essay on this is america childish gambino

An Expert’s Take on the Symbolism in Childish Gambino’s Viral ‘This Is America’ Video

D onald Glover released a new song and music video “This Is America” under his musical moniker Childish Gambino on Saturday Night Live this weekend — and the four-minute, single-take music video is laden with metaphors about race and gun violence in America.

The “This Is America” video, which has already racked up more than 20 million views on YouTube, reveals provocative imagery of the rapper as he guns down a choir at one point and dances while violence breaks out all around him. Childish Gambino/Glover ‘s decision to wear just a pair of gray pants without a shirt in the video, allows viewers to identify with “his humanness,” as he raps about the violent contradictions that come with being black in America, says Guthrie Ramsey, a professor of music history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Warning: Graphic violence

“The central message is about guns and violence in America and the fact that we deal with them and consume them as part of entertainment on one hand, and on the other hand, is a part of our national conversation,” Ramsey tells TIME. “You’re not supposed to feel as if this is the standard fare opulence of the music industry. It’s about a counter-narrative and it really leaves you with chills.”

Here’s Ramsay’s take on four key moments from “This Is America.”

The first gunshot

The opening moments of “This Is America” show a man strumming a guitar alone to choral sounds. Within the first minute, Gambino shoots the man, who has been tied up with a head cover. Childish Gambino hands the gun to another man, who safely wraps it in a red cloth as the obscured man is dragged away. The moment goes right into the first rapped chorus: “This is America / Don’t catch you slippin’ up.”

Ramsay says the timing — that this happens during the song’s move from choral tones to a trap sound — allows Gambino to straddle contradictions and also allows the viewer to identify with his humanness.

“He’s talking about the contradictions of trying to get money, the idea of being a black man in America,” Ramsey says. “It comes out of two different sound worlds. Part of the brilliance of the presentation is that you go from this happy major mode of choral singing that we associate with South African choral singing, and then after the first gunshot it moves right into the trap sound.”

The early moment shows, too, that Gambino “could be anyone,” according to Ramsey. “You have him almost unadorned, as if he were totally without all the accoutrements of stardom,” he says, noting that Gambino dances in neutral colored pants, dark skin and with textured hair. “It’s just him, and therefore, it could be us.”

Gambino dancing with schoolchildren amid violence

Gambino and a group of kids clad in school uniforms dance throughout much of the “This Is America” video, smiling through impeccable moves as violence erupts behind them. The moment could be open to numerous interpretations — for example, Ramsey says, the dancers could be there to distract viewers in the same way black art is used to distract people from real problems plaguing America. But, Ramsey says, it’s better to absorb the video as a whole because America itself is a country of “very strange juxtapositions.”

“Even though we think of popular culture a a space where we escape, he’s forcing us to understand that there’s actually nowhere to run,” he says. “We have to deal with the cultural violence that we have created and continue to sustain.”

The style of dancing by Gambino in the video also calls out the way we consume culture. Gambino samples at least 10 popular dance moves derived from hip hop and African moves, including the South African Gwara Gwara dance, according to Forbes . Ramsey says the use of so many famous dance moves show how ultra-popular pieces of culture lose their specificity over time as they become more ubiquitous.

“It’s really a commentary on how much violence and contradictions there are in the consuming of pop culture, particularly in the violent elements of it,” he says. “With all the conspicuous consumption that global capitalism inspires, part of what we are consuming is this appetite for violence.”

The gunned down choir

Toward the middle of the video, a choir sings enthusiastically in a happy tone before Gambino shoots them all. The massacre and its quickness recall the 2015 Charleston shooting in which white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a church basement , Ramsey says. The image and what it evokes shows how people struggle to reconcile with and separate different instances of violence, according to Ramsey. As we consume violence on all sorts of platforms, be it in the news, through music videos or television shows, it becomes difficult to absorb very real instances of mass murders.

“You can’t escape the violence,” Ramsey says. “But you’re being forced to separate how you feel about it in our digitized world. The virtual violence, the real violence, it’s all confused.”

Gambino running away in the closing moments

The final moments of the video show Gambino running, terrified, down a long dark hallway away from a group of people as Young Thug sings “You just a Black man in this world / You just a barcode, ayy.” Gambino’s sprint goes back to a long tradition of black Americans having to run to save their lives, according to Ramsey, who says one song dating back to slavery in the 19th century was called “Run N— Run.”

“A black person running for his or her life has just been a part of American culture dating back to slavery,” he says.

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This is America: Exploring Lyrical and Visual Symbolism

The Unites States has had a long history with strong elements of racial oppression. Despite many great leaps forward in the Civil Rights movement, most prominent in the 1950’s and 60’s, there are still various issues that remain sadly prevalent in the 21st century. There may be some who state that these problems are exaggerated, but those voices probably aren’t too steeped in personal experience. In the last few years, social media has significantly boosted awareness of violent racial oppression, particularly towards black men. Shootings involving black men and police officers became a prominent focal point of social media outlets. The sad truth is, these unfortunate altercations are simply putting a deeply embedded issue under a much brighter spotlight. Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” highlights this unfortunate state of events both through the lyrical poignancy, tonal contrast and disturbing visuals through the accompanying music video.

A Lyrical Examination

Gambino’s lyrics are fascinating due to a certain ambiguity of specific meaning. However, enough focus on verbal choice to create thoughtful and somewhat haunting possibilities is strongly suggested. The song is probably most effective in the jarring transition between the verses and chorus. The opening is introduced with a gentle gospel choir in the background singing, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, go, go, away”. This is one of the first of many repetitive phrases, creating an almost hypnotic suggestion. It’s almost as if the choir is suggesting that there isn’t really any problem and that we don’t really have to pay to close attention. We, the listeners, can just “go away”. This could be indicative of the tendency of society to ignore blatant social issues, simply going about the business of their day to day lives.

This is further emphasized by the following lyrics, “We just wanna party, Party just for you, We just want the money, Money just for you”. This echoes the general consensus of a reflection of a society focused on excess and monetary gain. In this instance, the voices could be from the perspective of minorities, African-Americans, who simply want the benefits of financial stability and the benefits of it. The opening also could suggest the idealized version of America. In a nation where social issues are often ignored in favor on individuals focused on the material, problems could continue without any changes enforced. The jarring shift comes during the chorus, as the transition begins with the sound of a gun shot, leading into a faster and more hectic tempo, complete with a more traditional hip-hop beat and an ominous electronic bass sound. Lyrically, the song takes on an almost different identity. The chorus flows into the verse, leading to a more chaotic contrast. The chorus goes, “This is America, don’t catch you slippin up”. This refrains from the first verse, in which everything seems fine. This sharp turn interjects with a statement accompanying the gunshot. The gunshot is America, or rather a bigger part of American culture than some may want to accept, almost breaking through the façade that everything is perfectly acceptable in modern American society.

The lyrics continue with more narrative focus by our narrator, “Look at how I’m livin now, Police be trippin now, Yeah this is America, Guns in my area, I got the strap, I gotta carry em. ” Here the lyrics are a bit more blatant. Gambino may simply be stating the facts of living as a black man in the United States. It’s far from perfect. He asks us to take a look at how it really is to live as a black man in today’s society. He asks us to look at the relationship between police brutality and African-Americans. Many ideas could be suggested by the lines regarding the presences of guns and gun violence. Gambino, representing a black man, sounds as is if he is confirming that he does indeed have a gun. In fact, he states that he must carry one. From that perspective, this indicates a choice. It should be noted that this line doesn’t take into account specific racial, cultural or socio economic factors. Gambino doesn’t state that he’s a criminal or even that he feels the need to use a gun for violent purposes. Rather, it seems almost that he’s stating the need to carry guns due to the environment pressures he feels around him. Due to his cultural living conditions and specific fear of the police tendencies towards racial violence, it proposes another side to the gun violence problem.

Gambino and his featured artists make it even clearer regarding the lack of priorities in our society in following verses, “Grandma told me, Get your money, Black man.” This demonstrates a generational message many African-Americans may feel. Due to the longstanding effects of racial attitudes, this had led to many disadvantages for people of color since the ending of slavery and the Reconstruction centuries before. For years since, minorities have been fighting the odds to reach a general level of equality in the United States. In simple terms, achieving a more stable economic status could hopefully guarantee a safe and happy place in the culture. However, as events have shown, simply having more money and achieving a greater status is not enough to dilute hundreds of years of embedded racial attitudes. Gambino uses examples of status that should suggest stability and happiness but ultimately mean little in the grand scheme, “I’m so fitted, I’m on Gucci…this is a celly, That’s a tool, On my Kodak.”

Perhaps the heaviest weight is in the final verse of the song, “You just a Black man in this world, You just a barcode…Drivin expensive foreigns.” This reinforces the dynamic between the pursuit for material gain being the dominant focus of black men, though it has done little to help provide a life of true freedom and prosperity. The final lines inform us of Gambino’s feelings regarding the status of African-Americans today, “You just a big dawg, yeah, I kenneled him in the backyard, No probably ain’t life to a dog, For a big dog.” Here Gambino twists the shallow lifestyle with the use of the slang term into what he claims he feels. In American society, it’s being suggested that black men are equated to a lesser class, simply pushed to the side and treated as less than human. This final line is both haunting and damning in what it states regarding race relations.

The Music Video

The lyrics are certainly strong in their message, but the themes are strengthened further by the images in the video. Accompany the gospel chanting of the introduction, the first image is that of a black man sitting solitarily and playing a guitar. Gambino appears and is dancing happily. The image further emphasizes the idea of African-Americans having perceived idea of what is hoped for or even expected of them. This is then interjected with Gambino shooting this man in the back of the head, leading into the previously mentioned chaotic chorus. In the background, the video is a clash of images . We see Gambino accompanied by school children who dance with him. However, the video continues to escalate with conflicting images of him dancing with children, while more violence seems to be going on just out of focus. The video could be suggesting that the society’s collective view of the topic is, in fact, out of focus. It’s also fitting that children would be at the center of the chaos, as the problem would certainly have an effect of future generations.

