So if a white person posting a GIF of a black person is racism-- digital
blackface-- then if a man posts a meme with a woman in it, is that 'digital
transface"? Or maybe it's 'pinkface'?

And does this work in reverse? Is it racism for black folks to use GIFs and
memes of white people? Or, like all the rest of this racial nonsense,
something that only works one way?

I need a bullshit-to-English 'splainer on these rules!

Can our resident progs and prog-apologists help? moviePig, Hutt?-- even FPP,
if he wants to slither out of the sewer and come back for a reunion tour--
lend us your expertise. Thrill us with your acumen.

------------------------------------

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/us/digital-blackface-social-media-explainer-blake-cec/index.html

Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly "Sweet Brown" Wilkins telling a
reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire, "Ain't nobody got time for
that!"

Perhaps you posted that meme of supermodel Tyra Banks exploding in anger on
AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL ("I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for
you!"). Or maybe you've simply posted popular GIFs, such as the one of NBA
great Michael Jordan crying or of drag queen RuPaul declaring, "Guuuurl..."

If you're black and you’ve shared such images online, you get a pass. But if
you’re white, you may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious
forms of contemporary racism.

You may be wearing "digital blackface".

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.

Digital blackface involves white people play-acting at being black, says
Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay for Teen
Vogue. Jackson says the internet thrives on white people laughing at
exaggerated displays of blackness, reflecting a tendency among some to see
"black people as walking hyperbole".

If you're still not sure how to define digital blackface, Jackson offers a
guide. She says it "includes displays of emotion stereotyped as excessive: so
happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud... our dial is on 10 all the time-- rarely
are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings".

Many white people choose images of black people when it comes to expressing
exaggerated emotions on social media-- a burden that black people didn't ask
for, she says.

"We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your annoyance,
your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your 'yaass' moments," Jackson
writes. "The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders."

Some may say posting a video of Sweet Brown saying, "Oh Lord Jesus, it's a
fire" is just for laughs. Why overthink it? Why give people yet another excuse
for labeling white people racists for the most innocuous behaviors?

But critics say digital blackface is wrong because it's a modern-day
repackaging of minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment popular in the
19th century. That's when white actors, faces darkened with burnt cork,
entertained audiences by playing black characters as bumbling, happy-go-lucky
simpletons. That practice continued in the 20th century on hit radio shows
such as AMOS 'N ANDY.

Put simply: digital blackface is 21st-century minstrelsy.

"Historical blackface has never truly ended and Americans have yet to actively
confront their racist past to this day," Erinn Wong writes in an academic
paper on the topic.

“In fact, minstrel blackface has emerged into even more subtle forms of racism
that are now glorified all over the Internet.”

Wong says that digital blackface is wrong because it “culturally appropriates
the language and expressions of black people for entertainment, while
dismissing the severity of everyday instances of racism black people
encounter, such as police brutality, job discrimination, and educational
inequity.”

In trying to define digital blackface, it depends on who you talk to. The
standard for some is comparable to what one Supreme Court Justice once said
when asked his test for pornography: "I know it when I see it."

This guidance might help: If a white person shares an image online that
perpetuates stereotypes of black people as loud, dumb, hyperviolent, or
hypersexual, they've entered digital blackface territory. And yet even with
that definition, it's hard to figure out exactly what is and isn't digital
blackface.

This is the challenge that Elizabeth Halford faces. Halford, a brand designer,
wrote an apologetic essay in 2020 about how she made a meme out of Wilkins'
"Ain't nobody got time for that" catchphrase and sent someone a GIF of the
singer Beyonce repeating, "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss."

"I've engaged in digital blackface," Halford wrote. "I've laughed at people of
color on the news facing horrifying crime and disaster and loss. I've
appropriated black trauma as punchlines and peeled their faces off to put on
my own and say what I can't say, to make you laugh, or just because it went
viral."

Halford tells CNN she was bothered that she overlooked the context of Sweet
Brown's interview. The woman had just experienced a tragedy. "I guess we find
it funny, the way (black) people tell their story with so much flair," she
says. "but at the end of the day, one woman's apartment building burned down
while she was in bed."

