Full video: https://youtu.be/pR6GoPogTwM?si=XP6COp3P3EXR4FcW

(almost verbatim)

Slide 1

Slide 1 Description: The title slide says "ethics in long covid research design" in blue and purple colored font. Underneath it says V. Copeland, Ph.D, MSW with input from Catherine Romatowski and individuals in the tired and wired and recover representative groups.

Audio transcription: Hello my name is Victoria and I wanted to thank the organizing team for inviting me to speak today. Im a policy researcher and social worker with a PhD and masters degree and I’m here today to share some points for reflection from myself and other people with severe manifestations of long COVID. Thank to Catherine and the other groups for feedback on this presentation.

Slide 2

Description: The title says Stats in purple font. On the side there are citations. The stats are as follows: 

• - One of most frequent symptoms after 6 months is post-exertional malaise (n=3762)
• - RECOVER Index PEM was prominent in all but one “subtypes” (n=13647)
• - Health outcomes study 36% of hospitalized patients reported PEM after 3 years 
• - In a RECOVER study (n=13224) people who had COVID-19 were ~ 5x more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS compared to those who did not.

Citations:

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34308300/
2. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2828329
3. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(25)00082-1/fulltext
4. https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11606-024-09290-9

Audio transcription: Today I’m talking about clinical long COVID research and post exertional malaise. For those new to the term, pem is often defined as the prolonged worsening of symptoms following exertion whether that exertion is physical or cognitive. This is not just a form of exercise intolerance. It a serious adverse reaction to exertion and a serious condition. Pem can be temporary but it can also cause permanent worsening of one’s condition. Symptoms can include: syncope, seizures, severe. Neurological disturbances, excruciating pain and muscle weakness, nausea, and extreme sensory sensitivity. According to the research pem was found to be one of the most frequent symptoms following a COVID infection, with patients even reporting pem three years post acute infection. So Why is this important?

Slide 3

Description: title says Stats "Inclusion in Long covid trials" in blue and purple font. Under the title it says who are we missing? And why does it matter?  To the side is a rectangle with three parts. At the top of the rectangle is a green box that says no PEM, accessible. Beneath is a yellow box that says moderate PEM. Access considered. PEM inevitable byproduct. Beneath is a red box that says severe PEM. No access, non inclusion. On the side of the rectangle is text that's says this image os a hypothetical and not based on any research. The bottom of the slide is a citation box: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/9/1/26.

Audio transcription: Well if we know that many people with long COVID also experience pem it’s very important that we take this into account when designing research.  this should not be just an afterthought for researchers but should be considered and planned for when designing trials from their conception.  one study shows that 67% of people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis report crashes that never resolve. And this is vital information to know as we craft new clinical research. 

Here I’m highlighting that people with severe pem, meaning they rarely leave their homes or beds, are often fully excluded from trials. Further, upon hearing testimony from people who have pem but are not fully home or bedbound, they also have to expect pem as an inevitable byproduct of participating in a clinical trial. Although access may be briefly acknowledged by researchers, it is not baked into the research design and thus people with moderate pem risk permanently worsening just to participate in a trial and potentially be helped.

 If people with long COVID and severe PEM are largely stuck in their homes or beds and excluded from trials, is the long COVID research as it stands representative of the full population of people with long COVID? If not what and who are we missing? Further, is it ethical to knowingly conduct trials that may cause long term health consequences ? 

I pause here to acknowledge that Of course this is a difficult discussion to have. many patients fear speaking up for fear of losing the ability to participate in a trial and others fear that they cannot speak up about accessibility when there’s so much political pressure and controversy  around funding long COVID research in general. Patients with severe pem are stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I know some researchers are trying their best to navigate this contentious landscape.

Slide 4 and 5

Description: Just text below. Citation box to the side: 

https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/index.html#xbenefit. 

Audio transcription: But this is still important for us to figure out. I wanted to take us back to the Belmont report. If you have a doctorate you have heard of this before but for those who may not know, in response to  the  violence of the Tuskegee experiments, the National Research Act of 1974 was passed and the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was created. The Belmont report came from this commission in efforts to set guidelines for research involving human subjects.  

One of the three ethical principles in the report is beneficence. Under this principle it states that: 

"Persons are treated in an ethical manner not only by respecting their decisions and protecting them from harm, but also by making efforts to secure their well-being"

"…beneficence is understood in a stronger sense, as an obligation.”

(1) do not harm and (2) maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harms."

Additionally it states that:

“investigators . . .  are obliged to give forethought to . . . the reduction of risk that might occur from the research investigation”

“Risk can perhaps never be entirely eliminated, but it can often be reduced by careful attention to alternative procedures.”