The video, much like the song itself, seems to demonstrate the conflict within the singer and perhaps black culture overall. Characters in the background are just interchanged between dancing and singing together to running in fear as riots appear to be escalating around them. This type of dancing could have another meaning as well. In addition to the suggestion of naïve and even manic glee, the style of dance has been suggested as a nod to a type of dance called Gwara Gwara. This type of dance originated in South Africa, a nation with a long history of oppression between races. The historical context is there as well, hinting that the roots of the issues have had lasting implications linked all the way back the origin of the slave trade. Much like the shift tempo of the song, the images shift contrastingly with bursts of violence. For instance, Gambino comes across of a group of people dancing in a choir. He starts dancing with them, but then mows them all down with a machine gun. He then moves as the camera turns, revealing a team of police swooping in. The dancing and singing seems to be a representation of the ideal status quo. However, much like the media’s typical reaction on a mass shooting, there is an immediate focus and discussion on it. Ultimately though, each instance of gun violence is quickly swept under the rug and everything seems to go back to normal, until the next burst of violence. Following the pattern of the song, this is the cycle of violence which keeps repeating.

One of the most interesting aspects of the performance is of the demeanor Gambino has throughout the video. Another example of the internal strife he is feeling, Gambino not only sharply contrasts his body movements from dancing to murder, but through facial expression. Throughout the video, Gambino shifts his facial features from showing joyful smiles to pained looks somewhere between rage and fear. All the while, he is often directly addressing the camera (and the viewer) with each moment of intense eye contact. The most frightening image is probably the final one, featuring Gambino running in terror from a crowd of Caucasian Americans. Conclusively, the video seems to suggest that Gambino, and by extension black society, live in fear of their white neighbors.

Some Lingering Questions

Childish Gambino is an artist with work that has often been soulful, thoughtful and sometimes heartbreaking. Most of his songs are established as being rather upbeat, but often had lyrics which suggest introspection and a truly personal reflection, often with a sad and melancholy tone. “This Is America” is probably his darkest piece yet and can now be counted among other songs such as Joyner Lucas’s “I’m Not Racist” as biting commentaries on the tough questions regarding race relations, classist divisions and violence 21st century culture. A few years ago, the documentary I Am Not Your Negro was released. Based on an unfinished manuscript by James Baldwin, the film explores the history of racism in the United States and the struggles of the Civil Rights movement. It’s very possible Gambino probably took inspiration from films like this, incorporating the general mood of the public in through his vocals and accompanying imagery. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gambino doesn’t outright tell you what he thinks. With symbolic word choice and specific musical dynamics, Gambino seems to focus on gaining a strong emotional response with both his voice and images. The problems he discusses in “This Is America” can’t simply be solved in a short time. However, much like the wave of social media awareness over the last few years, songs like these force us to ask questions about how we can improve our society and start communicating with each other about these issues.

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54 Comments

Dope tune…and I thought hip hop, or at least the hip hop I use to like, died many moons ago. Great bloody tune.

The rise and rise of Donald Glover. One minute he is building a pillow fort with Abed in Community. Next thing you know, he’s creating TV shows, Childish Gambino is 229th most listened to artist on Spotify and he’s playing Lando Calrissian in Star Wars, having already blagged a Marvel cameo.

Kardashian levels of fame await.

Please… Why you have to finish that lovely post quoting the kardashians.

He’s a talented dude, loved his time in the great ‘Community’ but then got into his Childish Gambino stuff. He certainly looks like he’ll be the best thing in that new Han Solo movie. This new video is one that deserves multiple re-watches, so much stuff to pick up on… can’t say that too often these days.

An amazingly well made video. Horrific scenes and vile attitudes. Childish Gambino has shown us what America seems to be allowed to be.

Great video and music. I think it’s quite obvious what the song means. Being black in America is deadly.

Donald Glover is the most annoying man in the world. He’s good looking, he’s got a good body, he’s funny, he can sing, he can rap, he can act, he can do stand up comedy, he can write and direct his own show. And he seems like a good bloke.

Brilliantly creative video.

I’m surprised that this movie isn’t 30 seconds long, with him walking on set and then some police shooting him.

That would be a more accurate description of the US.

It’s unbelievable how layered the video actually is.

The people on the girders with their mouths taped filming it on their phones.

The man on a horse that goes past like General lee when they are rioting.

As a protest piece of visual art it’s stunning.

You can watch it several times, and still miss so much. Because Gambino is in the foreground, dancing away and distracting you from the harsh reality all around.

I’m not sure what I’m meant to be getting from the more violent sections of the video – the reduction of the murders of black people as entertainment? A comment on black on black violence? Or is it meant to shock my out of my middle class comfort zone?

Visually the video is just stunning, trying to keep track of so many layers and movements is nigh on impossible as the brain gets pummelled with message after message, so many parts where the brain makes you see what is not there, and the track itself just pushes the boundaries of rap – and what can be considered popular music. Mindblowing stuff,

The murders show what life is actually like on the streets right now for average black dudes in America. It isn’t meant to shock, just show what things are actually like. A black church congregation was gunned down a few years ago. Black people killed in pais, and groups every day. If you don’t show something in compact form, it will not be known by those who aren’t a part of the situation. I don’t see the murders as shocking, more than I open a page online to read about YET another shooting of a black guy. If I’m not shocked at that, I have no right to be shocked at this video.

Violence made this video. The real violence on the street that kills people ( FYI blacks not whites) every minute in America. Are you so sanitized and clean you don’t like to see this stuff? You couldn’t be black then, or black American. Because it is a daily, real life situation in America. ANd I guess the many layers of action you see are not trying to confound you. It’s clear what they are. This is life on the street. A black man being chased by a police care, someone running as he’s being accused of having a gun. It’s not hard to understand.

Trying to overanalyze it all means you have never been in this situation. As such, you need to watch it a few more hundred times to start feeling the feels that any black baby is going to feel in America right now. Chaos without reason , people running scared, panic in the streets, fear, stupidity. Just accept that this is the status quo.

I can’t say it was my cup of tea. I’m not really a rap guy (although I enjoy Donald Glover’s work as a comic actor), but it was an interesting piece of film-making.

He reminds me of a black Spiderman.

That was quite clever, but the theme left me with the feel bad factor.

Kanye is all talk, Donald Glover is the real thing.

a) it’s mesmerizing b) I think he’s been watching some Aphex Twin c) I think there’s a Chomsky/Adorno critique: you can’t be clean in a dirty world/we’re all complicit.

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. I think more discussion should center around topics like this; I would like to hear more thoughts on how this work impact(s/ed) American society, or st least their diverse reactions.

Food for thought, right enough.

Clever and multi layered – there’s a huge amount going on behind him that it takes a few views to try and take it all in. It’s very bright to be able to pack that much opinion into a few minutes work.

I have no idea what all of its about, but if I had to dance on top of a car like that, I’d fall off and break an ankle.

Quite like it, though.

He’s absolutely brilliant.

I watched this twice and it meant stuff to me. Hope other people watch it and it means stuff for them…

Childish Gambino shows his sanity and humanism by showing and condemning random violence and madness. Kanye shows his ignorance and inhumanity by praising madness and racism.

It is interesting focus point based on moder song . However I tend to believe if you will look at artist like j cole , and compere his lyrics ideology In which he shows modern brutal truth of racism in his song like, neighbors or if you look at vic Mensa in his song “16 shots” he talk about brutality of today’s worlds . I enjoyed reading your article but if You would compare different artist from same music class it would be more philosophical and interesting to read.

I really appreciate how you can discover something new with each rewatch of this music video. For example, at 2:14 you can see a person jump and commit suicide in the background. Nobody runs to help or even seems to notice, which could be a commentary on how America deals with mental health issues. You also see throughout the video how guns are handled. After Gambino fires guns, someone comes with a cloth to carry it off with great care. Meanwhile, his murder victims are brutally dragged away.

I think the music video is pretty great. In the hyper-stimulated world we live in now, it’s much easier to view art with a sense of emotional detachment. We’ve become a bit numb to expressions of deep human feelings and thoughts. Childish Gambino was able to not only shock and surprise viewers with “This is America,” but I think he also made them care a little bit more because of it. It wasn’t just cheap tricks to sustain an audience’s attention. That’s quite refreshing.

I like the fact that this song and its accompanying video have got us all talking. There’s certainly a lot of layers that can pulled back from this video.

This new song is definitely something that’s rocked our nation’s culture. If anything, Childish Gambino is the poster child of a true artist’s take on the disparities and injustices prevalent in our society today. This work exemplifies his artistic skill and his ability to apply this skill in a way that sends a powerful message to his audience.

This Is America is incredibly powerful in lyrics, and the video presents itself almost like a visual satire… Similar to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it’s very obvious that something is wrong: the casual nature of massacre… as you mentioned, the nonchalant way that the video moves on with rhythmic dancing, and an almost caricature-like upbeat tone in Childish Gambino’s face as violence and brutality begins to coagulate in the background. I also find it interesting how the gun itself is handled. In both shootings, the gun is placed on a red cloth while the bodies fall, and no one attends to them. It is a vary powerful echo as to how America currently handles its gun violence; no matter how many people end up grieving, the topic returns to protecting the gun and its “rightful place” in the hands of the common people… despite the potential tragedies that play out over and over.

Donald Glover is an artist- he has something powerful to say and he puts it in the work.

Really interesting analysis! I remember watching this for the first time and was hoping I would find a detailed analysis such as this.

What is so fabulous about this music video is that there is room for another fifty articles analyzing this music video.

Great article!

Cool analysis! I’m so much more aware of the symbolism now that I watch the music video. It’s amazing how much thought was put into it.

This music video is an analytical wet dream.