But Halford says that doesn't mean she won't use any more GIFs of black
people. She doesn't object to the Beyonce "I'm the boss" meme because she
thinks it empowers women. She says that as long as a meme or GIF "is
empowering and not demeaning" she feels free to use it. Besides, Halford says,
if she refrains from using any black memes, she runs into another problem:
"Those are the most effective, because white people are so boring," she says.

Jackson, in her Vogue essay, acknowledges it can be hard to know where to draw
the line. "Now, I'm not suggesting that white and nonblack people refrain from
ever circulating a black person's image for amusement or otherwise..." she
writes. "There's no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to
follow, nobody's coming to take GIFs away." But no digital behavior exists in
a de-racialized vacuum, she says. A white person can spread digital blackface
without malicious intent.

"Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act-- the act of
inhabiting a black persona," she adds. "Employing digital technology to co-opt
a perceived cache or black cool, too, involves playacting blackness in a
minstrel-like tradition. No matter how brief the performance or playful the
intent, summoning black images to play types means pirouetting on over 150
years of American blackface tradition."

Another challenge with defining digital blackface is that some of the alleged
victims of the practice might chafe at being labeled casualties of racism.

Consider what happened to the woman now known as Sweet Brown after she went
viral. She hired an agent and appeared on THE VIEW and JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE. An
auto-tuned version of her original video now has at least 22 million views.
Sweet Brown did go public with accusations that she had been exploited, but it
had little to do with her race.

In 2013, she sued Apple and an Oklahoma radio show over using her likeness
without permission and producing a song, sold on iTunes, that sampled some of
her catchphrases. Is Sweet Brown the victim of digital blackface? Or did she
benefit from the exposure?

It's a tough question. But in the meantime, if you are a white person who is
contemplating using a "hold my wig" GIF, you should consider the advice
Jackson offers in her Teen Vogue essay to white people who playact being black
online.

Jackson writes: "If you find yourself always reaching for a black face to
release your inner sass monster, maybe consider going the extra country mile
and pick this nice Taylor Swift GIF instead."

