Digital Blackface: How to best act Black online
Your blaccent is so thick, that its hard to hear how insane you sound.
I was recently reading the book Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. The book entails a woman named June Hayward that had taken the manuscript of her dead friends’ manuscript. June is white and her friend, Athena Liu, is Asian. This type of story that centers the colonization of a culture and the whitewashing of a history is not a new story for R.F. Kuang, as she touches similar issues her previous book Babel: Or The Necessity of Violence. A story that delves into colonizing language and using the power of language to then colonize other non-European countries (I’m simplifying a bit, but by the story is very clear and very complex and you should definitely read it).
In Yellowface, June uses a book manuscript that goes into depth about Chinese Immigrant Labor Camps and the discrimination that they faced. June of course, knows nothing about this history (nor is she connected deeply to the history), but moves about presenting the book as if she does. She moves about interviews as if she had spent her entire life deeply knowing the struggles of Asian people. But unfortunately for her and those who think like her, learning does not equal knowing.
Digital Blackface/Blackfishing
This past year, you may have seen the words and concepts Digital Blackface, or even the term Blackfishing which made some rounds around 2020-2023 online. Both of these terms are something that are centered around the taking of black identities (mostly) online. You might have someone that tans a bit too much and has a unusually large BBL. Or maybe you see someone with a Black profile pic with that always talks in AAVE and is involved in black discourse all the time online. Or maybe they ONLY communicate in black memes, gifs, or reaction pics. That more often than not, include Black pain or exaggerated emotions from Black people.
When really they have never known a day of being black in person and truly knowing these issues that they see and involve themselves in everyday. These people often benefit off of the popularity of what it means to be black or the “coolness” of black culture within the mainstream. Something that Black people don’t often have the privilege of benefitting off of themselves.
Your local Celebrity is Black(-Lite)
Typically you can see a blackfishers more often as pop stars or celebrities, than the regular Susan on Instagram. The people most often accused of this are celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande, Iggy Azalea, and so on. These people often start their own careers with their own very obvious white identities then, over the course of several years, they start to participate in cultivating a more “urban” or “hip” art style, image, voice, etc. Now the scale of this is fluid and there are people that are more guilty of this than others, but they all have a subtle way of using Blackness to their advantage without having to actually be Black or experience being Black.
This isn’t really exclusive to singers either. Comedians and actors can do the same thing. The first person that comes to my head is Awkwafina. You started her career in parodying rap and hip-hop melodies and her famous blaccent that follows it. Not only back then, but in a lot of her mainstream acting chops too. Only to then drop the entire blaccent, once she got more reputable and “serious” roles in movies.
Copycats
Many don’t really take this type of thing seriously. That it’s funny to cosplay as a Black person or to completely use humor, terms, culture/cultural moments from Black people and use it in your everyday. That people can get popular after taking black terms or taking black culture and spinning it into something new. There’s even the trend of white woman copying hairstyles and body types that match black woman, white men that try to act tough and cosplay as black men.
To me, it screams Minstrelsy. It screams the idea of wanting to exaggerate blackness as a form of entertainment. For yourself or for others. It screams wanting to take aspects of a community that has already been stereotyped to hell and back. And to most Black people, it just looks cheap, goofy, and of course…disingenuous. They think that all it takes to be Black and have an “in” with Black culture is to know a few cool and hip words and know some rappers and cultural icons.
When I go online, I wanted to be entertained. I don’t however, want to see people be entertained by the likeness of me and others like me. Or to even profit off of the likeness of me. For decades, there has been a profit off of blackness through whiteness, through media and now they can do it online. And I fear, it is entirely obvious when normal and ordinary people try to copy our likeness (whether they mean to or not).
Co-opting terms and Language Assimilation
Many arguments that I see to defend actions like many look like “Well we don’t know who starts these terms, but they are so popular online! How are we supposed to know which ones to use or not use?” and “If Black people talk about them online so much then they can’t expect non-black people to not use them”.
Which too be fair, is somewhat true. When places like Twitter, Tiktok, Facebook, different types of Reality T.V. and so on started to open up shared spaces of different communities, the exposure of Black people was open to everyone. We were laughing and enjoying each other’s presence in the open and everyone watched. I do not expect everyone to follow these rules and I get the act of not knowing or feigning ignorance…but only for a bit.