It seems a common thread in hip hop is either talking about how the artist is trying to make their way in the world, or talking about the streets. What this song seems to be saying is both are traps, but there’s no alternative. If you “make it”, then you are like a big dog kenneled in a back yard. As long as you provide entertainment, you stay in the yard happily chained up, but if you get out of line they “wesley snipe your a%&” to quote K dot. The alternative is getting killed in the streets, or at least living in fear and anger at the thought that you might be killed. I think the song alone is good and it does what a lot of other thoughtful hip hop songs do, but with the added depth of the video it is a masterpiece

Really good job breaking it all down. Thanks a bunch. But, what’s that chick just sitting on a car in 3:19 represent? I genuinely wanna know.

It’s heartwarming to see Childish Gambino’s work generating so much engagement.

Symbols and lyrics within music change peoples lives.

This song has such a powerful message and started a great conversation- plus its a great song!

Great song, songwriter and analysis. Great job!

The special thing about this specific music video is that every time you watch it you discover something new. I thought I knew a lot about the video and the symbolism until I read through this article! The way he dances kind of distracts you from what’s happening in the back but the more you watch it the more you understand the plethora of messages he’s trying to convey. Overall an interesting read on an amazing video!

It is astounding how I seemed to have missed so much about the video at first glance.

Very informative article, it presented ideas that upon first watch I would not have initially picked up on. I love when artists create media which is thoughtful, insightful, and full of introspective messages.

This piece leaves me heartbroken. I cry every time I see/hear it. Childish Gambino is masterful in weaving visual, lyrical and musical elements together to illustrate the plight, and likewise the strength of people of color. His work shots straight to the heart. The first piece of art that comes to my mind, in comparison, is “Guernica,” by Pablo Picasso.

Art can be so powerful when it wakes people up!

I love Childish Gambino’s ability to turn a phrase. He begins a line and you have no idea where it’s going to go and that ability plays well here: the gun shot catches us off guard and is a jarring contrast to the almost whimsical start of the song.

I actually use your article in my Composition classes. My students write an essay analyzing song lyrics that speak to social justice issues. We start with a visual analysis of this video, and it’s a fun discussion to jumpstart their thinking.

I think this is a good analysis of what is an incredibly important song and music video. This is America is truly an intelligent and honest articulation of the systemic problems in urgent need of attention. I just stumbled upon this article today (in 2020), two years after the music video was released. After any media loses virality, the song’s spotlight has certainly dwindled after two years, it is easy to forget about art like this. It gets lost in the archives, no matter how poignant the message it sends. I’m definitely glad to have had Glover’s genius brought to my attention again. A very interesting read!

An interesting essay.

What about the sound bite of Bill Cosby’s voice as Fat Albert, saying “Hey!” right before Glover sings “I’m so fitted”? I’ve looked for references to that and haven’t found any.

This is going back to what rap/hip-hop was in the 80s.

Good analysis. One of my favorite songs. There is a lot to be said about the Gambino’s refusal to define his art leaving it open to speculation but there is a lot in the text that could be said to be “interesting” with regards to perceptions of black masculinities in America.

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The Carnage and Chaos of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”

By Doreen St. Félix

I happened to listen to “ This Is America ,” the new single by Childish Gambino, a.k.a. Donald Glover , before I saw the eloquent, ultra-violent accompanying video concocted by Glover and the director Hiro Murai. One of the song’s three strands is set to a benign Afrobeat rhythm, with Glover and a backing choir echoing old, edifying dogmas of black striving (“Grandma told me / Get your money, black man”); in another, Glover assumes the tempo of a jazz poet as he declares, “This Is America”; in the third, the familiar voices of Quavo, 21 Savage, and Young Thug are incorporated into the song as ambient reverberations, rather than as discrete guest features. The song, which Glover performed during his hosting gig on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, seemed like a portal into a successful black man’s psyche, consumed as it is by guilt and by vanity. I liked it.

The video, which was released online as Glover performed the track on live television, turned the single into a pessimistic statement on American entertainment—both the making and consumption of it. As such, the artist inculpates himself. In the video, Glover is shirtless and his teeth gleam. He plays a kind of deleterious tramp, all instinct, skitting around an airy parking hangar. Dance is its own language; the choreographer for the video, Sherrie Silver, has taught Glover to contort his body in a manner that induces memories of the grotesque theatre of jigging and cake-walking. Sometimes the movements and how they activate his muscles make him look sexy, at other times crazed. His manic elation erupts into violence at a speed that matches something of the media consumer’s daily experience. Glover strikes a pose, and then, in time for the rhythm drop, shoots a black man in the head from behind.

A moment ago, the victim had been strumming a guitar. Glover carefully places the gun on a lush pillow held out for him by an eager school-aged black child. The awful syncopation of murder and music recalls Arthur Jafa’s seven-minute video “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death,” from 2016, in which footage of a police officer shooting Walter Scott in the back corresponds to a climax in Kanye West’s “Ultra Light Beam.” This is what it’s like, Glover’s video seems to say, to be black in America—at any given time, vulnerable to joy or to destruction. When his character is not dancing, he is killing. The camera amiably follows Glover and a new set of companions, a troupe of uniformed schoolchildren doing the gwara gwara, and then a slew of viral dances. The reprieve ends abruptly when, in another room, Glover is passed another gun, a rifle this time, and murders the members of a black choir. The ten actors fall down in a gruesome heap, reminding us of the night we got word that a young white man had killed a gathering of black worshippers at a church in Charleston. And then Glover is dancing again—this time, with cars burning and police chaos beyond him. The song ends with an eerie melody from Young Thug, who is almost-singing, “You just a big dawg, yeah / I kennelled him in the back yard, yeah.” At the video’s end, Glover is running for his life, the police gaining on him. I’ve been watching it on a loop.

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A few years ago, among Glover’s various evolving creative modes (“I’m an actor, writer, and singer,” he said in his “S.N.L.” opening monologue), his career as a musician seemed to be one with a ceiling, and notable for its relative callowness. Childish Gambino was Glover’s imp, born from an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator. His hashtag-rap witticisms, which privileged punch line over narrative, seemed too flimsy to contain a philosophy. Among black people, he became the subject of skepticism: Can you trust the black artist who is so fluent in the tastes of a white society that seems genuinely to love him? Is his suaveness some cover for self-loathing? (“I learn fast—I figured out the algorithm,” Glover told Tad Friend, in a Profile for this magazine, about operating in Hollywood.) With the release of “Awaken, My Love!,” his 2016 funk album, he seemed to deepen, dashing suspicions about his sincerity, and investing fully in a black musical education.

That same year, the FX television series “ Atlanta ” premièred. With its crystalline fables of ambition and defeat, of the indignities of the social life of black millennials, Glover proved that he possessed an uncanny insight into what it is to be young and black and uncertain. Suddenly, and quite forcefully, Glover was being called the lodestar of a consciousness, the most elegant translator of his generation’s id. Rather than simply accepting the designation and becoming a spokesman, Glover the musician has found ways to point to the absurdity of the celebrity worship that attends his fame. In his new video, he is the executor of carnage and chaos. “This Is America” is currently being analyzed on Twitter as if it were the Rosetta Stone. The video has already been rapturously described as a powerful rally cry against gun violence, a powerful portrait of black-American existentialism, a powerful indictment of a culture that circulates videos of black children dying as easily as it does videos of black children dancing in parking lots. It is those things, but it also a fundamentally ambiguous document. The truth is that this video, and what it suggests about its artist, is very difficult. A lot of black people hate it. Glover forces us to relive public traumas and barely gives us a second to breathe before he forces us to dance. There is an inescapable disdain sewn into the fabric of “This Is America.” The very fact that the dance scenes are already being chopped into fun little GIFs online, divorcing them from the video’s brutality, only serves to prove his point.

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Decoding the Dark Imagery Behind the Meaning of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”

by Bryan Reesman January 28, 2024, 5:00 pm

When it debuted in 2018 around the same time as Donald Glover’s portrayal of pansexual Lando Calrissian in the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story , his video for “This Is America” caused a huge stir, racking up 50 million views in just a few days. It sits at about 900 million now. The song combined elements of gospel music, African folk music, and trap, just as the video later integrated different visual elements.

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It’s easy to see why the four-minute clip—directed by Hiro Murai, who also directed Glover in the TV series Atlanta —fascinated so many people. Shot in a large concrete warehouse space, it follows a shirtless Glover (aka Childish Gambino) as he dances and prances through different groups. He assassinates the folk singer who first accompanies him, gleefully dances with teens and young adults, guns down a black gospel choir after appreciating them, passes by riot police and a flaming car, all while performing exuberantly and often maintaining a smile on his face. In the final shot, he is running fearfully from an out-of-focus mob of white people.

Whenever he has been asked to explain the video and its ending, Glover replies that it’s not for him to say and that it’s for the people. But it is pretty obvious the clip is addressing the dumpster fire that the American social and political landscape has become. It’s like that meme of the dog sitting inside a burning house and saying “this is fine” when things are clearly not. Despite all of the tragedy that’s been heaped up in America over the last several years, we somehow ignore and deflect away from the endless cycle of racial and gun violence, perhaps hoping it will go away. Thoughts and prayers.

By not explaining what the video for “This Is America” is about, Glover prompted a conversation about racial prejudice, gun violence, and general societal chaos that has overwhelmed many Americans but never seems to lead to many solutions. However, many people have had their own ideas about what the video represents.

“I think in a lot of ways what Glover is trying to do is really bring our focus and our attention to black violence, black entertainment [and] the way they’re juxtaposed in society. They seem to cancel each other out in the greater public consciousness,” NPR hip-hop journalist Rodney Carmichael said in 2018 . In discussing the closing scene, he said, “It feels to me like it’s a black man running from a lynch mob.” Some felt that running shot invoked Jordan Peele’s 2017 film, Get Out . “Either way, it is representative of this history of violent white supremacy,” noted Carmichael.

The clip also does not provide easy answers about the social quandaries it is exploring. As Frank Guan noted in his 2018 Vulture essay “What It Means When Childish Gambino Says ‘This Is America,’” the arrival of the Trump administration meant that any “alternative America” for others that did not include pale-skinned residents was not in the picture (at least for his voter base).

