Digital Blackface!
Inventing outrage in an already outrageous world.
CNN enterprise writer John Blake examines “What’s ‘digital blackface?’ And why is it wrong when White people use it?“
Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly “Sweet Brown” Wilkins telling a reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
Perhaps you posted that meme of supermodel Tyra Banks exploding in anger on “America’s Next Top Model” (“I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you!”). Or maybe you’ve simply posted popular GIFs, such as the one of NBA great Michael Jordan crying, or of drag queen RuPaul declaring, “Guuuurl…”
If you’re Black and you’ve shared such images online, you get a pass. But if you’re White, you may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.
You may be wearing “digital blackface.”
I’m pretty sure I’ve never shared these memes but I’ve certainly seen them shared. How, you might be asking yourself, does sharing a meme constitute “blackface”?
Digital blackface is a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions.
These expressions, what one commentator calls racialized reactions, are mainstays in Twitter feeds, TikTok videos and Instagram reels, and are among the most popular Internet memes.
Digital blackface involves White people play-acting at being Black, says Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay for Teen Vogue. Jackson says the Internet thrives on White people laughing at exaggerated displays of Blackness, reflecting a tendency among some to see “Black people as walking hyperbole.”
But these aren’t White people dressing up as Black to make fun of them. It’s literally images or videos of actual Black people. And, with the possible exception of Wilkins, extremely successful celebrities at that.
If you’re still not sure how to define digital blackface, Jackson offers a guide. She says it “includes displays of emotion stereotyped as excessive: so happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud… our dial is on 10 all the time — rarely are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings.”
Many White people choose images of Black people when it comes to expressing exaggerated emotions on social media – a burden that Black people didn’t ask for, she says.
“We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your annoyance, your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your ‘yaas’ moments,” Jackson writes. “The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders.”
Michael Jordan is one of the most admired people on the planet. The “Crying Jordan” meme derived from his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s mostly used to troll those who lose an athletic competition.
I don’t know that anyone thinks of Jordon, Bank, or RuPaul as “ghetto.”
Some may say posting a video of Sweet Brown saying, “Oh Lord Jesus, it’s a fire” is just for laughs. Why overthink it? Why give people yet another excuse for labeling White people racists for the most innocuous behaviors?
But critics say digital blackface is wrong because it’s a modern-day repackaging of minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment popular in the 19th century. That’s when White actors, faces darkened with burnt cork, entertained audiences by playing Black characters as bumbling, happy-go-lucky simpletons. That practice continued in the 20th century on hit radio shows such as “Amos ‘n’ Andy.”
Put simply: digital blackface is 21st-century minstrelsy.
“Historical blackface has never truly ended, and Americans have yet to actively confront their racist past to this day,” Erinn Wong writes in an academic paper on the topic.
“In fact, minstrel blackface has emerged into even more subtle forms of racism that are now glorified all over the Internet.”
Wong says that digital blackface is wrong because it “culturally appropriates the language and expressions of black people for entertainment, while dismissing the severity of everyday instances of racism black people encounter, such as police brutality, job discrimination, and educational inequity.”
This is, frankly, absurd. It’s true that all manner of racial injustice exists. Or, hell, injustice, period.
This is probably the meme I’ve seen most in recent years:
I’ve probably seen it captioned hundreds of times, making light of myriad controversies. Just about every time, the plight of poor folks in Appalachia—not to mention starving children in the developing world—was ignored. Because people make jokes about things without considering every other thing all the time.
Indeed, the overwhelming number of popular Internet memes feature white people. With perhaps the exception of Wilkins, the handful that feature Black faces lack anything that could reasonably called a “minstrel” quality. For example, I’ve seen these two quite often (much more than I have the Wilkins meme):
Neither is making fun of Black people.
This one, on the other hand, might be:
I’ve seen it many times and assumed it was from a movie. According to the above-linked Pocket-Lint post,
This is a meme known as “Roll Safe” or “Think about it” which is based on a screenshot from 2016’s Hood Documentary series on BBC Three which shows a man knowingly pointing at his head while justifying poor decisions.