On 3/26/2023 4:20 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> So if a white person posting a GIF of a black person is racism-- digital
> blackface-- then if a man posts a meme with a woman in it, is that 'digital
> transface"? Or maybe it's 'pinkface'?
>
> And does this work in reverse? Is it racism for black folks to use GIFs and
> memes of white people? Or, like all the rest of this racial nonsense,
> something that only works one way?
>
> I need a bullshit-to-English 'splainer on these rules!
>
> Can our resident progs and prog-apologists help? moviePig, Hutt?-- even FPP,
> if he wants to slither out of the sewer and come back for a reunion tour--
> lend us your expertise. Thrill us with your acumen.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/us/digital-blackface-social-media-explainer-blake-cec/index.html
>
> Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly "Sweet Brown" Wilkins telling a
> reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire, "Ain't nobody got time for
> that!"
>
> Perhaps you posted that meme of supermodel Tyra Banks exploding in anger on
> AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL ("I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for
> you!"). Or maybe you've simply posted popular GIFs, such as the one of NBA
> great Michael Jordan crying or of drag queen RuPaul declaring, "Guuuurl..."
>
> If you're black and you’ve shared such images online, you get a pass. But if
> you’re white, you may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious
> forms of contemporary racism.
>
> You may be wearing "digital blackface".
>
> 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.
>
> Digital blackface involves white people play-acting at being black, says
> Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay for Teen
> Vogue. Jackson says the internet thrives on white people laughing at
> exaggerated displays of blackness, reflecting a tendency among some to see
> "black people as walking hyperbole".
>
> If you're still not sure how to define digital blackface, Jackson offers a
> guide. She says it "includes displays of emotion stereotyped as excessive: so
> happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud... our dial is on 10 all the time-- rarely
> are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings".
>
> Many white people choose images of black people when it comes to expressing
> exaggerated emotions on social media-- a burden that black people didn't ask
> for, she says.
>
> "We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your annoyance,
> your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your 'yaass' moments," Jackson
> writes. "The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders."
>
> Some may say posting a video of Sweet Brown saying, "Oh Lord Jesus, it's a
> fire" is just for laughs. Why overthink it? Why give people yet another excuse
> for labeling white people racists for the most innocuous behaviors?
>
> But critics say digital blackface is wrong because it's a modern-day
> repackaging of minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment popular in the
> 19th century. That's when white actors, faces darkened with burnt cork,
> entertained audiences by playing black characters as bumbling, happy-go-lucky
> simpletons. That practice continued in the 20th century on hit radio shows
> such as AMOS 'N ANDY.
>
> Put simply: digital blackface is 21st-century minstrelsy.
>
> "Historical blackface has never truly ended and Americans have yet to actively
> confront their racist past to this day," Erinn Wong writes in an academic
> paper on the topic.
>
> “In fact, minstrel blackface has emerged into even more subtle forms of racism
> that are now glorified all over the Internet.”
>
> Wong says that digital blackface is wrong because it “culturally appropriates
> the language and expressions of black people for entertainment, while
> dismissing the severity of everyday instances of racism black people
> encounter, such as police brutality, job discrimination, and educational
> inequity.”
>
> In trying to define digital blackface, it depends on who you talk to. The
> standard for some is comparable to what one Supreme Court Justice once said
> when asked his test for pornography: "I know it when I see it."
>
> This guidance might help: If a white person shares an image online that
> perpetuates stereotypes of black people as loud, dumb, hyperviolent, or
> hypersexual, they've entered digital blackface territory. And yet even with
> that definition, it's hard to figure out exactly what is and isn't digital
> blackface.
>
> This is the challenge that Elizabeth Halford faces. Halford, a brand designer,
> wrote an apologetic essay in 2020 about how she made a meme out of Wilkins'
> "Ain't nobody got time for that" catchphrase and sent someone a GIF of the
> singer Beyonce repeating, "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss."
>
> "I've engaged in digital blackface," Halford wrote. "I've laughed at people of
> color on the news facing horrifying crime and disaster and loss. I've
> appropriated black trauma as punchlines and peeled their faces off to put on
> my own and say what I can't say, to make you laugh, or just because it went
> viral."
>
> Halford tells CNN she was bothered that she overlooked the context of Sweet
> Brown's interview. The woman had just experienced a tragedy. "I guess we find
> it funny, the way (black) people tell their story with so much flair," she
> says. "but at the end of the day, one woman's apartment building burned down
> while she was in bed."
>
> But Halford says that doesn't mean she won't use any more GIFs of black
> people. She doesn't object to the Beyonce "I'm the boss" meme because she
> thinks it empowers women. She says that as long as a meme or GIF "is
> empowering and not demeaning" she feels free to use it. Besides, Halford says,
> if she refrains from using any black memes, she runs into another problem:
> "Those are the most effective, because white people are so boring," she says.
>
> Jackson, in her Vogue essay, acknowledges it can be hard to know where to draw
> the line. "Now, I'm not suggesting that white and nonblack people refrain from
> ever circulating a black person's image for amusement or otherwise..." she
> writes. "There's no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to
> follow, nobody's coming to take GIFs away." But no digital behavior exists in
> a de-racialized vacuum, she says. A white person can spread digital blackface
> without malicious intent.
>
> "Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act-- the act of
> inhabiting a black persona," she adds. "Employing digital technology to co-opt
> a perceived cache or black cool, too, involves playacting blackness in a
> minstrel-like tradition. No matter how brief the performance or playful the
> intent, summoning black images to play types means pirouetting on over 150
> years of American blackface tradition."
>
> Another challenge with defining digital blackface is that some of the alleged
> victims of the practice might chafe at being labeled casualties of racism.
>
> Consider what happened to the woman now known as Sweet Brown after she went
> viral. She hired an agent and appeared on THE VIEW and JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE. An
> auto-tuned version of her original video now has at least 22 million views.
> Sweet Brown did go public with accusations that she had been exploited, but it
> had little to do with her race.
>
> In 2013, she sued Apple and an Oklahoma radio show over using her likeness
> without permission and producing a song, sold on iTunes, that sampled some of
> her catchphrases. Is Sweet Brown the victim of digital blackface? Or did she
> benefit from the exposure?
>
> It's a tough question. But in the meantime, if you are a white person who is
> contemplating using a "hold my wig" GIF, you should consider the advice
> Jackson offers in her Teen Vogue essay to white people who playact being black
> online.
>
> Jackson writes: "If you find yourself always reaching for a black face to
> release your inner sass monster, maybe consider going the extra country mile
> and pick this nice Taylor Swift GIF instead."

