4/19 Kelly

            The excerpt from “Race Rebel” by Robin Kelly discusses examples of everyday resistances of African Americans working in McDonalds. The excerpt focuses the silent acts of foot-dragging from talking with their friends while working, rebelling by not following dress code, and cooking too much food at the closing shift. These were all acts to gain self-benefit, while wearing down authority. The acts of open challenge to authority would be meaningless since it usually does not achieve effective outcomes, thus silent revolts such as tuning to undesired, by managers, radio stations were a form of challenge to power. Kelly also recognizes that customers usually think that McDonalds’s employees are intellectually inferior because the majority of them are African American, which is a racial stigma, thus employees usually would not openly challenge higher power because no one would support them other than themselves. Finally, he recognizes that the everyday resistances would only bring the employee slight advantages with no lasting effects, thus he encourages official movements if necessary changes are the motives of rebellion. If Foucault had answered to Kelly, he’d probably agree to Kelly on the mistreatment of African Americans because Foucault also recognizes the power of authority over information which relates to racism. He would also likely to suggest first challenging authority on an intellectual level if they do establish an official movement; they must first form a theory to contest for the truth or information that public receives or else they would lose long term support from society and just seen as selfish/reckless/stupid rebels, because the public is probably already against them for being African American.