And the Award Goes to.... BLACK LIVES MATTER: Manifestation of uplift and racial reckoning at the 2020 BET Awards

In entertainment industries, annual award shows serve as a spectacular ceremony for the validation, acknowledgment, and celebration of entertainers across all fields. In music and popular culture, specifically, the Grammy Awards have reigned supreme for recording artists despite being called out for racially questionable practices year after year. Black artists tend to complain about being boxed into stereotypical categories, being overlooked for nominations, and about white artists dominating categories that are comprised of music rooted in Black culture. In opposition to the hegemonic whiteness of the Grammy’s, though, BET hosts its annual “BET Awards” as a celebration of Black culture, with categories, awards, and performance all dedicated to Black entertainment. However, historically the BET Awards never seem to garner the same prestige as the Grammy’s because they primarily attract a Black audience– a demographic of viewers who are not prioritized. The show never quite receives an equitable amount of media attention as the Grammy’s. However, in 2020, the year of America’s “racial reckoning,” the BET Awards held a virtual show that managed to celebrate Black culture at a time it was needed while grappling with the issues being protested in the summer of 2020. In this paper, I illustrate the ways the racial climate in tandem with high-value advertisements, allowed the 2020 BET Awards to raise its cultural cache, challenge the whiteness of other award shows, and create community uplift for Black folks in the midst of racial crisis