11 - “Black Rage” and the Architecture of Racial Oppression

Summary

Deborah Archer employs Lauryn Hill’s 2012 song “Black Rage” as a lens through which the reader can understand the 2014 uprisings based on the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. By flipping the popular American song “My Favorite Things” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music to describe the racism at the nation’s heart and the Black rage it evokes, Lauryn Hill offers a haunting and powerful ode to Black America in “Black Rage.” This chapter will include a close textual analysis of the song and discuss the ways it evokes Black America’s experience of racism and the Black rage which gives fuel to Black resistance. As “Black Rage” was dedicated to the residents of Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the chapter will discuss the systems of racial oppression exposed in the months following the murder of Michael Brown and connect it to the broader architecture of racial oppression in America. By adapting the Rodgers and Hammerstein song, Lauryn Hill is saying that racism, and the Black rage it engenders, are also quintessentially American.