"Digital Blackface"

[George K]

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.”

This Tyra Banks moment from "America's Next Top Model" in 2005 became an enduring meme.
This Tyra Banks moment from "America's Next Top Model" in 2005 became an enduring meme.
From CBS Television Distribution

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.””

What the actual hell...

[jon-nyc]

If I post a gif with a woman in it am I a digital drag queen?

[LuFins Dad]

[Mik]

Oh yeah. This goes on all the time. One cannot reasonably doubt their effect on American culture.

[LuFins Dad]

@jon-nyc said in "Digital Blackface":

If I post a gif with a woman in it am I a digital drag queen?

Aren’t Trans really Gender Appropriators?

[Copper]