> BTR1701
>
> Jackson writes: "If you find yourself always reaching for a black face to
> release your inner sass monster, maybe consider going the extra country
> mile and pick this nice Taylor Swift GIF instead."

Meanwhile...
https://i.postimg.cc/05Y6nmTX/1662676196657505.jpg

On 3/26/23 3:20 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> So if a white person posting a GIF of a black person is racism-- digital
> blackface-- then if a man posts a meme with a woman in it, is that 'digital
> transface"? Or maybe it's 'pinkface'?
>
> And does this work in reverse? Is it racism for black folks to use GIFs and
> memes of white people? Or, like all the rest of this racial nonsense,
> something that only works one way?
>
> I need a bullshit-to-English 'splainer on these rules!
>
> Can our resident progs and prog-apologists help? moviePig, Hutt?-- even FPP,
> if he wants to slither out of the sewer and come back for a reunion tour--
> lend us your expertise. Thrill us with your acumen.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/us/digital-blackface-social-media-explainer-blake-cec/index.html
>
> Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly "Sweet Brown" Wilkins telling a
> reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire, "Ain't nobody got time for
> that!"
>
> Perhaps you posted that meme of supermodel Tyra Banks exploding in anger on
> AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL ("I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for
> you!"). Or maybe you've simply posted popular GIFs, such as the one of NBA
> great Michael Jordan crying or of drag queen RuPaul declaring, "Guuuurl..."
>
> If you're black and you’ve shared such images online, you get a pass. But if
> you’re white, you may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious
> forms of contemporary racism.
>
> You may be wearing "digital blackface".
>
> 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.
>
> Digital blackface involves white people play-acting at being black, says
> Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay for Teen
> Vogue. Jackson says the internet thrives on white people laughing at
> exaggerated displays of blackness, reflecting a tendency among some to see
> "black people as walking hyperbole".
>
> If you're still not sure how to define digital blackface, Jackson offers a
> guide. She says it "includes displays of emotion stereotyped as excessive: so
> happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud... our dial is on 10 all the time-- rarely
> are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings".
>
> Many white people choose images of black people when it comes to expressing
> exaggerated emotions on social media-- a burden that black people didn't ask
> for, she says.
>
> "We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your annoyance,
> your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your 'yaass' moments," Jackson
> writes. "The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders."
>
> Some may say posting a video of Sweet Brown saying, "Oh Lord Jesus, it's a
> fire" is just for laughs. Why overthink it? Why give people yet another excuse
> for labeling white people racists for the most innocuous behaviors?
>
> But critics say digital blackface is wrong because it's a modern-day
> repackaging of minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment popular in the
> 19th century. That's when white actors, faces darkened with burnt cork,
> entertained audiences by playing black characters as bumbling, happy-go-lucky
> simpletons. That practice continued in the 20th century on hit radio shows
> such as AMOS 'N ANDY.
>
> Put simply: digital blackface is 21st-century minstrelsy.
>
> "Historical blackface has never truly ended and Americans have yet to actively
> confront their racist past to this day," Erinn Wong writes in an academic
> paper on the topic.
>
> “In fact, minstrel blackface has emerged into even more subtle forms of racism
> that are now glorified all over the Internet.”
>
> Wong says that digital blackface is wrong because it “culturally appropriates
> the language and expressions of black people for entertainment, while
> dismissing the severity of everyday instances of racism black people
> encounter, such as police brutality, job discrimination, and educational
> inequity.”
>
> In trying to define digital blackface, it depends on who you talk to. The
> standard for some is comparable to what one Supreme Court Justice once said
> when asked his test for pornography: "I know it when I see it."
>
> This guidance might help: If a white person shares an image online that
> perpetuates stereotypes of black people as loud, dumb, hyperviolent, or
> hypersexual, they've entered digital blackface territory. And yet even with
> that definition, it's hard to figure out exactly what is and isn't digital
> blackface.
>
> This is the challenge that Elizabeth Halford faces. Halford, a brand designer,
> wrote an apologetic essay in 2020 about how she made a meme out of Wilkins'
> "Ain't nobody got time for that" catchphrase and sent someone a GIF of the
> singer Beyonce repeating, "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss."
>
> "I've engaged in digital blackface," Halford wrote. "I've laughed at people of
> color on the news facing horrifying crime and disaster and loss. I've
> appropriated black trauma as punchlines and peeled their faces off to put on
> my own and say what I can't say, to make you laugh, or just because it went
> viral."
>
> Halford tells CNN she was bothered that she overlooked the context of Sweet
> Brown's interview. The woman had just experienced a tragedy. "I guess we find
> it funny, the way (black) people tell their story with so much flair," she
> says. "but at the end of the day, one woman's apartment building burned down
> while she was in bed."
>
> But Halford says that doesn't mean she won't use any more GIFs of black
> people. She doesn't object to the Beyonce "I'm the boss" meme because she
> thinks it empowers women. She says that as long as a meme or GIF "is
> empowering and not demeaning" she feels free to use it. Besides, Halford says,
> if she refrains from using any black memes, she runs into another problem:
> "Those are the most effective, because white people are so boring," she says.
>
> Jackson, in her Vogue essay, acknowledges it can be hard to know where to draw
> the line. "Now, I'm not suggesting that white and nonblack people refrain from
> ever circulating a black person's image for amusement or otherwise..." she
> writes. "There's no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to
> follow, nobody's coming to take GIFs away." But no digital behavior exists in
> a de-racialized vacuum, she says. A white person can spread digital blackface
> without malicious intent.
>
> "Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act-- the act of
> inhabiting a black persona," she adds. "Employing digital technology to co-opt
> a perceived cache or black cool, too, involves playacting blackness in a
> minstrel-like tradition. No matter how brief the performance or playful the
> intent, summoning black images to play types means pirouetting on over 150
> years of American blackface tradition."
>
> Another challenge with defining digital blackface is that some of the alleged
> victims of the practice might chafe at being labeled casualties of racism.
>
> Consider what happened to the woman now known as Sweet Brown after she went
> viral. She hired an agent and appeared on THE VIEW and JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE. An
> auto-tuned version of her original video now has at least 22 million views.
> Sweet Brown did go public with accusations that she had been exploited, but it
> had little to do with her race.
>
> In 2013, she sued Apple and an Oklahoma radio show over using her likeness
> without permission and producing a song, sold on iTunes, that sampled some of
> her catchphrases. Is Sweet Brown the victim of digital blackface? Or did she
> benefit from the exposure?
>
> It's a tough question. But in the meantime, if you are a white person who is
> contemplating using a "hold my wig" GIF, you should consider the advice
> Jackson offers in her Teen Vogue essay to white people who playact being black
> online.
>
> Jackson writes: "If you find yourself always reaching for a black face t> release your inner sass monster, maybe consider going the extra country mile
> and pick this nice Taylor Swift GIF instead."