Our everyday life is not something that you can intensely watch and know everything about. The way that black people talk to and humor each other is also not a spectacle to use to laugh at the extreme for your personal entertainment either. It is okay to learn and digest things that are black-centered in small ways. But for years there are things that I simply cannot stand for.
I’m sure the common black person the past 5 or 10 years has interacted with a person that uses AAVE wrong (I have a list, if anyone wants to see it) or references a Youtube clip or show with Black people in it and exaggerating it so they can sound like them. Or in the case of Blackfishing or Culture Vultures, “talking Black” when you yourself are white. With the Virality of Tiktok I would say that the gentrification of AAVE is even worse. Everybody now knows words that they don’t know the meaning of and changing it into something new. Something that means something to us and means something to an entire community.
“No one talks like that”
I want to inform you that, truly, no-one talks like that and its quite unnatural when you (a non-black person) say it. I think this the most with white gays and white woman. Using words like “Slay” and “Purr” wrong (although enough time has passed for people to start using it right). Or when the younger people starting using “Gyat” as a way to explain something or as an attribute that someone has, instead of it being just a modified version of “God damn!”. And like I said before, there are so many words and phrases out there, that we know that they use and are perfectly able to use whenever they would like to. There is nothing to gain out of our likeness except for the ability to seem “cool” or “hip”, without the pressure of being seen goofy, unprofessional, or uneducated.
And with the title in mind. People DO talk like that. Black people. For years, in fact. And its used against us in many spaces, outside of online. For it to be seen as something as Gen Z slang or something that the young people say, is frustrating to many to say the least. These words have meaning. They have an origin. And it didn’t originate online. And too many influencers that exist/used to exist online, didn’t make these words up either.
In the book Yellowface, June has this issue a bit. She thinks that many of the successes of Athena and other POC are because of her Asian origins. That just knowing the culture and maybe some Mandarin will get her the popularity that she needs. And she thinks that many of the Asian people around her would appreciate the small nods to cultural things that she did in her book about Chinese immigrants. Even though, in the reality, she was completely out of her element and the Asian people around her could tell. Even when she writes under her not Asian penname and accrues popularity off of the stories of Asian people, she does not appreciate the origins and importance of what she rights. Which eventually gets her in trouble with the public. In reality, what really made these writers special wasn’t just about them being Asian and the public needing diversity. It was about how they use their diverse background to write and say something meaningful. Something that June, a white woman, will never be able to acquire.
I Know What You Are
To the Black people around you, we know. We can mostly tell when you’re using words wrong or when you are exaggerating your accent. Or when you start to wear things or enjoy things that are unnatural to how you actually grew up. We can tell when you are trying to do something that is quite unnatural to you. And we can tell when you use our jokes, pain, and pleasure as a way to not only connect with us but also a way to be entertained. And I can’t blame you. We are pretty funny people.
(Author’s Note: Again not to say that you can’t enjoy things that are created by Black people. However, the taking of the culture and forcing it to form into your whiteness/version of blackness is apparent, unnatural and we can all tell.)
Black culture is something to be emulated. People think nowadays that being diverse is something that should be emulated in order to become “cool” or noticed. It is not something, however, that should be taken lightly and formed into something it is not. Pretending to be someone you are not so blatantly, will give you the allusion that you know what the Black experience is. But you will never truly know and people will see right through that. Whether its in real life or through a screen. People will know.
Please just be yourself
I don’t think that its entirely awful to be included in some things that are outside of your usual community. Being involved and knowing of Black media and culture is okay and the cross-over is going to happen. The internet and media is too vast and broad not to be. I think where the disconnect comes along, is when there is a lot use of our own culture, while also feining to realize the deep cultural mannerisms and context that they are seeing in real time.
And I think its still very funny when Black people online are like “White people ate with the phrase [insert the whitest phrase you have ever heard in your life]”. Because to us, there is no reason to be online adopting these black phrases and memes and such when there are already existing phrases and jokes by white people or other non-black people that can be just as funny and overused in some instances. And yeah, sometimes I wish people used “Golly” more in their everyday life. I think I would less annoyed by that.
I actually enjoy the presence of other people and cultures more, when they don’t try to overtly copy us online. I enjoy being online, when I know that there aren’t people out there that make a living off of being Black-Lite. So too some of you out there, I implore you, to just be yourself. Please. The internet is filled with too many idiots for you to also be annoying and cultural stealers on top of that.
A whole sermon.
Girl I love this whole piece! This is GOLD!