It all fell down when actress Stacey Dash decided to #ClapBack at BET when she stated, “If we don’t want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the Image Awards, where you’re only awarded if you’re black.” Now BET could have just been like, “Hey Stacey actually we gave Sam Smith a BET Award so don’t trip.” Instead BET has clapped back on Twitter, its website, and even decided to play a marathon of music videos featuring Stacey Dash with the hashtag #NeverForget.
Besides finding this whole ordeal completely hilarious and giving BET the ThrowinShade Award of the week, I think the recent events unfolding around Stacey Dash are an excellent example of positioning.
“Positioning involves socially producing particular individuals and groups as culturally imagined types such that others and, even the person herself, at least temporarily, treat her as though she were such a person” (Holland and Leander 130).
For years Stacey Dash positioned herself or maybe was positioned through her acting choices as the “Vixen” and an active participant in Black popular culture, television, and film. Now with her recent comments and alliance with Fox&Friends, Ms. Dash is attempting to shift her position. We all know she could not play the role of the “Vixen” forever due to the ageism of the entertainment industry, but to position herself in opposition to an organization that has been inextricably linked to her career is definitely a bold move. Maybe Stacy Dash has always felt this way and took the roles she did just to pay the bills. Perhaps we the public believed the positioning of herself as an actress aligned with her views as a person. Or maybe the general public just assumed that a Black actress who encounters the racist entertainment industry on a daily basis would articulate the necessity of organizations that exist to celebrate the work of Black people within an industry that tends to overlook the work of people of color.
Much love,
praxis
For more information on this story check out: http://thegrio.com/2016/01/24/bet-plays-marathon-of-music-videos-featuring-stacey-dash-uses-hashtag-neverforget/
Further Reading on positioning: Ethnographic Studies of Positioning and Subjectivity (Holland and Leander)
throwinshade 
The frustrating thing about her comments are that they overlooked the original issue which was the under-representation of black people in ‘mainstream’ awards. That the very existence of these other awards (BET, NAACP, etc.) is necessitated by the lack of representation elsewhere. Is it posible that her views on this issue have been shaped by a knowledge that she is not going to be part of the ‘mainstream’ as an actress (I’m not throwin’ shade, but Clueless was’t a huge Oscar hopeful) so she wants to gain legitimacy by positioning her self with the ‘mainstream’ in another way?
Afua
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I think you definitely raise an excellent point. Maybe this new positioning is her way of trying to position herself as someone who should be taken seriously both as a woman and as an actress. Who knows this newfound politics could lead to her being cast in roles other than the vixen.
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Doesn’t this leave room for her to develop the vacuum that is the black vixen political spokesperson persona?
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Great post – what I think is interesting here is the way you’ve positioned “positioning” as a project and it makes me think about the speed with which this occurs in social media and the push and pull involved on all sides – thank you…
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This type of positioning is almost similar to a concept called Star Dances. Arthur Knight talks about this as a dance black entertainers must do in order to reach a level of popularity outside of the black community.
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