On 3/26/23 4:01 PM, moviePig wrote:
> On 3/26/2023 4:20 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>> So if a white person posting a GIF of a black person is racism-- digital
>> blackface-- then if a man posts a meme with a woman in it, is that
>> 'digital
>> transface"? Or maybe it's 'pinkface'?
>>
>> And does this work in reverse? Is it racism for black folks to use
>> GIFs and
>> memes of white people? Or, like all the rest of this racial nonsense,
>> something that only works one way?
>>
>> I need a bullshit-to-English 'splainer on these rules!
>>
>> Can our resident progs and prog-apologists help? moviePig, Hutt?--
>> even FPP,
>> if he wants to slither out of the sewer and come back for a reunion
>> tour--
>> lend us your expertise. Thrill us with your acumen.
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/us/digital-blackface-social-media-explainer-blake-cec/index.html
>>
>> Maybe you shared that viral video of Kimberly "Sweet Brown" Wilkins
>> telling a
>> reporter after narrowly escaping an apartment fire, "Ain't nobody got
>> time for
>> that!"
>>
>> Perhaps you posted that meme of supermodel Tyra Banks exploding in
>> anger on
>> AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL ("I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for
>> you!"). Or maybe you've simply posted popular GIFs, such as the one of
>> NBA
>> great Michael Jordan crying or of drag queen RuPaul declaring,
>> "Guuuurl..."
>>
>> If you're black and you’ve shared such images online, you get a pass.
>> But if
>> you’re white, you may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most
>> insidious
>> forms of contemporary racism.
>>
>> You may be wearing "digital blackface".
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> Digital blackface involves white people play-acting at being black, says
>> Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay for
>> Teen
>> Vogue. Jackson says the internet thrives on white people laughing at
>> exaggerated displays of blackness, reflecting a tendency among some to
>> see
>> "black people as walking hyperbole".
>>
>> If you're still not sure how to define digital blackface, Jackson
>> offers a
>> guide. She says it "includes displays of emotion stereotyped as
>> excessive: so
>> happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud... our dial is on 10 all the
>> time-- rarely
>> are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings".
>>
>> Many white people choose images of black people when it comes to
>> expressing
>> exaggerated emotions on social media-- a burden that black people
>> didn't ask
>> for, she says.
>>
>> "We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your
>> annoyance,
>> your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your 'yaass' moments," Jackson
>> writes. "The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders."
>>
>> Some may say posting a video of Sweet Brown saying, "Oh Lord Jesus,
>> it's a
>> fire" is just for laughs. Why overthink it? Why give people yet
>> another excuse
>> for labeling white people racists for the most innocuous behaviors?
>>
>> But critics say digital blackface is wrong because it's a modern-day
>> repackaging of minstrel shows, a racist form of entertainment popular
>> in the
>> 19th century. That's when white actors, faces darkened with burnt cork,
>> entertained audiences by playing black characters as bumbling,
>> happy-go-lucky
>> simpletons. That practice continued in the 20th century on hit radio
>> shows
>> such as AMOS 'N ANDY.
>>
>> Put simply: digital blackface is 21st-century minstrelsy.
>>
>> "Historical blackface has never truly ended and Americans have yet to
>> actively
>> confront their racist past to this day," Erinn Wong writes in an academic
>> paper on the topic.
>>
>> “In fact, minstrel blackface has emerged into even more subtle forms
>> of racism
>> that are now glorified all over the Internet.”
>>
>> Wong says that digital blackface is wrong because it “culturally
>> appropriates
>> the language and expressions of black people for entertainment, while
>> dismissing the severity of everyday instances of racism black people
>> encounter, such as police brutality, job discrimination, and educational
>> inequity.”
>>
>> In trying to define digital blackface, it depends on who you talk to. The