I bring up this point to say that it is not just medical doctors who are responsible for upholding just and equitable care for their patients, but also researchers who are obligated to ethically navigate the risks and benefits of all research involving human participants.

This is not to say that trials should not be happening, but that we may need to become creative about the ways we engage in these trials, as we are dealing with a population of people who are incredibly ill and vulnerable to worsening without proper care.

Slide 6

Description: The title says prioritizing the individual. There's a picture in the center of an unbalanced scale with the left heavier than the right. To the left is text that's says: planning for confounding variables, internal and external validity, and finding constraints. To the right is text that says planning for: well being of trial participants, long term health impact.

Audio transcription: And yes of course this does not happen in a vacuum. It’s important for us to remember that researchers have to contend with planning for confounding variables, and the validity of findings. However we also have to weigh the well-being of patients which is what beneficence is pointing too. I have been on a call before where researchers were saying they cannot provide certain accessibility measures due to potentially muddying the data. However we also need to back these claims with science. 

To what extent will providing access impact the validity of the findings? Is that reduction in validity (either potential or proven) worth potentially disabling a participant by causing repeated or prolonged pem? These are the questions I am hoping researchers sit with.

Slide 7 & 8

Description: Just text as below. The title says beneficent action. 

Audio transcription: Here are some ways that patients have expressed we can reduce pem in trials. 

Reducing exertion: 
More capacious framework for time allotment, while acknowledging trial urgency. Here this is speaking to the need to understand that people with pem need more than one or two days for testing. Making patients choose between a 5-6 hour day of testing or two days of 3-4 hours of testing each may not actually be ethical when we are speaking of people with moderate or severe PEM. That is because even an hour of testing can cause a severe episode of pem. Several hours and back to back days both have ramifications on ones well-being that should be considered.

Use of mobile phlebotemy and at home tests and Requiring PPE at testing sites, and proper ventilation. I am shocked that it has to be stated so often but Infecting someone with COVID at a long COVID trial is just extremely offensive and violent and should not be happening. Providing lists of community resources upon visit. Multiple versions of consent, including plain language, written, and spoken prior to visit. Compensation for least exertional transport to site whether train, rideshare, gurney or wheelchair.

Slide 9

Description: Slide says thank you for watching and listening.

Audio transcription: I hope these questions and points raise some discussions about making more ethical trials and thank you for your time.

Trapped in the Digital Poorhouse: On misogynoir, mandatory reporting, and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

V. Copeland, Ph. D, MSW 

“Whether the Jezebel, mammy, Sapphire, and later the “welfare queen” or even the “strong Black woman” archetype, misogynoiristic portrayals of Black women shape their livelihoods and health. . . . Misogynoiristic caricatures materially impact the lives of Black women by justifying poor treatment throughout all areas of society and throughout US history.” – Moya Bailey[1]

“I imagine an African American mother of three who has worked two jobs to be sure that her family is well cared for, who suddenly is too sick to work at all and can find no explanation. . . . There are thousands of stories just like these. They deserve the strongest effort from their government to refute the image of ME/CFS as a "white person's disease" and to guarantee them a correct diagnosis. I will never stop fighting for this to happen.”  -- Wilhelmina Jenkins[2]

I believe that I am coming around the bend. My limbs no longer feel like they are being pressed down by iron weights, unable to budge regardless of any whispered prayer or herculean physical effort attempted. During these episodes, otherwise called Post-Exertional Malaise or PEM (Grach et al., 2023), the only thing I can do is surrender into the heaviness and lie still for hours. I am lucky. I had not had an episode like this in months. In fact, I considered myself to be significantly improved from the state I have been in for the past three years, where many days I could not lift my own head. As I slowly make my way out of this latest severe episode, I try my best to ignore the deep-seated fear that I am permanently worsening.  Instead, I find myself internally repeating “take it one day at a time”. Although these self-talks help to maintain stability in my mental health (as it is so easy to be hampered down by self-blame), they do little to take away the physiological pain and fatigue that so considerably impact me during an episode of PEM. This is my plight and my curse as someone with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis “MECFS”.

Stress, is what spurred this latest regression. Last week an Adult Protective Services or "APS" investigative worker came knocking on my door for an unannounced visit, just two business days after a slew of questions were sent to me from my In-Home Supportive Services “IHSS” worker from the Orange County Social Services Agency. The questions were so plentiful that I had to ask the worker whether his interrogation was due to some trouble I may be in with the county, to which I wasn’t aware. Based on my own experience with Child Protective Services, I knew that questions from county agencies were seldomly innocuous. Although he replied hastily with “no you’re not in trouble 😊”, just a few days later an investigatory worker came knocking on my door on the grounds of self-neglect. This started a torrential downpour of fear, anxiety, and confusion within me. Although they were not granted access, they said they’d be back. I immediately went into crisis mode, contacting all the attorney colleagues I knew and every legal aid center I could find. Because I am privy to these institutions as a social worker myself, I also consulted the Welfare Institutions Code and APS handbook. Though filled with trepidation, I knew I had to understand my rights.

