their own narratives. As a form of visual activism, the George Floyd Protest Graffiti acts to historically document the tragic sentiment of the collective protest demonstration and testify to political and racial struggles in America. In this essay, I examine the George Floyd Protest Graffiti as a discursive site to analyze how emotions come into play in its production. With a rhetorical power to communicate ideas and influence public debate, I contend that the Floyd cultural graffiti production functions as a system of socio-cultural negotiations and a political call to arms to collapse structural racism in America.