>> standard for some is comparable to what one Supreme Court Justice once
>> said
>> when asked his test for pornography: "I know it when I see it."
>>
>> This guidance might help: If a white person shares an image online that
>> perpetuates stereotypes of black people as loud, dumb, hyperviolent, or
>> hypersexual, they've entered digital blackface territory. And yet even
>> with
>> that definition, it's hard to figure out exactly what is and isn't
>> digital
>> blackface.
>>
>> This is the challenge that Elizabeth Halford faces. Halford, a brand
>> designer,
>> wrote an apologetic essay in 2020 about how she made a meme out of
>> Wilkins'
>> "Ain't nobody got time for that" catchphrase and sent someone a GIF of
>> the
>> singer Beyonce repeating, "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss."
>>
>> "I've engaged in digital blackface," Halford wrote. "I've laughed at
>> people of
>> color on the news facing horrifying crime and disaster and loss. I've
>> appropriated black trauma as punchlines and peeled their faces off to
>> put on
>> my own and say what I can't say, to make you laugh, or just because it
>> went
>> viral."
>>
>> Halford tells CNN she was bothered that she overlooked the context of
>> Sweet
>> Brown's interview. The woman had just experienced a tragedy. "I guess
>> we find
>> it funny, the way (black) people tell their story with so much flair,"
>> she
>> says. "but at the end of the day, one woman's apartment building
>> burned down
>> while she was in bed."
>>
>> But Halford says that doesn't mean she won't use any more GIFs of black
>> people. She doesn't object to the Beyonce "I'm the boss" meme because she
>> thinks it empowers women. She says that as long as a meme or GIF "is
>> empowering and not demeaning" she feels free to use it. Besides,
>> Halford says,
>> if she refrains from using any black memes, she runs into another
>> problem:
>> "Those are the most effective, because white people are so boring,"
>> she says.
>>
>> Jackson, in her Vogue essay, acknowledges it can be hard to know where
>> to draw
>> the line. "Now, I'm not suggesting that white and nonblack people
>> refrain from
>> ever circulating a black person's image for amusement or otherwise..."
>> she
>> writes. "There's no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to
>> follow, nobody's coming to take GIFs away." But no digital behavior
>> exists in
>> a de-racialized vacuum, she says. A white person can spread digital
>> blackface
>> without malicious intent.
>>
>> "Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act-- the act of
>> inhabiting a black persona," she adds. "Employing digital technology
>> to co-opt
>> a perceived cache or black cool, too, involves playacting blackness in a
>> minstrel-like tradition. No matter how brief the performance or
>> playful the
>> intent, summoning black images to play types means pirouetting on over
>> 150
>> years of American blackface tradition."
>>
>> Another challenge with defining digital blackface is that some of the
>> alleged
>> victims of the practice might chafe at being labeled casualties of
>> racism.
>>
>> Consider what happened to the woman now known as Sweet Brown after she
>> went
>> viral. She hired an agent and appeared on THE VIEW and JIMMY KIMMEL
>> LIVE. An
>> auto-tuned version of her original video now has at least 22 million
>> views.
>> Sweet Brown did go public with accusations that she had been
>> exploited, but it
>> had little to do with her race.
>>
>> In 2013, she sued Apple and an Oklahoma radio show over using her
>> likeness
>> without permission and producing a song, sold on iTunes, that sampled
>> some of
>> her catchphrases. Is Sweet Brown the victim of digital blackface? Or
>> did she
>> benefit from the exposure?
>>
>> It's a tough question. But in the meantime, if you are a white person
>> who is
>> contemplating using a "hold my wig" GIF, you should consider the advice
>> Jackson offers in her Teen Vogue essay to white people who playact
>> being black
>> online.
>>
>> Jackson writes: "If you find yourself always reaching for a black face to
>> release your inner sass monster, maybe consider going the extra
>> country mile
>> and pick this nice Taylor Swift GIF instead."
>
> Consider whether Potter Stewart "knew pornography when he saw it"...