The mental and physical energy I expended for a week straight on this sapped the few available energy reserves I need to survive every day. Rather than taking care of my needs, I spent my mitochondrial capacity sending emails, filling out online requests, and waiting on hold through my IP Relay app that frequently disconnects service. This required all of my limited energy reserves. As someone with severe MECFS, being able to prepare my own food, eat, and bathe myself is a privilege. The APS report and subsequent investigation was not only unnecessary and traumatic, it also made me feel significantly worse in every way.

Now that the coast is temporarily clear and I am not in imminent threat of caseworker surveillance, I can finally breathe and ask myself the many questions plaguing my mind. Some of these questions I will get into in the later parts of this piece, as many require a review of some key theoretical frameworks and terms including ableism (Lewis & Yancy, 2023), racism (Gilmore, 2007), misogynoir (Bailey, 2021), “matrix of domination” (Collins, 1990), organized abandonment (Gilmore, 2007), and extractive abandonment (Vierkant & Adler-Bolton, 2022). My intention in writing this piece is to better explore the ways in which various ideologies impact the care economy, and how these ideologies lead to a direct and significant impact on our social institutions, communities, and experiences as individuals.

Although my race, gender, income status and ability may not have directly or intentionally led to the specific APS report recounted above, the creation of a process that requires intrusion and surveillance to access “care” means that “care” is deeply steeped in logics of carcerality and eugenics. Consequently, we have come to know that the care economy is influenced by racialized, gendered, ableist ideas about safety, risk, and health. Mandatory reporters, like the one who presumably reported me, do not operate in a vacuum. Under capitalism and thus organized abandonment “care workers” become agents of the state who depend on the utilization of carceral tactics to dispense “services”. Care workers turned data workers, operate under a constant sense of manufactured scarcity, the idea that as a society we have few resources meaning we must surveil applicants and recipients of services to ensure that those who do qualify for government support are both worthy and compliant. This is not new, but an extension of the intrusive and violent tactics of surveillance that black, disabled, and otherwise non normatively classified individuals have experienced for generations (Browne, 2015; Gustafson, 2011).

Neither is this a simple, micro-level personal issue between me and the county. Caregivers registered with IHSS remain a largely low-income woman of color base of migrant workers that are underfunded and under protected. Registered care providers are burnt out, taking care of their own families, and being run out of the country by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or “ICE” and Border Patrol.  The reduction in already sparsely available caregivers has led to an inability for me to find stable caregiving through the county, which resulted in a subsequent report made to APS for “self-neglect” due to lack of stable caregiver. This is a clear example of how the expansiveness of what I call the carceral ecosystem – a framework that helps describe systemic issues of caging and categorizing people, impacts all parts of society from labor to childcare, to healthcare and domestic care. In these pages I will discuss how logics of carcerality and eugenics influence the care economy, including how it impacts both individual and institutional capacity to provide “care”, and how the care economy under capitalism is turned into a data economy in which care laborers like caseworkers and social workers become responsible for the collection, sharing, and use of data rather than the “care” most needed by our communities. Under capitalism prominent sectors of “care labor” become data labor, which necessitates a closer look into the ways data is extracted from and used to harm specific people, all in the name of care. To this end, I also use the term “digital poorhouse” by Virginia Eubanks (2018) to underscore the intentional and specific targeting of low-income communities.

References

Bailey, M. (2021). Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Resistance. NYU Press.

Browne, S. (2015). Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press.

Collins, P.H. (2000). Black Feminist Thought. Routledge.

Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. Macmillan.

Gilmore, R.W. (2007). Golden Gulag. University of California Press.

Grach, S.L., Seltzer, J., Chon, T.Y., Ganesh, R. (2023). Diagnosis and Management of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Concise Review for Clinicians, 98(10). https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/s0025-6196(23)00402-0/fulltext. 

Gustafson, K.S. (2011). Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty. NYU Press.

Jenkins, W. (2019, April 15). Unseen: Black People Living with ME. ME ACTION. https://www.meaction.net/2019/04/15/unseen-black-people-living-with-me/

Vierekant, A. & Adler-Bolton, B. (2022). Health Communism. Verso.

