What is 'digital blackface'? Why is there so much outrage over it?

You’ve heard of blackface and brownface – when a non-white person darkens his or her skin to mock black and brown people — but some now say there’s a new form of racism. Let’s take a closer look at the controversy surrounding ‘digital blackface’: What is it? According to CNN, ‘digital blackface’ is defined as “…a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions.” The CNN article gave a few examples of digital blackface. “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…’” Digital blackface like minstrel shows, critics say Critics have likened ‘digital blackface’ to minstrel shows – which some consider the first uniquely American form of entertainment. These shows, which trace their origins back to the 19th Century, saw White performers darken their faces to create caricatures of black people including large mouths, lips and eyes, woolly hair and coal-black skin. The performances would stereotype black men and women as ignorant, hypersexual, superstitious, lazy people who were prone to thievery and cowardice. The practice took hold in New York City in the 1830s and became immensely popular among post-Civil War whites. In fact, the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the South took their name from a character played by blackface performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice. He said his act “Jump, Jim Crow” (or “Jumping Jim Crow”) was inspired by a slave he saw.

Blackface performances were condemned as offensive from the beginning.

In 1848, after watching a blackface act, abolitionist Fredrick Douglass called the performers “the filthy scum of white society” in The North Star newspaper. Blackface performers, he said, “have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature … to make money and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens.” Civil rights organizations have publicly condemned blackface for decades, saying it dehumanizes blacks by introducing and reinforcing racial stereotypes. A letter to the editor in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1946 called a blackface performance “grotesque” and said it attacked “by ridicule and cheap buffoonery the self-respect of every American Negro.” The letter was written by a state lawmaker, the Inter-Racial Action Council, the Inter-Denominational Ministers Alliance and the publisher of The Pittsburgh Courier. ‘White people playing at being black’ Author Lauren Michele Jackson told CNN ‘digital blackface’ was simply White people playing at being Black. Jackson says this mirrors a tendency of people online to view ‘Black people as walking hyperbole’. [caption id=“attachment_12367102” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The photo of Michael Jordan crying became a meme. Twitter[/caption] “‘Digital blackface’ 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,” Jackson says.

But some have slammed this concept.

“I’m Black and I been Black my whole life. I have never read something stupider than this ever,” Florida Republican Lavern Spicer wrote. Journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote on Twitter: “The modern-day segregationists do everything possible to keep people divided by race, prevent them from having joyful and natural interactions, ban them from appreciating the culture and humor of others, and in general demand that they have as little in common as possible.” With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.