CNN Author Says White Individuals 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 folks to make use of Black memes … he says it is not.

John Blake revealed 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 folks 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 fashion … “[It] entails White folks 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 folks laughing at exaggerated shows of Blackness, reflecting a bent amongst some to see ‘Black folks as strolling hyperbole.'”

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

Now for the haymaker from Blake, who says digital blackface is flawed and that it needs to be halted. The rationale … he says it is embedded in racist traditions of constructing enjoyable of Black folks — and whereas Twitter customers in 2023 won’t essentially see it that manner 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 repeatedly recycles — together with some that characteristic well-known folks from TV exhibits and/or motion pictures — 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 respectable tragedy on the time — she was coping with an residence fireplace — and whereas her remarks have been animated/memorable … they have been coming from a critical place of worry. And but, the web made a complete autotune tune 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 by a really terrifying encounter — however his feedback additionally went viral.