Yancy, G. & Lewis, T.A. (2023, Jan 8). Ableism is the Driving Force Behind All Forms of Incarceration, Says Abolitionist Talia Lewis. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/incarceration-and-ableism-go-hand-in-hand-says-abolitionist-talila-lewis/

(Excerpt from book draft, copyrighted)

During grad school my medicaid was denied. After months and months of no insurance i finally got a court date, the final level of appeals. At the appeal i asked the judge where all of my sensitive documents went, he said "good luck finding that out". My experiences as a consumer of social services played a huge role in my interest in social services/data during graduate school.

In the U.S. we have normalized the unregulated use, storage, & sharing of data to the point that handing over a multitude of sensitive documents to a caseworker has become unquestionably normalized. Agencies retaining data for decades is normalized. It is near impossible for a consumer to track where their documents are and who has their eyes on them. This is because biocertification has become embedded into the social fabric of our society. Caseworkers are often caught in the middle of this. The push to automate and "AI"ify (see budget reconciliation bill) decision-making processes for "efficiency" make the work of caseworkers more difficult and more precarious, not the other way around.

Pouring $500billion into data infrastructure will make them more efficient yes, but not in the ways that workers OR consumers need. What will happen? We have seen it before. More cases will be erroneously flagged for case closure, more humans will have to fix these errors. More appeals will back up the system. In accordance w/ the budget reconciliation bill and the provisions to increase the frequency of verification's and add work requirements, more doctors will have to spend time going through documents, and more caseworkers will have to increase their already burdensome caseloads.

Many proponents of AI try to convince the masses that automated decision-making is both inevitable and immensely helpful. But in the realm of social-services-under-capitalism, they are first and foremost biocertification tools that operate under eugenic logics. They perpetuate the stratification between the undeserving and deserving poor simultaneous to extracting labor from the working surplus (including caseworkers who largely work low wage labor). They make life so very difficult for so many low income consumers and workers.

Right now I am trying to meaningfully write about the proposed changes to the ACF - Administration for Children & Families written in Pr*ject 2025. I have found it difficult to articulate how often misogynoir is at the root of policy changes that specifically target the broader trans community. The hatred of Black people and specifically Black women specifically has been a driver for government policy, the paradigms in Pr*ject 2025 are a recapitulation of what we already know. I do not believe you can or should fight for trans rights without fighting against anti-Blackness. They have always intersected.

As Spillers states,

“Under these conditions, we lose at least gender difference in the outcome, and the female body and the male body become a territory of cultural and political maneuver, not at all gender-related, gender-specific. But this body, at least from the point of view of the captive community, focuses a private and particular space, at which point of convergence biological, sexual, social, cultural, linguistic, ritualistic, and psychological fortunes join. This profound intimacy of interlocking detail is disrupted, however, by externally imposed meanings and uses…”.

C Riley Snortons conversation with Spillers work, and their focus on “uncensored flesh” is what I am currently diving into so that I can better appreciate and articulate this discourse around gender fluidity, racialization, and the mechanisms of upkeeping a captive flesh via policing.

Digression aside, I  say that Project 2025s aims are a recapitulation, due to the lineages of suffering that stemmed from the transatlantic slave trade, much of which we already experience - including that which has flourished from the seemingly mundane (to non Black folks) policy changes of the 60s, 80’s, & 90’s.

Right now I am honing in on the 60’s — a time when in response to desegregation jurisdictions, particularly in the south, were attempting to creatively destabilize the Black family by instituting several new criminalization measures/tactics, ie: diminishing ADC access by deploying suitable housing & parenting requirements which were enforced by welfare workers via raids. Too many Black women on AFDC meant having to find new ways to kick them off it. The focus on waste and fraud became more prevalent and necessary to uphold the white supremacist order. Segregationist, in retaliation to the freedom rides, pushed Black women out of their cities by claiming they were lazy, aid-dependent, & draining the community. Moynihan's cementing of this discourse in “tangle of pathology” paved the way for Reagan’s obsession with Linda Taylor & the welfare-queen-dramatics-turned-full-fledge-policy-agenda. The goal was and continues to be domination of the white cis-nuclear family, & anti-Black racism drives this.

As evident in Pr*ject 2025, there is still an effort to solidify this image of what is a “healthy”, normative,  “productive” family. As this posts describes, this has been the case decades prior to Trumps second election. It has surfaced in significant ways locally. In my dissertation work I found that Los Angeles, as of 2020, has had a “red flag” warning for mothers who have a boyfriend living in their home . This red flag was suggested by the LA Civil Grand Jury. Single Black and Latine mothers in LA talk about experiencing this in real time through additional surveillance from caseworkers and even having to sit through interrogations abut their sex life — as teenagers. I have no doubt that this has been occurring throughout the country. 

