If you are a liberal you can wear blackface all you want. Because if you are a liberal you are immune from legitimate criticism.
The rules are different for the rest of us, and now the Church of Perpetual Whiners has found a new thing to worry about: “digital blackface.”
No, it’s not about Jimmy Kimmel being immortalized on the Internet wearing actual Blackface, it’s a new kind of racism.
What is digital blackface, you might wonder? Is it pretending to be Black online, like Pocahontas Warren or all the other transracial liberals out there?
"If you're White and you've posted a GIF or meme of a Black person to express a strong emotion, you may be guilty of wearing 'digital blackface,'" writes John Blake | Analysis https://t.co/KlHkWWHq6x
— CNN (@CNN) March 26, 2023
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.
You bet they are. In fact, many social media platforms and even the Disqus comment box provide GIF libraries to use while responding to others, and they do so because GIFs have become a standard means of communication in our increasingly post-verbal world.
In the never-ending quest to find ever new things to bitch about the woke monsters have found another target.
It’s not at all clear to me that there is anything one could do to satisfy the whiners. Excluding Black people from GIF libraries would clearly be racist, and not excluding them is also racist.
Perhaps we could institute a rule that GIFs with Black people could only be used by Black people, but then we have the problem of identifying people as truly Black (maybe a check box on the “Are you a Robot” model?).
One of the ironies, of course, is that some of the people who inspired “digital blackface” memes have made a bundle and even a career out of spawning the humorous GIFs.
Sweet Brown, for instance, inspired a “digital blackface” GIF after an interview with a TV station in which she charmed the world with her take on the fire that burned down her apartment. She appeared on numerous TV shows, mixed a music video, and got billions of views.
It is true that many of these GIFs get their humorous punch from tapping into stereotypes, as a lot of humor does. This is also true about complaints of racism, which are based upon assuming ill intent when none is intended.
Back in the day a blog called “Stuff that White People Like” became a short-lived hit making fun of stereotypes attached to Whiteness. It was pretty funny, actually.
Use any GIF library and just type in the word “Black” and innumerable GIFs will pop up. Until 5 minutes ago nobody thought anything about it, because we were too busy looking for just the right GIF or meme to express our attitude. And our attitude had nothing to do with making fun of Black people or looking down on them.
But as with all good things, it must be canceled.
Can we use GIFs making fun of Italians instead?
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