These are essentially daft, but amusing, life hacks where “thinking about it” can be enough to justify poor life choices.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a context where it came across to me as racialized. As with Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) meme, the Blackness of the character is irrelevant to the joke/observation.
Alas, Blake explains, defining “digital blackface” is challenging.
In trying to define digital blackface, it depends on who you talk to. The standard for some is comparable to what one Supreme Court Justice once said when asked his test for pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
This guidance might help: If a White person shares an image online that perpetuates stereotypes of Black people as loud, dumb, hyperviolent or hypersexual, they’ve entered digital blackface territory.
And yet even with that definition, it’s hard to figure out exactly what is and isn’t digital blackface.
This is the challenge that Elizabeth Halford faces.
Halford, a brand designer, wrote an apologetic essay in 2020 about how she made a meme out of Wilkins’ “Ain’t nobody got time for that” catchphrase and sent someone a GIF of the singer Beyonce repeating, “I’m not bossy, I’m the boss.”
“I’ve engaged in digital blackface,” Halford wrote.” I’ve laughed at people of color on the news facing horrifying crime and disaster and loss. I’ve appropriated Black trauma as punchlines and peeled their faces off to put on my own and say what I can’t say, to make you laugh, or just because it went viral.”
Honestly, that sounds more like someone got hit by a social media pile-on and responded with a mea culpa written by a PR person. Beyonce is one of the richest, most powerful women on the planet; I don’t know that anybody thinks of her as loud, dumb, or hyperviolent. Her sexuality is doubtless part of her appeal but that’s hardly uncommon in the entertainment industry.
Halford tells CNN she was bothered that she overlooked the context of Sweet Brown’s interview. The woman had just experienced a tragedy.
“I guess we find it funny, the way (Black) people tell their story with so much flair,” she says. “but at the end of the day, one woman’s apartment building burned down while she was in bed.”
So, that’s fair! But I would wager that, 99% of the time, memes are divorced from the circumstances in which they arose. I have no idea what the origin of the Drake meme is and didn’t know until reading about it this morning that the “looking back boyfriend” was literally a stock photo that somebody meme’d.
But Halford says that doesn’t mean she won’t use any more GIFs of Black people. She doesn’t object to the Beyonce “I’m the boss” meme because she thinks it empowers women. She says that as long as a meme or GIF “is empowering and not demeaning” she feels free to use it.
Besides, Halford says, if she refrains from using any Black memes, she runs into another problem:
“Those are the most effective, because White people are so boring,” she says.
You’re not helping, Liz.
Jackson, in her Vogue essay, acknowledges it can be hard to know where to draw the line.
“Now, I’m not suggesting that white and nonblack people refrain from ever circulating a black person’s image for amusement or otherwise…” she writes. “There’s no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to follow, nobody’s coming to take GIFs away.”
But no digital behavior exists in a deracialized vacuum, she says. A White person can spread digital blackface without malicious intent.
“Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act — the act of inhabiting a black persona,” she adds. “Employing digital technology to co-opt a perceived cache or black cool, too, involves playacting blackness in a minstrel-like tradition.
“No matter how brief the performance or playful the intent, summoning black images to play types means pirouetting on over 150 years of American blackface tradition.”
This is utter bullshit. Black culture, and certainly Black pop culture, is inextricable from American culture. Black athletes, movie stars, and performers are as woven into our narrative as their White counterparts.
The above image, of the late Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, is widely meme’d. Is circulating these anti-Semitic? Digital Jewface?
As to the meme referenced above that I find most problematic:
Another challenge with defining digital blackface is that some of the alleged victims of the practice might chafe at being labeled casualties of racism.
Consider what happened to the woman now known as Sweet Brown after she went viral. She hired an agent and appeared on “The View” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” An Auto-Tuned version of her original video now has at least 22 million views.
Sweet Brown did go public with accusations that she had been exploited. But it had little to do with her race.
In 2013, she sued Apple and an Oklahoma radio show over using her likeness without permission and producing a song, sold on iTunes, that sampled some of her catchphrases.