But why is this all important to remember now? Because solidarity and cross movement organizing is what is going to keep us alive. Back when legislation passed in Florida to criminalize gender affirming care, making it a reportable crime by child maltreatment agency workers, caseworkers stepped up to outright refuse to comply. But once legislation started to change for the better, those caseworkers went back to business as usual, dismissing all of the presently-normative ways that they still harm of the youth in the system. It is this way because these youth are disproportionally Black. Even if they are trans, they are seen as Black first, making their suffering less critical and urgent. In 2025 we have to care about Black liberation, even when it’s not convenient.

My first pitch since 2021 was just published by the Forge! This piece was inspired by my friends with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis who have expressed feeling left out of post-election organizing spaces due to inaccessibility. I love you all and am so grateful to have the support from such a loving community. This piece is about grief, severe disability, and community.

If you're seeing this, I am on a medical break due to a procedure planned on Monday 2/24. Keep me in your prayers as I navigate a crucial month (including possible biopsies in March) for medical care. 

luv,

v

It has only been two days since the Super Bowl performance and I am still reeling from the radiance of SZA and Serena, the eloquent dragging of Aubrey, and the simple genius of Kendrick’s 13 minute set. This reflection is a first impression stream of consciousness and not neat and tidy, so bare with me. Regardless, writing this has been a pleasure. Kendricks performances have always been memorable. The first time I saw him perform live was in 2015 from the press pit. My hands couldn’t stop shaking as I tried holding my camera steady to get at least one good picture. Mid set he dropped a bunch of red and blue balls on the crowd as the lyrics “if Pirus and Crips all got along…” blared through the festival grounds. I'm grateful that we are still able to experience his music, art, and mind ten years later.

I’m going to get into my thoughts of the performance, but first let me get this off my chest. As someone very critical of, well everything, engaging with the Super Bowl and the NFL was and is riddled with tensions for me. With the pandemics, the state of democracy right now, genocides, and state sanctioned abandonment across Louisiana, I can’t help but feel disdain for so many parts of the event. Simultaneously, I cannot ignore how much joy I experienced getting to watch and engage with the audacity of Kendrick Lamar, my favorite rapper since I was 17 and first heard “Faith” in 2009. Most times I don’t know how to discuss these intricacies and contradictions, and I have been recognizing that I regularly feel these tensions in my day-to-day whether it’s working jobs that profit the elite or during my futile attempts to try and chip away at my grief and anxiety with inadequate resources.  Somehow, I (we) still find ways to experience and create joy through it all. And I think that’s remarkable. This is not an excusal. In this part one of my stream of consciousness, I’m validating how difficult it is to feel this tension, and how feeling it has influenced how I viewed the performance as well. In this piece, I’m acknowledging the inspiration and joy Kendrick’s creativity has brought me over the years while also grappling with the landscape in which we create and enjoy Black art.
 

The Super Bowl halftime show was packed with meaning. I can’t speak on everything because there’s too much to cover. I won't even get into the significance of having Samuel L Jackson as Uncle Sam, SZAs performance, Serena getting her lick back via glorious crip walk, or the Gloria jacket. The performance was a 10/10 no notes. As for the rap beef, Drake is down bad. Period. But as I sat with the performance over the past two days I recognized a few themes, one of which is control. Of course this is likely obvious upon first watch or listen.

As many have recounted over the past few days, Kendrick loops us into a story about the “Great American Game” straightaway through Black Uncle Sam’s opening dialogue. My first thought was that the performance and the slogan were alluding to the government and music industries oppressive attempts to control Black people, attempting to mold them into a palatable extractable entity — a thing created for consumption, labor, and entertainment. Of course this is rooted in the echoes of the transatlantic slave trade, much of what many of us already know and much of which K Dot has explored in his previous projects. This perspective was made more evident by the continuous cut scenes of Uncle Sam instructing us to tighten up, stay calm and peaceful, and refrain from being too “ghetto” (aka refrain from the tropes associated with Blackness in America). Peaceful protest anyone?

The stage consisted of a simple but thoughtful set up that utilized the entire stadium. The main performance stage was laid out as a controller, accompanied by a street running through what would be the middle of the buttons. The street was wide and surrounded by streetlights and surveillance cameras lining either side. Part of the stage expanded to the crowd with lighting being manipulated throughout the set to show different signs in accordance with the game stage, words including “start here”, “warning wrong way”, and “game over” flashed at different parts of the show. My visibility, however, was entirely based on the Apple Music version of the performance which was shot by a few cameramen on the stage itself and a camera from birds eye view.

