digital blackface

Sometimes white people think that black people are better at expressing their feelings in ways that are confident and cool. So they borrow these expressions in social media to fill the gap in their own communicative abilities, as text written in what is obviously Black American English and incorporating BAE slang, or as gifs or memes.  But this is considered most inappropriate. Apart from anything else this habit tends to favour exaggerated expressions that bolster a cultural stereotype of black people being exhibitionists.

There was a moment in the Black Lives Matter Movement when white people adopted black-skinned emojis as a sign of solidarity but this led to confusion and misunderstanding.  White people pretending to be black didn’t help the situation at all.

Underlying digital blackface are the same cultural assumptions that influenced the minstrel shows where the portrayal of black people was meant to be entertainment for a white audience.