Is Sweet Brown the victim of digital blackface? Or did she benefit from the exposure?
Those are not, of course, mutually exclusive options.
It’s a tough question. But in the meantime, if you are a White person who is contemplating using a “hold my wig” GIF, you should consider the advice Jackson offers in her Teen Vogue essay to White people who playact being Black online.
Jackson writes:
“If you find yourself always reaching for a black face to release your inner sass monster, maybe consider going the extra country mile and pick this nice Taylor Swift GIF instead.”
I’m not sure I’d be comfortable appropriating Swiftface.
I think once again we see the consequences of media needing to fill (digital) column inches with something.
It wouldn’t be difficult to present an argument that universal use of memes, regardless of the subject’s race, ethnic and/or sexual identity is an act of leveling across various groups, we’re all sharing the same joke. But no, it is important to go with divisiveness.
I have to think its a tiny percent of the population that worries about stuff like this. Kind of a shame this manages to get published and get attention.
Steve
“James, you have Beyoncé on line 1.”
“James, Rihanna is holding on line 2.”
This reminds me of a piece I read several years ago about how white people should never, ever compliment Black women on their dress or appearance, because a white person saying “you look great” really means “you look great…for a n—–.”
That died quickly, thank God.
Tiptoeing thru this strange new world, trying not to accidentally offend…
Or as Thomas Sowell wrote in ‘Black Rednecks, White Liberals, the redneck culture African slaves adopted from the poor NW European whites they worked alongside and then took to Northern cities in the waves of migrations for factory jobs.
Is it “blackface” when the “Cash me Outside” girl from Dr. Phil explains her accent is “from the streets”.
Maybe stop aggrandizing the “loud, dumb, hyperviolent or hypersexual” attributes of underclass culture in music and song and instead show how over the centuries, those who overcame those attributes, even while poor, found success, be they Irish, Italians, descendants of slaves, etc. in the US.
Here is an excerpt from Sowell’s book describing how these very traits in Southern blacks migrated to the north prompted segregation on the early 20th century.
My rule of thumb is that if the GIF I’m about to use is funny because the person is hilariously stupid not because of what they did (ex: set off fireworks in their pants) but because of their general demeanor, then it is just mean spirited.
@JKB:
So it’s the fault of the victims?
You are such a maroon.
Well this is a couple moments of my life that I’ll never get back…
I think the core concern here is that a lot of black people have trouble trusting a white person they don’t otherwise know with regard to how that white person thinks about race.
This feels very similar to the situation where Spike Lee complained about the appropriativeness of Django Unchained, and to which Sam Jackson replied by describing how when Quentin Tarantino was little a black neighbor took him to the movies every Saturday, and they were mostly the blaxploitation movies.
I think this is the main complaint here. It’s kind of like, “black people invented the blues, but white people made all the money from it” or “black people invented rock and roll, and Elvis, a white guy, made all the money and fame”. Which is another layer of feeling I recognize. I’m not sure that there’s anything that will stop people from imitating things they like, though. It can be hard to trust the liking, I would think, though.
I don’t generally use memes. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t reuse heavily, but seek out my own voice. I can imagine that there would be instances where I might feel a black person represented my voice well, but I can’t imagine that happening a lot.
@daryl and his brother darryl: You got more out of his comment than I did. I thought he was just channeling Sarah Palin.
@Kurtz: Neither of those refutes my point. Rihanna isn’t Beyonce. And people complain about sexualized content in Super Bowl halftime shows all the time.
Thank you for drawing my attention to this problem. You have made me think. Why do they use Snoopdog to sell beer? They should use an ordinary person with average amounts of charisma. This is exploitation! And what about Jake from State Farm? Instead of someone engaging in amusing repartee with famous athletes, they should use a realistic insurance agent; you know, a boring guy who talks too much and is too pushy. And while we’re talking about Jake from State Farm, why do they show Boban Marjanovic? That is clearly exploitation of the big dumb Pollock jock stereotype.*
* I know that he is Serbian.
@Slugger: Who’s Boban Marjanovic?
