ABSTRACT
In this chapter, an art educator examines how the postmodern artistic device of appropriation is used in both benign and sinister ways, depending on the intention, race, and privilege of the maker. She introduces two politically driven Black performance artists, Dread Scott and William Pope.L, who invite non-white audiences into a conversation about unconscious presumptions of racial identity and the privilege of appropriating sub-cultural traditions. The two artists resist misrepresentation by reclaiming their knowledge of and connection to history. They often counter-appropriate their own racial heritage in outrageous, humorous, and ironic works. The author suggests that the confluence of real time, politics, and art in performance is similar to the documentation of real oppression that has been overwhelmingly present in social media, such as #Blacklivesmatter, after which this chapter is titled.