On 3/26/23 4:20 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

> I need a bullshit-to-English 'splainer on these rules!
>
> Can our resident progs and prog-apologists help? moviePig, Hutt?-- even FPP,
> if he wants to slither out of the sewer and come back for a reunion tour--
> lend us your expertise. Thrill us with your acumen.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/us/digital-blackface-social-media-explainer-blake-cec/index.html

"Digital blackface involves White people play-acting at being Black,
says Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay
for Teen Vogue."

That's your source? Teen Vogue?
You like reading about adolescent teen girls a lot, do you?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cez1lz2rkqdkjsg/Chef%27s%20Kiss.gif?dl=0

--
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0es3xolxka455iw/BetterThingsToDo.jpg?dl=0

And since I trashed all my social media accounts over a year ago, the
only time I check in here is when I boot up to check out my external SSD
backup drive.

So you shouldn't expect I'll see any replies... but feel free to knock
yourself out!

atropos@mac.com wrote:

>So if a white person posting a GIF of a black person is racism-- digital
>blackface-- then if a man posts a meme with a woman in it, is that 'digital
>transface"? Or maybe it's 'pinkface'?
>
>And does this work in reverse? Is it racism for black folks to use GIFs and
>memes of white people? Or, like all the rest of this racial nonsense,
>something that only works one way?
>
>I need a bullshit-to-English 'splainer on these rules!
>
>Can our resident progs and prog-apologists help? moviePig, Hutt?-- even FPP,
>if he wants to slither out of the sewer and come back for a reunion tour--
>lend us your expertise. Thrill us with your acumen.

Don't hold your breath; FPP is still crying in his pillow over Trump not
being arrested.

--
Let's go Brandon!

"trtosky" wrote:
> On 3/26/23 4:20 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

>> I need a bullshit-to-English 'splainer on these rules!
>>
>> Can our resident progs and prog-apologists help? moviePig, Hutt?-- even FPP,
>> if he wants to slither out of the sewer and come back for a reunion tour--
>> lend us your expertise. Thrill us with your acumen.
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/us/digital-blackface-social-media-explainer-blake-cec/index.html
>
>"Digital blackface involves White people play-acting at being Black,
>says Lauren Michele Jackson, an author and cultural critic, in an essay
>for Teen Vogue."
>
>That's your source? Teen Vogue?
>You like reading about adolescent teen girls a lot, do you?

Reading comprehension problem noted.
Shitposting noted.
Ad hominem noted.

Get back to us when you have a real argument to make.

--
Let's go Brandon!