@James Joyner:
Most of the Beyoncé complaints were about the racism of “Formation” and Black Panther uniforms. The sexuality of the show was very much secondary that year.
And you’re right Rihanna is not Beyoncé. Rihanna has only sold more records and has a higher net worth than Bey, but one is far more known among a particular cohort than the other so let’s just ignore the obvious.
Come on, man.
Whet
@Slugger: I wonder what has become of the original Jake from State Farm, the white guy with the khaki’s talking insurance on the phone at 2:00 in the morning. Can you imagine finding out that your commercial concept was going to be hugely expanded, just not with you in them. Sorry buddy.
@Just nutha: An example of the acromegalic phenotype featured in several State Farm commercials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boban_Marjanović
I did not take this picture but I do have a photo of this figure that I took when I saw it on a road trip.
I showed it to a Caucasian waitress at the coffee shop. “That’s racist.” she said.
I then told her that when I showed it to Kenny, a black cook who worked in the kitchen he said that he wanted one for his front yard.
She’s not wrong.
If you look at the memes featuring white people, they are mostly from movies or stock photos where the white person is being directed and overacting, with very careful lighting and makeup to bring out their features.
The memes featuring black people are far more likely to be unscripted moments of genuine life, except for moments of anger.
(I would like to briefly pause and say that I am pleased that “angry black man” memes are not popular, and we instead use the white women yelling at the cat)
Is it cultural stoicism among white people? Do darker skin tones and the contrast with the eyes and teeth just telegraph emotion better? Is it an artifact of cameras optimized to make white people look good that makes them look a little blander? Do we need to get our calipers and start measuring skulls to discover that Black folk have wider smiles on average? Is it just that white folk have thin, narrow lips that hide expression? And, just to be absurd, is it that white people are bloodless monsters with no soul or emotion?
I think this is one of those moments where we should just celebrate the diversity, and not worry too much about the details.
So why give the invented outrage oxygen by writing about it instead of real outrages, like how Ron DeFascist could become president despite leading Florida’s continued anti-freedom attacks on books, art, drag queens, and black history — including schools now banning Michelangelo’s David and a movie about Ruby Bridges?
Or about how conservative lies about the meaning of 2nd Amendment keep killing our schoolkids — who Republicans pretend to care about when they are smearing drag queens and gays with homophobic bile?
Y’all give stupid stuff legs by reacting to it.
As Shakespeare said: “Much ado about nothing.”
@DK: Your opening statement sums up my opinion of your entire comment. When books get “banned” (not really) all left wingers cry censorship but never utter a word about Movie ratings (under 17 not admitted) or TV warnings: (This program may be unsuitable for children), or even (No alcohol sold to minors.) I have an 8 year old granddaughter and I do not wish her to learn about blowjobs in grade school. So STFU.
I always thought the Picard one is the best I’ve seen. It can be used for so many things: stupidity, ridiculousness, hypocrisy
@Gustopher: You must have a different GIF aesthetic than me. Most of my GIFs consist of either a) cheering crowds, b) Charlie Chaplin riding on the outside of a train (my family is spread between two points in the Amtrak northeast corridor), c) hamsters wearing a birthday hat and eating a frosted cupcake, or d) various famous of semi-famous people giving the side-eye or similar. And, although I haven’t ever totaled it up, I just go down the suggestions until I find one that seems appropriate without much regard to whether the person represents me physically, so skin color or gender doesn’t really enter into it. (Well, Charlie Chaplin is always white, and the Hamster is brown.)
I didn’t want my grandchildren to learn “grab ’em by the pussy” in 2016 either but Mister Republican Family First Donald Trump took care of that.
@John430:
Haha, no. I’m going to keep talking — especially because it triggers deranged radical right extremist trash.
Imagine being stupid enough to believe the Fox News propaganda about America schools teaching little kids about “blowjobs” — a disgusting smear of America’s hard-working, underpaid teachers that appalls anybody with decency. Imagine being too stupid to know conservative media is lying to you even after their own texts have confirmed it. Do you realize how insane you conservatives sound these days? This is why your Red Wave imploded. You’re a bunch of washed-up, patholgical lying lunatics, and Americans are sick of you.
