Finding the Fallen: Reclaiming Black Women Celebrities from Baby Mama Scrutiny in Online Discourse 24 views

This thesis examines how white supremacist ideals of womanhood and motherhood persist and shift within Black online discourse centering Black single mother celebrities. Through a Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) of posts from X and TikTok addressing the pregnancy scandals of Halle Bailey, Keke Palmer, and Skai Jackson, I identity two dominant rhetorical patterns: (1) the “language of ruin,” which frames single motherhood as professional death, along with a general loss of potential, and (2) “pathology of choice,” which displaces accountability from structural violence onto individual choices. I argue that these patterns are influenced by the complex Black celebrity-audience relationship, shaped by compensatory mechanisms (Black excellence, respectability politics, and the myth of Black buying power) that turn collective hope into individual obligation. I contend these patterns serve as ritual enactments of white supremacist logics, performed and reinforced through discursive mechanisms across digital platforms. These discourses naturalize victim-blaming as common sense and divert energy away from structural critique to intra-community policing, thereby furthering the white supremacist ritual of scapegoating. I turn to the work of Saidiya Hartman, Marquis Bey, and Édouard Glissant to offer alternative frameworks for reimagining and reclaiming Black single mother identity by refusing the terms of white supremacist logics altogether. Ultimately, this study aims to expose these complex mechanisms so that Black folks might imagine and enact discursive futures beyond white supremacy.

MA (Master of Arts)

single motherhood; celebrity; respectability; white supremacy; discourse; platforms; algorithms; ritual; scapegoating; baby mama

English

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2026-05-05