CNN Author Says White Folks Utilizing Black Memes is ‘Digital Blackface’

A CNN author has spurred a wholesome debate about Web tradition, and has posed the query of whether or not it is okay for white individuals to make use of Black memes … he says it is not.

John Blake printed a piece Sunday that is gotten an enormous response on-line. It is titled, “What’s ‘digital blackface?’ And why is it flawed when White individuals use it?” Within the evaluation article, he makes his argument — particularly, utilizing these memes/GIFs is modern-day minstrel present fare.

For starters, he describes digital blackface this manner … “[It] entails White individuals play-acting at being Black,” citing a Teen Vogue author who outlined it. He goes on to cite that writer as saying, “[T]he Web thrives on White individuals laughing at exaggerated shows of Blackness, reflecting a bent amongst some to see ‘Black individuals as strolling hyperbole.'”

Blake continues to reference Teen Vogue in zeroing in additional … “[Digital blackface] contains shows of emotion stereotyped as extreme: so joyful, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud… our dial is on 10 on a regular basis — hardly ever are black characters afforded delicate traits or emotions.”

Now for the haymaker from Blake, who says digital blackface is flawed and that it ought to be halted. The rationale … he says it is embedded in racist traditions of constructing enjoyable of Black individuals — and whereas Twitter customers in 2023 won’t essentially see it that means from the surface trying in, that is definitely the way it’s being perceived by many … deliberately or not.

There are numerous Black memes that the Web usually recycles — together with some that characteristic well-known individuals from TV reveals and/or films — however there’s one which Blake focuses on particularly as his Exhibit A … particularly, the 2012 Candy Brown interview from Oklahoma.

Brown had simply skilled a professional tragedy on the time — she was coping with an house hearth — and whereas her remarks had been animated/memorable … they had been coming from a critical place of concern. And but, the web made a complete autotune music out of it — seemingly discounting her real-life emotions and easily making a joke out of the entire thing.

Ditto for Antoine Dodson‘s TV information interview from years in the past, the place his household additionally had simply gone via a very terrifying encounter — however his feedback additionally went viral.