Yes, you freedom-hating, hypocritical MAGA scum are passing laws that have schools pulling books from shelves. No, liberals are not passing laws to pull movies from shelves or ban TV shows. We are focused on real issues: gun violence, fixing climate disaster, combating Putin, upgrading America is crumbling infrastructure, and protecting the women and girls Republicans want to enslave with forced birth.
So if you want to waste what’s left of your pathetic life crying about movie ratings and TV warnings like you do books, black history, drag queens, and non-existent blowjob instruction, go ahead. Keep alienating American voters by doing that. Liberals are not following y’all up on your stupidity, which is why youth, black, and educated white voters have helped Democrats kick your tails in the last three election cycles.
Keep digging, QAnon. Democrats thank you. #YouAreWhyTrumpLost #MAGAIsAMentalDisease
This sort of reminds me of my adolescence in the 1970s when black people suddenly became commonly seen on TV and movies.
And how a lot of white people considered it to be a sign of hipness and progressiveness to adopt black slang and mannerisms.
So me and a million other white teenagers would go around slapping each other’s hands and saying “Dyno-Mite!” like Jimmy Walker on Good Times (You did too. Shut up, yes you did. Or some equivalent).
Looking back, it doesn’t strike me as harmful for reasons of “appropriation”, but harmful in that it gave us an unearned sense of grace and moral righteousness, that racial enlightenment is some sort of hip attitude one can just adopt, like wearing hip hugger jeans or something.
Or like religious people who think that wearing a cross and making magic hand symbols somehow wards off ugly mean-spirited behavior.
White people adopting black slang or memes or culture aren’t any more enlightened than anyone else, but are very prone to avoid doing the hard work of being kind and accepting.
@Chip Daniels: I never watched that show, but I had a friend who did, and did as you said. I thought nothing of it.
Now, I did adopt one phrase from that show: “from the penthouse to the outhouse”. I use it very infrequently, and credit it when asked or remarked upon.
But see, I claim that phrase as part of my heritage. With outhouses. I’ve spent a lot of time in outhouses. Seriously. A lot.
@John430: Hahahaha…..guess what, buddy!!! Your granddaughter is ALREADY learning about blowjobs in school. From her peers, not teachers. And soooooo much more….from peers, not teachers.
This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve read about in weeks, and I read lot. It probably surpasses the absurdity of the baby from the Nirvana “Nevermind” album cover suing the band decades later for exploitation because the baby was naked.
I like memes and think the OTB comments section would be much improved if we could easily post memes.
@Jax: Good point! But I really wish he would come back and explain one thing to me (though I know he won’t since he’s mostly a drive by troll):
I’ve always thought left wingers didn’t complain about movie ratings, TV warnings, and prohibitions on selling alcohol to minors because they agree with his concerns about what children are exposed to. Was I wrong all along, or was he just being incoherent?
Either way, I do agree with him on his main point. His 8-year-old granddaughter should be learning about blowjobs from him!
(Wait… did that come out all right?)
@John430:
Is your grand daughter also your child?
If not, what the fuck right do you have to say what she should be learning? Sit down old man.
The schools have sex ed classes, and parents can opt their kids out of it if they want their kids to learn about it the old fashioned way, and the grandparents can go pound sand.
@Gustopher
and
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think we can all agree that grandparents should have no right to complain about 2nd and 3rd graders learning about blow jobs in public schools. I must have missed that schoolhouse rock episode, maybe I can find it on Google.
@Gustopher: Inasmuch as I raised her father to know right from wrong, I am involved in her life. Having said that, if you want to offer BJs to young kids, please be advised that is called pedophilia.
@john430: Heh. Every conservative accusation is a confession.
Teachers aren’t talking about offering BJs to young kids. You are. And nobody here is thinking about BJs being offered to young kids. You are.
You’re the one who brought up this bizarre, vile scenario. You’re the only one here with young kid BJs stuck on their brain. So the pedophile appears to be you.
