Digital Blackface

Before reading Lauren Michele Jackson’s article on Digital Blackface, I had never really given this topic much thought. Of course I realized the abundance of black people when selecting reaction gifs to my friends, but it comes so naturally for me to use them. For me, it was simply like selecting an emoji with brown skin instead of using one of the others. After reading Jackson’s article, it made me think of how much I actually do see other people, outside of my race, using these reaction gifs. In addition, how often I see people with white skin using dark skin emojis. It makes me wonder.

During our class discussion, one comment that was made particularly stood out to me: “Shouldn’t they be happy that their images are being appreciated?” This comment stirred up mixed reactions within myself. The first thing that came to mind was that yes, black people aren’t typically the faces you see everywhere on the web or media. Television shows and movies are still predominantly white. However, it is odd that our faces would make up the faces of extreme reactions, sassiness, and “relatable” images. In a way, yes we are glad that reaction faces are being shared as opposed to mug shots or videos of our kind being shot, but being known as “the girl with the stank face” or “black girl meme” isn’t exactly flattering.

Our discussion posed the question of how to show your appreciation for television shows with a majority black cast without being unintentionally racist many times. The answer? I’m not sure. One thing that I’d say is to simply be thoughtful of why you are using a specific gif. If you can’t actually see yourself reacting in that way, then I wouldn’t caption it with “me” or “relatable”. In addition, simply realizing your own actions of generalizing on the web is extremely important. Just like how we take advantage of iOS coming out with multi-skin color emojis and use the ones fitting for us to use, I’d recommend doing this same thing with reaction gifs if possible.