But Guan also wrote of the video: “Jubilant black culture abounds not only in resistance to the lethal violence directed at its makers, but also in complicity with it: When Glover stages the murder of a black guitarist and a black church choir, it’s not a white policeman pulling the trigger, but Glover himself, and after each killing he resumes his dancing with the same livewire energy and his rapping with the same assured flow, as if nothing had happened. If black culture affirms itself, accurately, as a testament to its makers’ capacity for grace, invention, and vigor in the face of an inhuman social reality, Glover’s own affirmation contains a shadowy admission that such makers cultivate their own agony in the act of representation.”

In her video breakdown for Insider , Alana Yzola broke down different interpretations of the symbolism throughout the video, from the Confederate soldier-type pants worn by Glover to his Jim Crow-like minstrel movements to the apocalyptic horse riding figure in the background. Then there are those cheerfully dancing young people who are protected from harm, just as he is, because their joyful African dance represents media drawing us away from dire events.

In her video, Yzola states: “Throughout the piece, Gambino plays the complex role of America herself, from violence to the use of entertainment as a distraction. He’s playing both a caricature and a ringleader.” She notes that at the end, the performer seems to snap out of America’s spell and is running like hell to escape it.

On her Medium page, Rashi Ranka wrote in 2020: “’This Is America’ appears to be a commentary on black life in America and American culture as a whole. As a piece of literature, it is almost a declaration of the hidden reality of America, more specifically of a black and white America. Within this song and its video lie various secret messages, symbolism, and ultimately a hidden truth that Glover wishes to communicate to his audience. The contrast we see within the song and the video draws attention through shifts in mood whenever there is a shooting in America against blacks. One second, the entire nation is in an uproar against the atrocity, the next, they are happy, carefree and unconcerned. ‘This Is America’ contrasts popular culture’s perception of black experience and its often brutal reality by juxtaposing happy, carefree choruses along with dark, aggressive verses that invoke emotion.”

What’s fascinating about the different viewpoints on the song is that different people find different meanings within it, yet they all seem to circle around similar themes. Yzola’s and Ranka’s points about the video’s juxtapositions are well taken. Watching the video is uncomfortable yet riveting—it mirrors the surreal quality that American life has taken in the wake of endless chaos. Beyond the overt racial issues portrayed in “This Is America,” the clips make one think about how easy it’s become to pull the trigger, from hateful social media posts to senseless gun violence that both serve no purpose. But what are we going to do about? Just keep watching?

With its fraught and intense imagery, “This Is America” remains a wake-up call, particularly to younger people, that things are not all right. It still deserves repeat viewings, but hopefully followed by our real world action.

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The Real Meaning Behind Childish Gambino’s “This is America”

Childish Gambino's had everyone dissecting the video for his latest single, "This Is America." Here's what we found when we looked deeper at the piece.

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During Donald Glover’s astounding guest spot on Saturday Night Live , the multi-hyphenate took to the stage as Childish Gambino to debut a new song titled “This Is America.” Glover gave a thrilling performance of the track, then unleashed the single online, as well as the official music video , which many are calling brilliant and disturbing. With a title like “This Is America,” both descriptions fit.

While the song itself is a great sonic follow-up to what Gambino put forth with 2016’s Awaken, My Love! , there’s a lot to unpack with the visuals, which, as Akilah Hughes pointed out , take place entirely in a warehouse, similar to the video for Gambino’s 2011 single “Freaks and Geeks.” Both feature Childish showing out for the camera, but instead of a one-man performance, “This Is America” brilliantly takes on a number of issues plucked directly from recent news.

Very early on, an actor by the name of Calvin The Second (who definitely resembles Trayvon Martin’s father Tracy, but is not, in fact, Tracy Martin ) strums on a guitar to the track. By the time the camera moves with Gambino back to the chair the man was sitting on, he now has a hood covering his head, and Gambino’s standing behind him, hitting a terribly familiar Jim Crow pose , before aiming a gun and shooting the man through the head. A well-dressed person in a polo shirt and slacks then brings a red cloth out so Gambino can carefully place the gun into it. This special cloth makes it clear there’s real care and consideration given to how the firearm is being handled. Meanwhile, the dead man’s body is left lying on the ground, only to be dragged off-screen, all while Gambino continues his performance, smiling and dancing like nothing has happened, as if that black body isn’t worth anywhere near as much as the instrument used to end its life. A similar moment of gun violence during a happier singing sequence happens later, after Gambino uses an assault rifle to mow down a church choir.

Those two sequences alone have a few messages buried within them. At the top is a play on how Americans view their guns. Whether it’s the NRA or anyone who grips their 9MM tightly while reciting the Second Amendment, the last thing some Americans want to lose is their right to bear arms, even though the NRA was slow to speak on the murder of Philando Castile , an African-American man who was shot to death by a cop despite alerting the officer that he had a permit for the gun in his vehicle. The guns many say they acquire to protect their lives end up being more important than the growing number of lives taken by police officers on a disturbingly-regular basis. The church choir sequence is even more tragic when you realize that it’s more than likely a reference to that horrific 2015 massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Immediately after he takes someone out, Gambino looks right into the camera and starts his verse with the phrase: “This is America.” You can’t get more direct than that.

Speaking of the turn up, there’s a lot of awesome dancing in this clip. Gambino, surrounded by a number of younger kids, hits everything from Blocboy JB ’s now-iconic shoot dance to the gwara-gwara, which hits even closer to home when you realize that the kids dancing with him appear to be dressed in the school uniforms that South African children wear. This symbolism speaks to how folks will stay scrolling timelines, searching for the perfect meme or commenting on the latest songs, consuming distractions while the world around us burns, figuratively and literally. It’s hard to tell if this is ignorance to what really matters or a coping mechanism and escapism from the fuckery of everyday life, but it’s definitely something that Gambino touches on in this video. Many are also seeing Gambino’s performance as a way to dance in the face of the oppressors.

Now, while all of this is going on in the forefront, there’s a ton of chaos erupting in the background. There are fires, people rioting, and a bunch of cars that look at least 20 or 30 years old (remember, Castile was killed in his ’97 Oldsmobile). There’s even a hooded figure riding a white horse, which could be a reference to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which anyone up on their Bible knows is a reference to the end of the world in the Book of Revelation. According to the Word, the first horse was a white one.

One of the most interesting moments in this video is when Gambino says, “This a celly / That’s a tool.” In the clip, the camera pans to a group of kids with their faces covered, appearing to be recording the insanity on their cell phones. It’s either highlighting just how powerful the cellphone has become in documenting these horrific acts of violence being brought upon us these days, or a reference to the Stephon Clark case, where police thought Clark was holding a gun or a tool and shot him to death in a backyard, only to find out he was holding his cellphone.

If that interpretation is correct that would mean that Glover wrote and recorded this song, then shot the video for it, some time after Clark’s death in late March 2018 . Glover swiftly turning around art that speaks directly to recent news isn’t unheard of, considering that Glover “leaked” that script for his now-cancelled Deadpool animated series referencing #WhoBitBeyonce during the same week we tried to figure out #WhoBitBeyonce. AKA we’re just amassing proof of how much of a creative genius Donald Glover truly is.

One of the heaviest moments is the end of the video, which finds the warehouse dark and seemingly barren, until we see Gambino running for his life from a lynch mob of what appears to be all-white faces. There are a number of schools of thought on this ending; some posit that it’s the ideals of white supremacy intruding on the life of black people. Others have likened it to a slave running through the woods at night. One has to wonder if this was Gambino’s attempt to escape The Sunken Place, which could explain why Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya introduces Childish Gambino on Saturday Night Live right before the performance of “This Is America.”

Look, Childish Gambino does a lot of insane dancing in what appears to be a one-shot onion of a video. As you peel back the layers, you get a beautifully dark portrait of the ultra violence and rage running through America, and, most importantly, residing in the minds of black Americans trying to survive this insanity. That Gambino can take these strands and weave them into a cohesive narrative over song, dance and video underscores that he is today’s foremost creative voice for our people.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Song Analysis — “This is America”: an Analysis of Childish Gambino’s Song

"This is America": an Analysis of Childish Gambino's Song

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Words: 972 |

Updated: 8 November, 2023

Words: 972 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited:

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• Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), 1087-1101.
• Haimovitz, K., & Dweck, C. S. (2017). What Predicts Children's Fixed and Growth Intelligence Mind-Sets? Not Their Parents' Views of Intelligence but Their Parents' Views of Failure. Psychological Science, 28(6), 776-785.
• Hong, Y. Y., Chiu, C. Y., Dweck, C. S., Lin, D. M., & Wan, W. (1999). Implicit theories, attributions, and coping: A meaning system approach. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(3), 588-599.
• Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(1), 33-52.
• Paunesku, D., Walton, G. M., Romero, C., Smith, E. N., Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2015). Mind-set interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement. Psychological Science, 26(6), 784-793.
• Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that personal characteristics can be developed. Educational psychologist, 47(4), 302-314.

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A Racial Analysis of Childish Gambino's "This is America"

The choir scene does not only mean what you think it does..

Posted May 9, 2018 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Childish Gambino's This is America offers a welcome reprieve from the most recent Kanye controversy , but Donald Glover's (the artist's real name) new song and video are themselves provocative, inspiring (requiring perhaps) multiple commentaries on their meaning.

Rather than writing an analysis of the whole video, as others have done, I want to instead do a deeper dive into one small part: the scene with the choir. I do so in the hope that understanding the nuances of this scene will help us better understand the video as a whole. If you happen to be one of the few who hasn't yet seen the video, you can find it below.

Other commentators (e.g., this NPR story , this Time article , this Atlantic piece ) have generally focused on how the choir scene recalls the 2015 shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. This seems likely. Dylann Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who was apparently radicalized by the shooting of Trayvon Martin and reports of so-called “black on white crime ,” killed nine black people during a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. In This is America , ten members of the choir are gunned down, not nine, but Roof actually hit ten and one survived.

