Racism masqueraded as entertainment has an extensive history that has extended into the present day. More specifically, antiblack imagery has had a large presence in comedy, and although the racist ideologies that fueled said forms of comedy in the past may not be as easily recognizable nowadays, they undoubtedly lurk behind some of the comedic practices people engage in every day. One long-standing internet tradition that has been called into question continuously in the past several years is the trend of white and other nonblack audiences using Black vernacular and images for the sake of memes, a broad phenomenon that has been dubbed digital blackface. Writer Lauren Michele Jackson further explains the term as a way for nonblack individuals to “inhabit a Black persona [by] employing digital technology.” Anyone who has been on social media is almost certainly familiar with cases of white or nonblack people selecting GIFs or reaction images of Black people in order to punctuate their joke or display an exaggerated emotion. For quite some time, Black people have pointed out the insulting implications of this paradigm, but you’d be hard pressed to find people outside of Black circles who are willing to critically analyze this incredibly routine convention. The truth is that digital blackface both dehumanizes and mocks Black people and the Black experience all the while targeting those most on the margins.

First, to understand the harm in digital blackface, you have to understand how it connects to history. In her aforementioned 2017 Teen Vogue article that brought mainstream attention to digital blackface, Lauren Michele Jackson points out the ways in which digital blackface has indisputable connections to the era of minstrel shows, live performances of the early 19th and 20th century in which white actors performed stereotypical portrayals of Black people while donning blackface. At first glance, this connection may seem severe, but when placed in contrast to the most frequent examples of digital blackface we encounter, the comparison holds up. Arguably one of the most common types of digital blackface is the casual use of Black people as props or vessels of stereotypical behavior. The most highly sought GIFs on popular GIFing platforms such as Giphy include angry black woman, fat black woman, and sassy black woman, each of these search terms a crude demonstration of how dominant culture caricatures Black identity. When used as mere imagery to be gawked at or spectacles of dramatic sass and anger, Black people cease to exist as humans with complex emotions, thoughts, and experiences. Rather, they become performers for a nonblack audience, their Blackness (or at least the mockable version that it’s been reduced to) being the butt of the joke. Placed beside minstrelsy, the resemblance speaks for itself; at their core, both practices employ racist stereotypes that dehumanize Black people in order to entertain a white (or nonblack) audience.

Beyond the questionable historical roots that digital blackface can be linked to, it’s also important to note the way that digital blackface tends to specifically target Black women and Black LGBTQ+ people the most. The individuals who are most often used in GIFs and memes tend to be either Black gay men, Black gender non-conforming and/or trans people, or Black women. In these cases, the mockery extends beyond a racist caricature and ventures into homophobia, transphobia, and misogynoir (the intersection of both antiblack racism and misogyny that Black women experience). A prime example of this dynamic at play was the five-year-long ruse pulled by one white man in his thirties. In 2007, the Twitter account @bigoletitties of one Wanda LaQuanda went viral for its cooky (read: stereotypical) tweets all made from the perspective of (ostensibly) a Black woman. Through 2012, this internet persona amassed over 30 thousand followers, garnering enough online success to even release a line of merchandise. However, the owner of the account later revealed himself to be a 32-year-old white man, Alex Munkacsy, who had found an online advertisement for a Black sex worker and subsequently used her picture as the face of the Twitter account. Munkacsy would even go on to author a book detailing his experience of posing as Wanda. Now, to most Black people, and probably anyone else who knows a single Black person, the reveal that Wanda LaQuanda was really just a white guy was no surprise. However, the misogynoir that was promoted by Munkacsy creating and subsequently parading as Wanda had already done its damage by the time that he fessed up. What makes Munkacsy’s case all the more frustrating is the fact that he proudly boasts that he was able to pull off this act, describing his actions as an “affectionate nod to Black culture.” In reality, Munkacsy’s “affectionate nod” was really just him promoting stereotypes that degrade Black women, all the while profiting under the stolen image of an actual Black woman.

From my perspective, the primary concern regarding digital blackface goes to Black people who have witnessed or come of age alongside this bizarre, antiblack trend. One of the most interesting socio-political phenomena I think we can see in online behavior is the way that racism, both covert and explicit, is regarded as impolite or edgy or ‘politically incorrect’ rather than morally wrong. In the context of digital blackface, the grave mistake in this perspective is that it removes any responsibility on the nonblack population to consider how it must feel for Black people to constantly see Blackness represented as the punchline to some huge joke that everyone else seems to all be in on.

The question of how to move forward once recognizing the harm in digital blackface is difficult to answer, particularly seeing how in America, elements of Black culture tend to seep into general cultural trends. With that sentiment in mind, some may be inclined to presume that nonblack people adopting Black traits/vernacular/style/etc. is simply nonblack people adopting elements of cultural relevance. But the fact that we’re all accustomed to the world’s obsession with co-opting Black culture isn’t a pass to not think critically about these sorts of race-related online customs. While online Black communities will create their own jokes born out of distinctly Black lived experiences, those jokes simply don’t hold the same meaning for nonblack people. Cherry-picking certain cultural elements without the full context of actually being Black more often than not ends up reducing Black identity to disrespectful stereotypes, regardless of intention. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that white people can only use GIFs of other white people, but I do think it’s worthwhile to have these discussions, and more importantly, I think it’s essential for nonblack folks to pay close attention to how and why they use African American Vernacular English or Black imagery as a form of comedy when conducting themselves online.

Photo credits: A. Hamilton