After watching the recordings from people at the stadium, I recognized that there were multiple different ways to engage with the performance based on vantage point, some of which were inaccessible to people only watching through the cameras lens. Kendrick masterfully controlled the reception of his storytelling by utilizing various camera angles and lighting sequences, while also playing with movement and set architecture. These manipulations impacted the audiences vantage points in real time and could completely alter the meaning and interpretation of the performance based on how you viewed it. This realization made me feel like I was in a simulation, a game indeed, and I have been grinning from ear to ear ever since.
 

But let’s back up, first impressions right? Kendrick opened the show by rapping an unreleased track on top of a GNX. I hate to toot my own horn but in our pre show estimations I definitely hoped this would happen. I’m not about to get too into the GNX discourse because I’m not a car girlie but I will say that my very cursory look into K Dots beloved car shows that it was thee car at the time of its conception. I am sure K Dot and a bunch of Black kids during the 80’s dreamed of racing this so called “Darth Vader” joint — (“Ain’t no other rap king, they siblings. Nothing but my children, one shot they disappearin’, I-am-your-father type vibe). Performance wise, the GNX was comparable to the Ferrari F40 at the time and only 547 were made. I love the notorious reputation of the GNX which is exemplified in this very 80’s commercial, enticing the consumer to join the dark side as Bad to the Bone plays in the background.

Real g shit, what an opener. But what almost made me cry was when all of the dancers started popping out that mug.

My first impression was awe. It was a reminder that Kendrick constantly puts LA and other Black creatives on. When he eats, others eat too. I thought about how exciting it must have felt for the performers. It also made me proud. Sometimes you really do gotta pop out and show ninjas. Talk your shit Kenny! But upon more consideration, I started thinking about the pressure that’s placed on Black men as mentors, fathers, brothers, husbands, artists, and educators everywhere. Their lives are consistently under a microscope, or surveillance camera. Kendrick Lamar has alluded to this over the years.

The introspection and creativity Kendrick has shown us over time through his music started to become more evident to me very early on in the performance. People hopping out the GNX was love, but was it also part of the game? I started falling down a mental spiral of questions. Can you stay genuine to your roots while amassing capital? How do you put people on without selling them and yourself out? What do you do with immense influence and responsibility as a Black man, especially one tangled up in the industry?

Not only that but what happens when we come together and things pop off? How do we handle our beef under the constant gaze of the oppressor/controller? Do we run to the courts (uh say Drake), do we kill each other, do we lock each other up? I think back to conversations I had while organizing with my Skid Row comrades, talking about how the prevalence of police and the criminal legal system reduces our communal imagination and our ability to handle conflict without relying on forms of policing. As one might say, it’s deeper than rap.
 
There was a simultaneity of narratives happening with this performance. I remember one time my professor lectured our grad seminar on legibility because we were frustrated reading through some dense text. Someone said “it’s just not legible”. Our professor took the time to teach us about legibility and how it didn’t always mean what we thought it did. Sometimes when you read or engage with Black text or art a specific meaning will only be decipherable if you can connect with it based on a common experience. Some text and art is more easily deciphered and given meaning when engaged with as a group, as black study. It’s rigorous, and sometimes it’s difficult and painful, but it turns illegibility on its head. And legibility is not always synonymous with accessibility. I love that Kendrick talks about this in Not Like Us and his teaser track. When Kendrick’s raps  “You would not get the picture if I had to sit you for hours in front of the Louvre” in the opener, he meant that shit. I appreciate him for the level of entertainment he planned for the Super Bowl, but also for the discussion he laid out for us underneath, around, and within the performance.
 

Kendrick can be serious, goofy, a straight shooter, a g, but hands down he is always a creative genius. Over the years people have been saying Kendrick can’t put out a hit song. (Which has always been cap, but I digress). To play on these critiques he released bops like Not Like Us and tv off, “give them what they asked for”. In doing so, he showed us the role WE, as the enjoyers and engagers of the art, play in controlling what is and isn’t taken up by artists and the industry heads who run the labels (eyes on you Lucy). In many ways we playing right into the game. We do it through our hot takes, our opinion pieces, our need and desire for drama, and our general consumption of art without true engagement and respect for Black artists as human. I am particularly thinking about dehumanizing situations like Meg the Stallions experience.

We are not just mindless consuming machines here to be entertained, we play in active role in all of this, for better or worse. He’s calling Drake a whole ass pedophile, but how many of us will still include him in our playlists? And what if all of us just chose not to? It truly begs the question of who is really in control and how we can and do use our power. I can’t help but feel like Dot is asking us to sit with these questions.
 