Even so, the church scene is not only about what happened in Charleston. This part of the video, like the earlier portion, intended to juxtapose happy and positive aspects of African American culture (in this case the Black church) with the violence that surrounds and impacts the black community. Roof and other white supremacists may be part of this violence, but the threat is more pervasive and more insidious.

Rather than focusing on one tragic incident, I believe this scene, like the entire video, is intentionally ambiguous in order to invite a variety of different interpretations. Consider, for example, three very different interpretations, among many other possibilities.

• It is a criticism of the black church for focusing on materialism ("get your money, Black man") while the community is being ravaged.
• It is a criticism of black men (if you interpret Glover's character as a representation of black men, which I personally do not) whose violence fails to adequately discriminate between those who would do them harm and those who try to lead righteous lives, including in their own communities.
• It is a criticism of America (if you interpret Glover's character as a representation of America, as I do) for not valuing black lives, even when those lives are innocent and righteous, as represented by their participation in the church choir.

So, which of these, if any, are right? That is, which of these meanings did Glover intend to convey? It's tempting to ask this question, and then try to answer it, but I think it's the wrong question. As is always the case with ambiguous stimuli, what the viewer or reader thinks is happening has much more to do with their life experiences and beliefs than with the stimulus itself.

There is no point in asking what Glover intended the scene to mean. If he intended to present an unambiguous narrative, he would have done so. The ambiguous symbols suggest that he wanted multiple interpretations. Perhaps he wanted people to do some personal reflection on the relationship between religion and violence. Perhaps he wanted to invite dialogue. Maybe he just wanted people to watch his video over and over in order to figure it out. Either way, there is no one right answer here. The question is not what is it that Glover intended but rather what is it that the viewer takes from it.

There is, however, some context – the name of the song, the lyrics, the rest of the video – that suggests some interpretations might be more accurate and truthful than others.

This is America . That this is a commentary on the United States might seem obvious to Americans (isn't everything always about us?), but the music has South African influences and the clothing seems culturally ambiguous. The title provides important information.

Black men are the focus. The word "Black" appears as a racial signifier 28 times in the song. All but one of those times it appears as "Black men." If this seems a tad overdone, consider how common it still is for white Americans to assert that race isn't important and that we should all focus on our shared humanity, even as black men and women continue to experience disproportional access to education , health care , and justice .

Glover is America. In the church scene, just as in the earlier scenes, Glover is self-assured and brash. He kills multiple people (including the choir) and afterward continues to dance and mug for the camera, seemingly without a care in the world.

On a literal level, it is hard to make sense of this juxtaposition of violence and dance. But as I mentioned in #3 above, I think Glover's character is intended as a representation of America. As such, it is not Glover (or Black men) doing the killing. It is not even white men. Rather, it is the country itself. It is America, with its racist history and contemporary disinterest in black lives, that takes the lives of black people, even innocent, church-going black people, and continues to smile and dance as though the violence was unworthy of notice.

Yes, some of this violence takes the form of self-identified white supremacists but other violence is systemic — racially biased school discipline, racially segregated low-income housing that isolates those living in poverty, subcultures that glorify guns and value them more than people. This systemic violence can be just as deadly. I think it's part of Glover's commentary.

What does the church scene mean? To me, it is all of the following:

• It is a criticism of America for not valuing black lives, even when those lives are innocent, as represented by the church choir.
• It is a criticism of the pro-gun lobby for making guns so accessible that there is no place that black people are safe, not even a church.
• It is an observation that violence is unpredictable. A man entering a church with hardly any clothes could be looking for shelter or for God. But he could just as easily be looking for vengeance.
• It is an observation (criticism?) that Americans seem content to consume popular culture (as represented by the choir and his own dancing) while people (specifically black people) around them are getting killed.

Again, I don't assume the above is definitive. Earlier, I wrote that what the viewer or reader thinks is happening has much more to do with their life experiences and beliefs than with the stimulus itself. I am not immune from this tendency. As readers of this blog know, much of my writing and community work focus on racial justice and restorative responses to acts of injustice. Like others, I am interpreting this work of art through my own personal filter. As such, it is not the truth but rather my personal truth.

There is room for other truths.

There always is with art.

Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D., teaches in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches, studies, and writes about race relations, conflict, and restorative justice.

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Jason Parham

Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' and the New Shape of Protest Music

In 2014, a Rolling Stone poll declared Bob Dylan’s "Masters of War" the best protest song of our time. Recorded in April of 1963, during that fierce spell of racial and economic tumult, Dylan, in his folksy pragmatism, rages against the Cold War and the military industrial complex, singing: "You play with my world/ Like it’s your little toy." Corralled by social margins during that same era, the tenor of resistance for artists like Sam Cooke ("A Change Is Gonna Come") and James Brown ("Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud") was voiced in anthems of anti-racism and self-pride. Out of the 1970 Kent State shootings—where the National Guard killed four students during a school protest—Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded the stringent "Ohio."

Donald Glover ’s trap gospel "This Is America" is a piece of trickster art that soundly rebukes the natural DNA of the protest song and constructs it into a freakish chronicle of imprisoned torment. In the dozen or so times I’ve watched the 4-minute video, which was released last Saturday and has already amassed 50 million views on YouTube, I kept thinking how much it reminded me of Kara Walker’s grand Antebellum silhouettes , which juggle themes of the grotesque—torture, death, slavery—in one graceful sweep.

Working under his rap pseudonym Childish Gambino, Glover, like Walker, suggests a story of impossible escape. It’s tough work, blood-soaked and vacant redemption, but—and here’s where the artifice begins to reveal traces of brilliance—it’s playful and soul-moving to the point one only wants to keep peering into its dark interiors, waiting for the next truth to sprout.

Hiro Murai, who directed the video, is no stranger to Glover’s rhythms and deceptions, having lensed Atlanta ’s wooziest, most disorienting episodes (“Teddy Perkins,” “The Woods”). Here, he seems content to let the scene unfold simply; all the kineticism comes from Gambino, who slinks, then transforms with cartoonish ferocity. With hollow-eyed conviction and no forewarning, he shoots a black man in the head from behind in one sequence, and rifles down a 10-person choir in another. The warehouse tornadoes into chaos and smoke. "This is America," Gambino insists. "Don’t catch you slippin’ up/ Look at how I’m livin’ now/ Police be trippin’ now." The lyrics are unadorned, raw, hauntingly spiritual. Later, over a ribbon of oily vocals, he tells us: "Grandma told me/ Get your money, black man." But the ironies have run flat by then—there are no riches to be had. The jig is up.

Notice, too, how the beat is uptempo, sporadically layered with Afrobeat pulses and church hymns. Gambino and his co-producer Ludwig Goransson trick the ears; they fabricate joy and stack it against Murai’s jamboree of ruin and violence. Atlanta rap contemporaries—among them, Young Thug, Quavo, Slim Jxmmi, and 21 Savage—enter the song’s orbit through a gumbo of yelps, ayes, skrrts, and woos. Both song and video take on the impression of collage.

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"This Is America" is successful in the way all art should be: Its meaning wraps around each listener differently, a beautiful, nebulous showpiece with a thousand implications. How Gambino and Murai go about bringing those implications to the surface—turning the suffering and trauma of black people into a cinematic playhouse with no way out—and whether that makes it truly vital, is harder to sift through. (Notice that Gambino’s grim odyssey never takes him beyond the white walls of the warehouse, almost as if he’s trapped.) What "This Is America" ends up becoming is one of the most unconventional protest songs of the modern era.

The images are especially significant to Gambino's puzzle. For most people, "This Is America" was first consumed in video form—the song and footage were released simultaneously during Glover’s Saturday Night Live performance last weekend. The images, above all I believe, are what Gambino wants to resonate, to burn, to damn. The sum is one of naked invention—destruction so bare in its presentation it’s hard to know what exactly the viewer should be looking for.

There are three videos happening within Murai's scope. The first is in the foreground, where Gambino and a cluster of school kids perform choreography sewn together from across the black diaspora, invoking the Gwara Gwara with identical rigor as they do Memphis rapper Blocboy JB’s popular "Shoot" dance (which went viral thanks to a collaboration with Drake ). The second video is the background, a canvas of unblinking devastation: burning cars, falling bodies, raging crowds. A world of gun and flame. The third is both of these ecosystems working in symbiotic tandem. Together, they imply complicity on the part of its black actors—that there is plenty of fault to share in the destruction.

That very duality, even if just teased at, is precisely what makes "This Is America" such an unorthodox protest song. Whether imbued with a social or political slant, songs of resistance typically envision a clear villain or threat—a president, a war—but Gambino doesn’t just cough up one, he gives us a multitude. There are no solutions. No paths forward. Just a trove of questions.

After the antiwar soundtrack of the 1960s and ’70s, the protest song pushed forward. Under the boot of Reaganomics, incendiary rap group NWA found a target in law enforcement with 1988’s "Fuck Tha Police," followed by Public Enemy’s rallying call "Fight the Power." Years later, in 2004, Green Day would damn the Bush administration with timeless punk brava. "Well, maybe I’m the faggot, America/ I’m not a part of a redneck agenda/ Now everybody do the propaganda/ And sing along to the age of paranoia," they sang on 2004’s "American Idiot."

With Black Lives Matter ( Janelle Monae’s "Hell You Talmbout" ) and #MeToo (MILCK’s "Quiet") came resounding psalms to the opposition of the day. In 2016, YG and Nipsey Hussle’s "FDT" gave us a plain-spoken mantra—"Fuck Donald Trump"—that has yet to lose bite. Collectively, these were songs meant to check the power-drunk, the intolerant, the warmongering, the racist. Their force lay in their ability to defeat apathy, to anger, even to galvanize.

"This Is America" diverges from this lineage, insisting instead on pain: working to accept it, to get past it, but never being able to.