And considering the long line of Republicans who have turned out to be child abusers, sex criminals, and perverts — including longest-serving Republican House Speaker turned convicted boy rapist Denny Hastert and #1 Republican hero Trump, the pussygrabbing Epstein-bestie who repeatedly made gross comments about wanting sex with his underage daughter — your gross pedophilic obsessions are not a surprise.
The new right is populated with sick puppies who need mental help. It’s yet another reason why the party of radical right extremist groomers, fascists, liars, and bigots keeps losing elections.
@DK: If you haven’t checked into what they are teaching kids today you are sadly out of touch with reality in America. BTW: I never said anything about offering BJs to kids. Try to keep up
See: Early Elementary Sex Education Curriculum (grades K-3) Day One: Human Development
Reproduction
General physiology of reproduction – male and female required, intercourse, baby grows in uterus
Puberty and body changes – no pregnancy before puberty
Pregnancy and birth
Sexual Identity and Orientation
Gender – boys/girls and men/women
Homosexuality and heterosexuality and appropriate labels (gay men and lesbians)
Day Three: Sexual Behavior
Masturbation
Definition
Boys and girls masturbate
Private (not secret) activity
Shared Sexual Behavior
Touching, hugging, kissing, sexual behavior
To show love and share pleasure
Nuf’ said
@john430:
Except that everyone here can read your previous comments where you obsesses over sex and kids, disgusting thoughts no one else but you brought up. Because like a typical MAGA extremist, you’re pedophilic pervert projecting your sick desires onto others. Try not to keep embarrassing yourself.
And, of course, no citation or link showing that any of this — all of which reflects reality and none of which includes any offer of bloejobs to kids, the lie you made up from your your gross, perverted conservative brain — is being taught to little kiss. Probably because it’s yet another invention of the groomer mind of some twisted, sick right wing pedo — like Republican leaders Donald Trump or Denny Hastert. Nuff said indeed.
Well: here are some links for you to http://www.seemore.mi.org/portfolio/sex-ed/
Check out WA state’s requirements, In NJ–A 30-minute lesson called “Pink, Blue and Purple” aims to teach the 6-year-olds to define “gender, gender identity and gender role stereotypes,”
It also includes instructions for teachers to tell students that their gender identity is up to them, according to materials reportedly distributed to parents at a Feb. 22 meeting of the Westfield Board of Education and posted online.
So,, instead of ranting and name-calling, (which most liberals do when they refuse to face facts) try educating yourself . BTW: You sure are vocal about gay sex and kids. Are you suppressing your inner feelings?
@john430: Your link is dated 2001 and it’s a random page from the internet (and, of course, includes nothing about offering blowjob to little kids, the fever dream that came from your pedophilic peabrain). It’s not linked to any department of education or school website. So, agsiv, do you have any proof that this is or was actually taught anywhere? Of course you don’t. You just saw something on the internet and ran with it, because you’re an ignorant, gullible, brainwashed right wing idiot who believes anything that reinforces your psychotic, extremist, MAGA worldview.
This is a lie. The lesson does not tell teachers to have kids to choose their gender. False af. That lesson reinforces the traditional gender binary, referencing “boy” body parts and “girl” parts, instructs kids that this is true for most people, then explains to kids in age-appropriate terms that for some people this traditional binary does not hold. In other words, the lesson simply teaches the truth in a delicate manner, like schools should do for kids this age.
It’s easy to see why this upsets Republicans, because conservatives hate the truth. A point proven by your nonstop lies.
I accurately described you as what you are: an ignorant, easily-manipulated, low IQ, radical right extremist liar, and a washed-up fool who demonstrates why Republicans keep losing elections. If you don’t want to be called a liar, stop lying.
Yet another dumb, desperate lie from a dumb, desperate liar. What I’m vocal about is your rank dishonesty and your obvious obsession with gay sex and kids. You can make a fool out of yourself trying to spin it, but you were the one who brought up that topic. Not me. Are you too stupid to know we can all read your comments? Get help, groomer.