() — Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly “Sweet Brown” Wilkins telling him to a reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire: “No one has time for that!”
Maybe you posted that supermodel Tyra Banks meme exploding of rage on “America’s Next Top Model” (“I was cheering for you! We were all cheering for you!”). Or you may have just posted popular GIFs, like the one of the great michael jordan nba cryingor that of the drag queen RuPaul stating: “Guuuurl…”.
If you are black and have shared those images on the internet, you have a free hand. But if you’re white, you may have unwittingly perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.
You may be using “digital blackface”.
What is digital blackface?
Digital blackface is a practice in which whites adopt online expressions of black imagery, slang, slogans, or culture to convey humor or express emotion.
These expressions, which one commentator calls racialized reactionsare common on Twitter, TikTok videos and Instagram, and are among the most popular memes on the internet.
In a rehearsal for Teen Vogue, Lauren Michele Jackson, author and cultural critic, affirms that digital blackface consists of white people playing at being black. Jackson says the internet thrives on whites who laugh at exaggerated displays of blackness, reflecting the tendency of some to view “blacks as walking hyperbole.”
This Tyra Banks moment on “America’s Next Top Model” in 2005 became a perennial meme. (Credit: CBS Television Distribution)
If you’re still not sure how to define digital blackface, Jackson offers a guide. He says that it “includes displays of stereotypical excessive emotion: so light-hearted, so cheeky, so ghetto, so loud… our score is at 10 all the time, black characters are rarely granted subtle traits or sentiments.”
Many whites choose images of blacks when expressing exaggerated emotions on social media, a charge blacks did not ask for, he says.
“We are your cheek, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your anger, your happy dance, your diva, your shadow, your ‘yaas’ moments,” Jackson writes. “The weight of the GIFing reaction, period, rests on our shoulders.”
Why is digital blackface wrong?
Some will say that posting a video of Sweet Brown saying “Oh Lord Jesus, it’s a fire” is just for laughs. Why go around it so much? Why give people one more excuse to label white people racist for the most innocuous behavior?
But critics say digital blackface is wrong because it’s a modern reissue of the minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment popular in the 19th century. At that time, white actors, their faces obscured with burnt cork, they entertained audiences by portraying black characters as bumbling, happy-go-lucky simpletons. That practice continued into the 20th century on hit radio shows like “Amos ‘n’ Andy”.
RuPaul’s colorful reactions to his reality series, “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” have spawned many memes. (Credit: World of Wonder)
Simply put: digital blackface is the minstrel of the 21st century.
“Historical blackface never came to an end, and Americans still do not actively confront their racist past to this day,” writes Erin Wong in an academic article on the subject.
“Indeed, the blackface minstrel has emerged in even more subtle forms of racism that are now glorified all over the internet.”
Wong claims that digital blackface is wrong because it “culturally appropriates the language and expressions of black people for entertainment, while dismissing the seriousness of the everyday instances of racism black people encounter, such as brutality police, employment discrimination and educational inequality.
Defining digital blackface is not easy
The definition of digital blackface depends on who you talk to. For some, the norm is comparable to what said once a Supreme Court justice when asked his criteria for defining pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
This guidance can help: If a white person shares an image online that perpetuates stereotypes of blacks as loud, dumb, hyper-violent, or hypersexual, they’ve entered digital blackface territory.
But even with that definition, it’s hard to know exactly what digital blackface is and isn’t.
This is the challenge you face Elizabeth Halford.
Halford, a brand designer, wrote a apology essay in 2020 about making a meme of Wilkins’ catchphrase “Ain’t nobody got time for that” and sending someone a GIF of the singer beyonce repeating: “I’m not bossy, I’m the boss” (“I’m not bossy, I’m the boss”).
“I’ve done digital blackface,” Halford wrote. “I’ve laughed at people of color on the news facing horrible crime and disaster and loss. I’ve hijacked black trauma as a joke and taken their faces off to put my own on and say what I can’t say, to make you laugh, or just because it went viral.”
Comedian Holly Logan helped popularize the “hold my wig” meme. (Credit: Holly Logan)
Halford tells that he was upset that he overlooked the context of the Sweet Brown interview. The woman had just experienced a tragedy.
“I guess we find it funny the way (black) people tell their story with such flair,” he says. “But at the end of the day, a woman burned down her apartment building while she was in bed.”
But Halford says that doesn’t mean he won’t be using more GIFs of black people. He doesn’t take issue with Beyonce’s “I’m the boss” meme because he believes she empowers women. He says as long as a meme or GIF “is empowering and not demeaning” he feels free to use it.
Furthermore, Halford says that if you refrain from using black memes, you run into another problem:
“They are the most effective, because whites are so boring,” he says.
Jackson, in her essay for Vogue, acknowledges that it can be hard to know where to draw the line.
“Now, I’m not suggesting that whites and non-blacks refrain from spreading the image of a black person for fun or not…” he writes. “There’s no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to follow, no one is coming to take down GIFs.”
But no digital behavior exists in a deracialized vacuum, he says. A white person can spread digital blackface without bad intent.
“Digital blackface does not describe an intention, but an act: the act of inhabiting a black character,” he adds. “Employing digital technology to embrace a perceived cache or black fashion also entails representing blackness in a minstrel tradition.”
“However brief the performance or playful intent, conjuring black imagery to play character means pirouetting over 150 years of American blackface lore.”
What happened to Sweet Brown?
Another problem when defining digital “blackface” is that some of the alleged victims of this practice might feel upset at being labeled as victims of racism.
Consider what happened to the woman now known as Sweet Brown after it went viral. She hired an agent and appeared in “The View” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live“. A version with autotune of his original video now has at least 22 million views.
Sweet Brown went public with her allegations of being exploited. But she had little to do with her race.
In 2013, sued to Apple and a oklahoma radio show for using his likeness without permission and producing a song, sold on iTunes, that sampled some of his catchphrases.
Is Sweet Brown the victim of digital blackface? Or did she benefit from the exposure?
It is a difficult question. But in the meantime, if you’re a white person thinking of using a GIF of “hold my wig“, you should take into account the advice that Jackson offers in his Teen Vogue essay to white people playing black on the internet.
Jackson writes:
“If you find yourself always looking for a blackface to unleash your inner cheeky monster, perhaps you should consider going further and picking up this pretty Taylor Swift GIF instead”.
John Blake is a editor-in-chief and author of “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew“.