And in this, his ultimate trick is his most nightmarish. Throughout the video, Gambino and the school children are the lone people untouched, dancing with the history of Jim Crow alive in their feet , contorting and romping, faces plastered with sly, elastic grins. But it turns out to be a mirage—in the final flash, Gambino’s character is seen manically fleeing down a dark hall, a mob at his back. With harrowing clarity one last note boils, then pops: even when you play their game, they still turn on you. "This Is America," unlike so much protest music, ends as it began—with death, pain, blood. We never know what exactly comes of Gambino, but Young Thug’s closing lyrics bear the impact of a dagger. "You just a big dawg, yeah/I kenneled him in the backyard."

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Why the Dancing Makes 'This Is America' So Uncomfortable to Watch

The new music video from Childish Gambino weaponizes the viewer’s instinctive bodily empathy.

“This Is America” isn’t the first time that Donald Glover, as his musical alter ego Childish Gambino, has harnessed dance in service of surrealism . But the art form has a conspicuous symbolic significance in the artist’s latest single, which Glover debuted on Saturday Night Live : The song’s emphasis on dance was apparent in his live performance on the show, in the cover art for the track , and in the remarkable music video itself, which has more than 36 million views on YouTube as of publication. In the video, a grinning, shirtless Glover dances through a giant warehouse, occasionally accompanied by black school children in uniform, as chaotic scenes of violence unfold behind him—and are sometimes enacted by him.

One popular interpretation is that the short film—directed by Glover’s frequent collaborator Hiro Murai—is a denunciation of the distractions that keep many Americans from noticing how the world around them is falling apart. Those diversions are represented by Glover and the schoolkids’ performances; their choreographed moves include at least 10 different popular dances, such as the shoot and the South African Gwara Gwara. Viral dances tend to be associated with frivolity and vapidity, despite the fact that dancing has always been a communicative art of great cultural significance that spreads joy through movement. Glover, however, subverts an uplifting communal activity to deliver a powerful indictment of the unsettling contradictions in American society.

Though the word viral is so associated with internet-sharing now, the virus-like quality of dance was being analyzed long before the existence of social media. John Martin, one of the first prominent dance critics, described the medium’s effect on its audience as a contagion. He suggested in his book Introduction to the Dance (1939) that when we watch others dance, “we shall cease to be mere spectators and become participants in the movement that is presented to us, and though to all outward appearances we shall be sitting quietly in our chairs, we shall nevertheless be dancing synthetically with all our musculature.”

Decades later, inspired by ’90s research on so-called mirror neurons —cells discovered in the brains of monkeys that react equally when the body performs an action as when it sees the action performed—modern dance theorists such as Ivar Hagendoorn and Susan Leigh Foster applied the idea to humans. Kinesthetic empathy, critics like Foster have argued, is what makes dance feel so infectious—and what prompts the body, upon seeing another body dance, to internally simulate the movement.

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If you watch “This Is America” on YouTube, you might stumble on videos of people who recorded their own reactions to it. Many of these viewers sway along with Glover at first, rolling their own shoulders, nodding to the afro folk–inspired melody as the musician twists his bare torso, revealing his own musculature and contorting his body in ways both alluring and disturbing. But the benign nature of that contagion is shattered when the first gunshot rings out 53 seconds in, and with the jarring transition of the melody to dark, pulsing trap. In the reaction videos, mouths fall open, and people are stunned into paralysis. The shooting itself is shocking, but so is that fact that Glover carries on dancing as if nothing happened.

An internal struggle begins in the viewer’s body, which is pulled between joy and horror. Just as the video questions how we can dance when there is pandemonium all around, the audience struggles with whether to continue moving, too, after witnessing such brutality, especially after Glover shoots an entire choir of gospel singers, supposedly in reference to the 2015 murder of nine churchgoers by Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina.

Susan Leigh Foster, in her paper and performed lecture Kinesthetic Empathies and the Politics of Compassion , outlines Martin’s idea that the internal mimicry of movement extends to emotion, which gives dance the ability to transcend class, cultural, and racial barriers. While there’s certainly value in this potential for universalism, “This Is America” complicates the question of empathy (intentionally or otherwise) because of its references to racial trauma and racist violence. Does the video—which foregrounds black suffering—aim to send a single message to all viewers, to all Americans, regardless of race ? Some people were especially troubled by the shooting of the choir: If the scene is meant to evoke an atrocity committed by a white terrorist with a specifically anti-black agenda, what does it mean to see a black man re-create it? And to bring the issue back to the video’s use of dance, what does it mean for nonblack viewers to internally simulate movement inspired by black pain?

Because of all the thorny debates it prompts—and because of how much there is to process, both intellectually and emotionally—“This Is America” seems made for repeat watching. But the dancing, too, reveals its power in a second and third viewing. The dramatic irony is pervasive. It even feels like Glover is aware of your presence . His satisfaction that the viewer has been lulled into a false sense of security seems apparent in the languidness with which he pulls out that gun from his waistband, poses, and then shoots the hooded man in the head.

The scientist Vittorio Gallese, who was part of the team of researchers who discovered mirror neurons, describes kinesthetic empathy as “involuntary and automatic.” Therein lies the dilemma for viewers of “This Is America,” who might recoil at the chaos and yet feel a strong impulse to dance anyway. One man, recording his reaction , summed up this tension when he remarked: “I’m lowkey scared of him right now. But I have to bop my head.”

This kind of empathy means viewers cannot, really, just be passive observers. The video’s juxtaposition of carefree dancing with carnage and disorder, the vacillation between the gospel-Afrobeat hybrid and the harsher, sparse rap reflects the discord in the audience’s bodies, our faces perhaps displaying discomfort while our bodies betray us . In doing so, “This Is America” perverts the positive potential of dance’s collective nature, taking it from something celebratory to something far more disturbing that implicates us all.

24 things you may have missed in Childish Gambino's 'This is America' music video

The music video for "This is America" capped an important weekend for Donald Glover .

Glover released the 4-minute opus under his musical alter-ego Childish Gambino, after performing the song on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." It launched a storm of conversation on social media and quickly became one of the most trending videos on YouTube .

Like much of Glover's work, "This is America" is cryptic and loaded with shocking imagery and metaphor. The track's tone swerves from happy-go-lucky psalmic readings to more alarming verses. In typical Glover fashion, he dismissed close readings of his work in an interview at the Met Gala Monday night .

"I just wanted to make a good song," Glover told E! . "Like something that people could play on Fourth of Julys."

Directed by his frequent "Atlanta" collaborator Hiro Murai and choreographed by Sherrie Silver, the music video touches on gun violence, the precarious state of black bodies in the US, and how we've historically used entertainment to distract us from pervasive cultural and political problems. But the music video's iconoclastic images and many layers deserve close examination to fully parse.

Here are 24 things you may have missed.

Less than a minute in, Gambino strikes a pose and kills a guitarist with a bag over his head.

It happens just as the video drastically shifts from a cheerful to aggressive tone.

Some initially believed the guitarist was Tracy Martin, the father of slain teen Trayvon Martin. But he's actually played by Calvin Winbush , a Los Angeles-based musician and actor.

The pose resembles Jim Crow.

As noted by several people on Twitter , including "Dear White People" creator Justin Simien , the pose resembles a classic illustration of Jim Crow,  the fictional racist character that characterized African-Americans as " lazy, stupid, and inherently less human." The character was created and performed by Thomas D. Rice in the early 1800s at early minstrel shows.

Later, the term " Jim Crow"  referred to a series of racist segregation laws that emerged during the Reconstruction Era. 

The evocation may be a reflection on what just transpired: Glover dances around while a black man played guitar, entertaining the viewer, but the threat of violence against African-Americans is inextricable from that entertainment.

Or it could be a reference to Michael Jackson.

Others feel the pose evokes  Michael Jackson in his 1991 music video for "Black or White."

Another part of "This is America" also resembles "Black or White."

Near the end of the video, Glover is dancing on top of a car, and it's similar to Jackson's moves in the "Black and White" video, as well. 

Michael Jackson also dances on top of a car.

Glover has riffed on Michael Jackson before, most notably in the  "Teddy Perkins"  episode of his FX show "Atlanta."  He seems to see Jackson as a black man aggressively groomed for show business , that may have also had a violent underside .

Gambino hands his gun to someone who takes it away in a cloth, while the body he shot is dragged away.

It's representative of guns being treated with care and priority while black bodies don't get the same dignity.

That it's red is also significant.

Glover could have picked any color for the fabric. He chose red, INSIDER's Alana Yzola theorizes , because it's representative of Republican-dominated states, which she says often value guns over black lives.

He's shirtless for a reason.

Glover's exposed torso is there to remind us that he is black and vulnerable, according to Yahoo's Ken Tucker .

"Glover wants to remind us that violence is committed against black bodies like his with some regularity and with no heed to whether the body in question is that of a celebrity or an ordinary citizen," Tucker writes.

Notice the buttons on his pants?

Glover's clothing choices are also loaded with meaning. As one Twitter user suggested , Glover's pants seem inspired by a particular pair of trousers worn by Confederate soldiers . And his yellow shoes may also be a reference to canvas shoes worn by Confederate soldiers .

Glover's garments are a reminder of the historical violence inflicted upon African-Americans, and his dancing serves to highlight the ways we're continually distracted from that history.  

At around the minute mark, action begins to take off in the background.

The video shifts in tone as Glover dances past the guitarist he shot. Black men run across the warehouse-like room as people drive by in a car. The background becomes increasingly busy and frenetic as the video continues.

Someone dancing on top of a car shoots what looks like dollar bills out of a toy gun.

It could be a commentary on Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy who was shot by Cleveland police in 2014. Glover could also be drawing a connection between violence, entertainment, and profit in capitalism.

Gambino kills a black church choir, evoking the Dylann Roof shooting.

In another shocking turn, Glover mows down a church choir with an assault rifle. It's an image that seems to reference the  killing of nine people  at a predominantly African-American church by white supremacist Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

The gun is an AK-47.

Roof used a Glock pistol in his massacre, but the AK-47 — used by Glover in the video and originally created to kill masses of people in war — is a weapon of choice for mass shooters in America .