This is where I started to really get into my head with the performance. When I first heard Dot say the revolution WILL be televised it made me pause, it was not what I expected. While everyone is hyping this part up as an “I’m that ninja” moment, I have been thinking about it in terms of gaze and the overall theme of control.

I am jumping around but stay with me.

I want to specifically talk about my first impressions of “peekaboo” and “Not Like Us”/“tv off” as it relates to this. First, when Kendrick performed “peekaboo” I was shook. It’s also when I realized that so much of his performance was to or for the camera, and not necessarily the stadium audience. He was making sure he was almost always in frame directly addressing the camera audience. That’s part of the game right? That’s what we wanted right? During "peekaboo" Kendrick was within the X, the only stage with walls in which those in the stadium attendees could not clearly see unless seated with a birds eye view, or directly looking at the screens showing the camera footage. He further controlled the camera shots by moving his body around, comically popping up on the first peekaboo (he’s a diabolical troll fam). And it was up. I was hyped.

This segment of the performance had me thinking about a concept I’ve discussed in previous posts (and my dissertation) called dark sousveillance created by Simone Browne in Dark Matters) which she describes as “a way to situate the tactics employed to render one's self out of sight, and strategies used in the flight to freedom from slavery as necessarily ones of undersight”. She goes on to say, "Dark sousveillance, then, plots imaginaries that are oppositional and that are hopeful for another way of being. Dark sousveillance is a site of critique, as it speaks to black epistemologies of contending with anti black surveillance”, and that it “…charts possibilities and coordinates modes of responding to, challenging, and confronting a surveillance that was almost all-encompassing…”.
 

Kendrick crafted the stage architecture in a way that allowed for pockets of invisibility/hypervisibility based on different audience vantage points. Kendrick's set was a contestation of the attempted censorship that stemmed from the lawsuit, a dismissal of the legal and industry eyes that were on him, and a declaration of subversive artistry and joy. I love how this ties into Simone Brownes concept of dark sousveillance, but also her work in general in that she calls us to question who is being watched, who is watching, and in what capacity—particularly as it pertains to Black people. I had this in mind as I scanned the stage.

There were performers seated on the street lights as an ode to the city life, but were they ops? Were they guardians? Homies? Scorekeepers? Spectators? This play on gaze seeped throughout the entire set. Although stadium-goers were able to see the dancers in black who were in the periphery or margins of the stage, particularly those gathered around the street section of the stage who were holding the pg lang flags (site of the protest), they could not clearly see Kendrick and the performers while inside of the X during peekaboo unless they watched the tv screen.

 In contrast those watching through the camera/tv only could only see what he and the camera man wanted us to see and when. We missed the peripheral details, the elusive performers in black weren't apparent until the end performance of “Not Like Us” (the final level before game over) when he chose to have the house lights on during A Minoooooor. *Revelation*. Exposed.

Sometimes our joy is not for their gaze. Sometimes we scheme in the shadows. Although tv viewers at home got to consume (in detail) Dots entire performance without much “distraction”, we missed other critical details like the directions and warnings portrayed from within the crowd. At times, we were lost because the camera was not focused on those other details. Funny how that works. I loved this play on gaze. We see what we want to see. We see what he wanted us to see. It was all crafted knowing it would be consumed in this way. We are part of the game.
 

There’s one part of the performance that made me gasp, and it was the pause after the John Stockton bar in “Not Like Us”.  The performers were laid out in an eerie resemblance to the forensic investigation crime scene chalk symbols used on the streets when there’s a murder.

It was so quick you could easily miss it. This was the best visual of the night to me. I’m still deciphering what the circle of standing performers means, but having everyone laid out like this initially made me think of Kendrick’s "Rigamorotus" video. “Don’t ask for your favorite rapper, he dead”!

However, when I started to sit with it more I thought about the spectacle, performance, and reality of mass Black death. It’s not lost on me that New Orleans has seen devastation, not only through the slave trade but also notably during and after Katrina when masses of Black people were forced to exist in horrendous conditions, particularly within the Superdome. These suffering bodies were “dead” to some of you, some of them. Waste, thing, to be used or otherwise forgotten.

It made me think about the bloods and crips in the streets of LA (reminding me of having to remove our blue shoe laces when we visited my aunties house on menlo as a kid) and how the death and destruction of Black communities is recycled, taken and used to propel the prison industrial complex, the music industry, and everything in between. We are the creators, the consumers, and the consumed. Whose holding the controller? They need us laid out in the streets as much as they need us to live so that they can keep taking — an almost guaranteed cycle of destruction. They find new ways to profit off of our suffering and I have been thinking about the ways the Super Bowl performance aides in or resisted that.

