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."

I don't get the Oath Keepers' emails so I have no idea what the fuck
"CNNL" means. Google returns this: Did you mean to search for: CNN

Same fucking stupid bullshit different day.