Once again, the gun is whisked away with care on a red cloth.

Even after the Roof massacre, the United States failed to pass a single law restricting gun ownership.

Glover may be sending a message about how the US prioritizes the protection of guns over the protection of black bodies. Glover moves fluidly from violent act to violent act, just as America does with mass shootings.

Two minutes in, he reveals a new tattoo.

Glover has had a tattoo that reads "Truth is a power" — a reference to the works of Kierkegaard — for a few years now. In this video, he debuts a new one above it, written in a script font, which appears to say "Love is a passion." 

Someone commits suicide in the background.

As Glover and the kids are dancing, someone leaps off the railing and apparently commits suicide. The images of smiling, dancing black children nod to the ways that black cultural production is often commodified and appropriated by white audiences. 

Throughout the video, Glover's dancing serves as a distraction from the awful things happening around him. He and the kids around him seem to be performing a variation on the Gwara Gwara, a South African dance Rihanna famously performed at the Grammys this year .

Glover seems to be saying that America uses entertainment provided by its black celebrities as a distraction from the death and violence it forces on its black citizens. It also sends a message about the ways that the lives of black Americans are often devalued in our culture. As  Vibe writer Bianca Salvant notes , "It  is relevant to ask why their bodies are worth more on a field or court than on the streets of America."

He raps "This is a celly/That's a tool."

As he raps those verses , the camera pans up to show multiple kids holding cell phones.

The line could have multiple meanings.

The next verse, "On my Kodak," referring to the film brand, could refer to how the proliferation of cellphones allows people to capture images of police violence.

It could also be a reference to the March 18 police shooting of Stephon Clark , an unarmed black man holding a cell phone.

Or it could refer to prison cells — the warehouse where the music video takes place somewhat resembles a prison — which are used as tools of oppression.

Death gallops by on a white horse.

The image appears to be a reference to verse 6:8 in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. In the King James translation , it goes like this:

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

A police car follows death on the horse, perhaps symbolizing the tacit connection between police violence and death for black Americans.  

After pretending to open fire, there are 17 seconds of silence, possibly for the victims of the Parkland shooting.

Glover poses as if he's about to kill the children who were dancing around him, but he isn't actually holding a gun.

The song comes to a halt, and Glover strikes up a joint to smoke. There are 17 seconds of silence, which some on Reddit interpret as a moment of respect for the 17 victims of the February shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida .

Did you notice the screen corners?

If you look closely, you'll notice that the edges of the screen have started to curve in — timed perfectly to the point at which Glover shoots the guitarist on screen. It's a visual cue, meant to evoke a sense of claustrophobia and unease.  

At this point in the video, the corners push back once again.

This scene represents the apex of that transition. Once Glover pauses, the corners start spreading back out, and the camera begins to pan away.

Hey, it's SZA.

SZA shows up sitting on a car in the next scene wearing a dress by French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier . She also posted an image from the set on Instagram . It's not really clear why she's there, but it may hint toward a future collaboration between the pair.

Many of the cars have the driver's door open.

It could be representative of how African-Americans are often forced to pull over and step outside of their vehicles by police officers. Black drivers are asked to pull over at higher rates than white drivers, according to research from Stanford University .

All of the cars are old.

As Adrienne Gibbs notes in Forbes , all the cars in the video are models from the '80s and '90s. Not everyone can afford the new, flashy cars in most rap music videos. It may also be a commentary on the American obsession with capitalist consumption.  

The ending of the video draws comparisons to "Get Out."

The final scene of the video shows Glover running from what seems to be white riot police officers.

Some people understood it as him running from "The Sunken Place" from "Get Out," a metaphysical place that holds the black consciousness while a white mind takes over a black person's body.(When Glover performed the song on "Saturday Night Live," "Get Out" star Daniel Kaluuya introduced him.) It could be read as Glover trying to escape simply being a body to be used by white people for distraction. 

Another reading understands it as Glover as a slave running through the woods, which may hold a similar metaphorical meaning.

And some viewers read the scene as being directly connected to the pause in the video where Glover lights a joint. In the end, Glover says, police care more about black men using drugs than gun violence. And it's an especially prescient message when, according to the NAACP , "African-Americans represent 12.5% of illicit drug users, but 29% of those arrested for drug offenses and 33% of those incarcerated in state facilities for drug offenses."

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This is America: an Analysis of Childish Gambino’s Song

This essay about “This Is America” by Childish Gambino explores the song’s intricate critique of American society, focusing on themes like race, violence, and media distraction. It highlights how the song juxtaposes cheerful melodies with dark themes to reflect the shocking nature of gun violence and the commodification of African American culture. The essay examines the symbolism of dance as both a cultural expression and a metaphor for distraction from societal issues. It also addresses the portrayal of gun violence and police brutality in the lyrics, emphasizing the reverence for guns over human life and the racial biases that lead to the unjustified killing of African Americans. Through its analysis, the essay presents “This Is America” as a powerful commentary on the contradictions within American society, urging a reflection on the nation’s identity and the need for change.

How it works

Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” exploded onto the music scene, capturing the attention of audiences worldwide with its powerful lyrics and provocative video. At its core, the song is a multifaceted critique of contemporary American society, tackling themes of race, violence, and distraction within the media landscape. This essay seeks to unpack the layers of meaning embedded in the lyrics and accompanying visuals, exploring how they reflect and comment on the complexities of American life today.

The song opens with a cheerful, almost tranquil melody, setting a stage that quickly shifts to a darker, more intense rhythm.

This abrupt transition mirrors the sudden and often shocking nature of violence in America, particularly gun violence. The recurring phrase “This is America” serves as a refrain throughout the song, a reminder that the scenes depicted are not isolated incidents but rather reflective of the country’s broader social and cultural dynamics.

One of the most striking aspects of the song’s lyrics is the juxtaposition of dance and violence. Gambino uses dance both as a symbol of African American cultural expression and as a metaphor for distraction – a way of diverting attention from the more sinister aspects of American society. The lyrics “Don’t catch you slippin’ now / Look what I’m whippin’ now” can be interpreted as a commentary on the way sensationalism and consumer culture overshadow critical issues, such as racial discrimination and gun violence.

The refrain “This is America” is interspersed with references to gun violence and its normalization within American society. After each act of violence in the music video, the weapons are carefully handled with cloth, suggesting a reverence for guns over human life. This imagery, coupled with the lyrics, critiques the gun control debate and the cyclical nature of violence and outrage in the media.

Moreover, “This Is America” delves into the African American experience, highlighting the duality of living in a country that celebrates black culture through entertainment and music while simultaneously grappling with systemic racism and inequality. The lyrics “We just wanna party / Party just for you / We just want the money / Money just for you” reflect the commodification of black culture and the exploitation of black artists in the entertainment industry.

Throughout the song, Gambino addresses the issue of police brutality with lines like “This is a celly / That’s a tool” – a reference to the killings of African Americans by police officers, often justified by claims that the victims were armed. This line, in particular, is a chilling reminder of how everyday objects in the hands of African Americans can be perceived as threats, underscoring the deep-seated racial biases that permeate American society.

In conclusion, “This Is America” is a powerful artistic expression that challenges listeners and viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about American society. Through its lyrics and visuals, the song paints a portrait of a nation grappling with its identity, caught between the celebration of culture and the perpetuation of violence and inequality. Childish Gambino’s masterpiece urges us to reflect on the America we live in, the America we contribute to, and ultimately, the America we envision for the future. It is a call to awareness, a demand for change, and a reminder that the realities depicted are not just lyrics in a song but the lived experiences of many.

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Is This America?: How Rhetorical Velocity and Recomposition Turn Movements into Memes

• Micah Williams University of Alabama at Birmingham

Recomposition has been widely discussed as complex and rhetorically sophisticated—but is it just? This essay examines three recompositions of a music video, Childish Gambino’s “This Is America,” to understand how justice and injustice are carried out through changes to form and content. Save a few cases, such recompositions appropriated the original for personal gain, in effect undermining Gambino’s work to champion for marginalized communities. Ultimately, my analysis shows it is imperative that content creators learn what makes just and unjust recomposition. Rather than misappropriate important messages from marginalized groups, users should call out unjust recompositions when they see them.

Author Biography

Micah Williams is currently an English and Philosophy double-major with an African-American Studies minor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After graduation, he plans to obtain a PhD in English Literature and teach and research various topics in African-American literature. His research interests include Black protest literature, explorations of gender and sexuality in the Black literary tradition, and the philosophy of media representation, particularly Blackness in film and television.

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Introduction to academic writing.

Greer Phillips “This Is America”: Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation

“This is America”: Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation  

As can be seen over the past few years, the media has had a great influence on what Americans believe. When it comes to gun violence in America, the media often displays black people as the aggressors when truthfully, they are the ones most likely to be targeted due to the unspoken racism in America. Even when actions are done in self-defense, the black community is likely to be misrepresented, as seen with the Black Lives Matter protests. Donald Glover, commonly known as Childish Gambino, challenges people to reevaluate their ideas revolving around gun violence and race in regards to the black community. To produce a song that would gain mainstream media attention while also addressing this complex issue, Glover had to take careful consideration of the rhetorical situation and all its factors.  

Lloyd Bitzer  redefined t he term “rhetorical situation” and its supporting terms such as exigence, audience, and constraints. Bitzer describes a rhetorical situation as a creation of discourse and specifies that the discourse occurs “because of some specific condition or situation which invites utterance” (4). Bitzer also goes into great detail when defining the factors of a rhetorical situation which are the exigence, audience, and constraints. Exigence is defined by Bitzer as an issue that can be changed and is marked by a sense of urgency (6-7). Bitzer stresses the importance that “an exigence that cannot be modified is not rhetorical” (6). The audience of a rhetorical situation is anyone can cause a change in reference to the exigence (Bitzer 7). Anyone who views the rhetorical situation is a part of an audience; however, they must have the ability to modify the exigence in order to be a part of the rhetorical audience. The last factor of any rhetorical situation is the constraints. Bitzer defines constraints as being “made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are part of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence” (8). There are a number of different things that act on an exigence as constraints for every rhetorical situation. Lloyd Bitzer’s descriptions of exigence, audience, and constraints help to illustrate and redefine the term “rhetorical situation.”  