The performers laid out on the street was a statement for us, but also for those wealthy folks in the stadium watching an NFL game (NFL with majority white owners) in a city and country still devastated by ongoing disaster. A stage-street filled with a momentary fleeting spectacle of Black death, what and who was it for? K Dot gave us what we asked for, are we satisfied?  I am still stuck on this and am reminded of Christina Sharpe’s words from In the Wake:

Respectability. Representation. Revolution via Apple Music? Although “Not Like Us”/“tv off” felt like a victory lap (we reached the final level of the game!), especially when the performers started leaking onto the green outside of the bounds of the stage-street, I had to think, did we really win? Of course on the first watch I was purely hyped. The questioning came the next day like a lingering bitter aftertaste. Is it victory having Black people in high places if they’re abiding by, allowing for, and exacerbating the conditions that lead to our premature death and destruction (when we're the ones holding the controller)? Do we win by having a Black Uncle Sam? Does anyone win this game? Do we even have a choice in whether or not we play? Why did it bring me so much joy though?

I throughly enjoyed this performance. But after thinking about it I was like dang, am I even supposed to enjoy it? (Yes and no). It is deep. I feel like Kendrick called me out/in, particularly when it comes to how I consume art, violence, tragedy, beef, and music. I have so many emotions. I feel immense joy and appreciation from the art. I have been so depressed lately and I genuinely needed this inspiration. I laughed hard at how hard Drake was dragged. I feel awe over the audacity to bring this conversation to a global audience as a Black man during this political climate. I feel tension in watching for entertainment. I feel enraged that I’m a pawn, an npc, and at the same time partially controlling the game. One thing I know for sure is that Kendrick always reminds me how important it is to not wait for our oppressor’s to call the shots. We are not just spectators. We never were. We have to find a way to free ourselves, and to enjoy ourselves in the midst of the struggle. It will be mucky, full of failures and experiments, riddled with tension, but we are worth it. 

A little about me.

(This section is not pertinent to the review above so feel free to skip!)

My dads dream was always to have a radio station. He frequently made me record voice overs for him and listen to his mixes back on tape. He would play them in his red bmw with the bass so loud that it rattled my entire body. All of my dads spare time was mostly spent listening to music or creating music mixes. This love for music has been passed down to me and my brothers, and we have shared this passion with our closest friends growing up. Growing up in North Las Vegas was... an experience. We were consistently ranked as the second worst school district in the country. There were multiple shootings at school and the police regularly pepper sprayed us and did searches of our bags during class time. There was little for us to do in Vegas, it was a city tailored to adult tourism. No one poured into the youth, into us. Disinvestment from the city and county was felt by our corner of the valley specifically.

Growing up in the North we had to observe and experience a lot of state violence and I believe this impacted our perceptions of ourselves. Compounding all of this, the recession (and my dads retirement from the army) made things very conflict-ridden at home. For years I really didn’t know anything else. It was the norm for us. Through the long dry and scorching summers, crusty textbooks and defunded after school programs, we all found sanctuary in the music. 

It was game over when my brother bought FL Studio for the first time. Friends would frequently come over to record in our makeshift recording studios (aka a mic and pop filter in my tiny little bedroom). All of us spent long afternoons and endless nights surrounding ourselves with music whether it was making beats, testing them out in the van, recording raps, shooting videos, or going to local shows. It really did deter us from messing around in the streets. I’m not sure if my mom realizes we had some gang bangin ass people in the house, but my best friend in high school protected me (and I him) from some major foolery, and music brought us together. In high school I helped host beat battles at the local venues, created a website to promote local hip hop, and started recording “producer series” across the west coast. 

Section.80 was the soundtrack of my senior year and I know that it inspired so many of us. Some of the people I grew up with in Vegas and became close friends with, went on to become producers (presently!) for some of the biggest artists in the world. Music was our fuel, it was everything.

 
In my twenties I took my passion for art to the streets to protest against state violence and the prison industrial complex, my playlist was dominated by GKMC and later TPAB. At the first protest I brought my younger brother to we circled around the strip with a banner of all of the names of people who were gunned down by the police while blasting “alright”.  I say all of this to say, I love music deeply — and Kendrick has deeply shaped part of that for me. Music, for Black folks, is so much more than entertainment; its essence, joy, release, love, ancestry. Music has introduced me to people I’d never thought I’d meet, it’s helped me through depression and illness, it brings people together, it ruins lives (RIP drake), and it exposes vulnerabilities -- this performance was not an exception to that and I'm grateful for that. We need the music.

Thank you for reading. Part II incoming soon, health permitting! If you enjoyed this please subscribe to a membership or contribute a one-time donation to help me pay for my medical expenses, thank you!