Figure 1: Opening Scene (Time)

“This is America”, recorded by David Glover, made headlines with its shocking juxtaposition of scenes of violence and scenes of joy (“Genius Absurdity”).  One of the most famous scenes from the video depicts Glover shooting a hooded man in the back of the head while he is strapped to a chair. This is likely in reference to the past when slaves would be lynched; however, Glover is addressing how lynching has evolved into gun violence against the black community. Many people have also made this connection since Glover’s stance is ”r eminiscent of Thomas Rice, the original Jim Crow” (Craven).   This graphic symbolism and the many other examples shown throughout the video make viewers uncomfortable, which is exactly what Glover intended for it to do.  Donald Glover uses “This Is America” as a way to challenge viewers’ ideas on the issue and to show them that the people of t he black community are too often the targets of gun violence strictly due to their race.  

Figure 2: Glover prior to shooting choir (Time)

While there are many different interpretations of the viral video, “This Is America” has one issue it clearly addresses. The music video brings attention to the issues of racially charged gun violence in America, which serves as the rhetorical exigence of the piece. By addressing this ma jor  issue through  complex symbolism, Glover forces viewers to reassess their thoughts and actions regarding the topic of racism based on their individual interpretation of the video. Ano ther reason this exigence is rhetorical is that it has a sense of urgency, something Bitzer describes as an important characteristic of any exigence. Many people have already formed their own opinions regarding gun violence and race, some of which have done so subconsciously. Research has shown that “anxieties about insanity and gun violence are imbued with often unspoken anxieties about race, politics, and the unequal distribution of violence in American society” (Metzl). As gun violence continues to rapidly grow in America, the black community is “disproportionately impacted by gun  violence” which is why Donald Glover felt the need to address this issue in his song “This Is America” (Everytown Research and Policy). This differs from what most people believe and what the media presents, which is that black people are typically the ones pulling the trigger.  In this short video, Donald Glover delivered his exigence to millions of people, and likely changed the minds of many of them as well.  

Most rhetorical situations usually have a specific audience they reach. However, the rhetorical audience of this piece is simply anyone who watches the video. While one may argue that this definition of the audience is too simple, Bitzer describes the audience as anyone who can invoke change. With the video’s ability to provoke the thought and emotions of the people who view it, the video allows anyone the ability to reevaluate their stance on racially charged violence in Ame rica. Simply by modifying their stance on this issue, anyone is able to make a change in many various ways. Change starts by calling out the media’s common misrepresentation which leads people  to have racist opinions on gun violence. These opinions can cause people to act more intensely on them when in a confrontation with a person of color. “This is America” has a very wide rhetorical audience since everyone has the ability to reevaluate their beliefs and their actions based on their beliefs after watching the video.  

Many constraints worked against Do nald Glover and his team when creating “This Is America”. The first, and most obvious constraint, is time. Most music videos are under five minutes long, including “This Is America” which is four minutes and five seconds. Glover had to keep this in mind when creating the video since most people will not watch a music video over five minutes long. With this short time frame, Glover had to figure out how to incorporate all of the symbolism he had in mind. The constant change of scenery in an effort to fit everything into the four-minute and five-second video shows that he was suc cessful in this feat. Although the video mainly served as a way to challenge viewers’ ideas on gun violence, Glover still wanted people to enjoy the song. Glover had to find a way to send a message while also creating a song that people would like to listen to it on repeat. If people liked the song, this also meant the message written in the song would be spread to more people as well. Donald Glover accomplished this by creating an entertaining and everchanging beat in the background as well as using a popular genre of singing: rap. In 2018, 21.7% of music Americans consumed was rap while pop stood at 20.1%, making these genres the most popular of the year ( Statista Research Department).  Glover’s popular beat has more of an upbeat feel while the lyrics discuss the idea of partying, which could be described as shallow but is specifically used to illustrate how we ignore racially charged gun violence an d try to continue on with living happy lives. The ly rics during the rap beat discuss gun violence against the black community by police officers and the high number of gun violence incidents in black communities. They also draw attention to common black stereotypes non-people of color hold such as that people of color are more likely to break the law, be violent people, and are poor and will do anything necessary to make money. By strategically shifting between these two genres during scenes of violence and tying in complex issues and stereotypes into his lyrics, Glover addresses the issue of racially charged gun violence in America in a way that is intriguing yet entertaining to listener s. These two constraints, a relatively short time length and attractive musical elements, helped to contribute to the number of people who watched the video, adding to the rhetorical audience.  

Figure 3: Glover dancing amid violence (Time)

“This is America” has depictions of violence and gore throughout the entire video. The amount of violence that could be depicted for the video to still be shared on mainstream media platforms serves as another constraint for the video. The violence serv es to successfully confront people will the realities of racial gun violence and provide real-world references. While it is an important aspect, due to the community guidelines on popular video platforms, the violence had restrictions on how detailed it could be. If the violence and gore had been too detailed or contained too much blood, the video would be restricted only for mature viewers, or even taken down from platforms. “This is America” has over 798 million views which would not be possible if YouTube had taken the video down due to community guideline violations. While Glover could have decided to film a video without violence, it would not have been as popular as it was and he could not effectively get his message across to the people without it. This was one of the most major constraints Donald Glover, or anyone would have when filming a video about the issue of gun violence.  

One reason “This is America” received so much national attention was because of the shocking symbolism throughout the video. While some symbols are obvious with their meanings, with others some people don’t even recognize them as symbols. One of the most obvious references in the video is to the shooting at the AME Church in Charleston, SC. In one scene in “This Is America”, Glover enters a room where a ten-person choir is singing along and clapping to the upbeat music while Glover joins in the celebration as well. Quickly, Glovers mood shifts when he is handed a large gun with which he proceeds to turn around and shoot the choir dead. This references the famous AME Church shooting when a white supremacist shot and killed nine black church members. This real-world reference illustrates one of the many examples of black people being the targets of gun violence solely because of their race. This shooting made headlines about the need to address and change the amount of gun violence against the black community. The use of references to sensitive events and topics through the depiction of violence is one of the reasons “This Is America” received so much mainstream attention. Some scenes, such as the shooting of the choir, were shocking to viewers to see these sensitive topics depicted in that way but this was necessary to get people to reevaluate their beliefs on the issue of racially charged gun violence. While many references were obvious, others were much more complex. The more complex references, some of which have been discovered while some have not, left viewers wondering and thinking, causing them to think about the video’s message more deeply. In “This Is America”, Glover addressed the issue of gun violence against the black community by shocking and provoking the thoughts of viewers.  

“This is America” received national attention. Many videos and articles have been made analyzing almost every object in the video and it even became a trend for people to film and post their reaction when watching the video the first time. This alone illustrated how the video accomplished David Glover’s goal of it being seen by a large number of people. It is also evident in the articles and reaction videos that Glover challenged viewers’ minds. This widespread coverage also contributed to the conversation surrounding racially charged gun violence, which is exactly what Donald Glover was attempting to do. “This is America” successfully responds to the rhetorical situation through discourse.  

Donald Glover addresses the complex issue of  gun violence  against the black community through the use of sophisticated symbolism and by leaving the video to be uniquely analyzed by each individual viewer. “This is America” created discussion and debate on the issue of racially charged violence in America and how it unfairly targets the black community. Through shocking real-world references and entertaining musical elements, Glover created a song, that when analyzed, brought attention to racially charged gun violence in a way that had never been done before. By successfully addressing his rhetorical situation in each level of exigence, audience, and constraint, Glover produced a nationally headlined music video that received millions of views. In 2018, “This is America” started a much-needed discussion on racially charged gun violence in America and challenged and changed the minds of many viewers.  

Works Cited  

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.”  Philosophy & Rhetoric , vol. 25, Penn State University Press, 1992, pp. 1-14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40237697  

Craven, Julia. “Donald Glover’s ‘This Is America,’ Through the Eyes of a Jim Crow Historian.”  Huff Post , 9 May 2019,  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-glover-this-is-america-jim-crow-history_n_5af31588e4b00a3224efcc40 .  

Everytown Research and Policy. “Impact of Gun Violence on Black American.”  Everytown ,  https://everytownresearch.org/issue/gun-violence-black-americans/ . Accessed 7 Oct 2021  

Gambino, Childish. “Childish Gambino- This Is America (Official Video).”  YouTube , uploaded by Donald Glover, 6 May 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY  

Metzl, Jonathan M. “Gun violence, stigma, and mental illness: clinical implications.”  Psychiatric Times , vol. 32, no. 3, Mar. 2015, p. 54.  Gale Academic OneFile , link.gale.com/apps/doc/A405023798/AONE?u=cofc_main&sid=bookmark-AO.NE&xid=6ffbc87c. Accessed 7 Oct. 2021.  

Statista Research Department. “Share of Total Music Album Consumption* in the United States in 2018, by Genre.”  Statista , Jan 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/310746/share-music-albums-sales-us-genre/. Accessed 15 Oct 2021.  

“This is America: Childish Gambino’s Genius Absurdity.”  YouTube , uploaded by Make Stuff, 2 Aug 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HfsU07jHis  

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Home / Essay Samples / Sociology / American Dream / Dissecting the Cultural Commentary in “This Is America”: Analysis

Dissecting the Cultural Commentary in "This Is America": Analysis

• Category: Sociology
• Topic: American Dream , American Identity

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 "This is America" by Childish Gambino (essay)

• Americans are blinded by money, fame, and entertainment from the real issues, and
• America has a gun problem.
• time.com/collection/2017-time-100/4736210/donald-glover/
• Childish Gambino. “This is America.” Youtube, 5 May, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY
• http://time.com/collection/2017-time-100/4736210/donald-glover/
• http://www.webmath.com/lottery.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY

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