From Diversity To Problematic: When Is Meme Culture Racist?

The internet lets us be whoever we want to be...but how far can we stray from being ourselves?

Between tweets and memes, we’ve all picked up some implicit rules about what is and isn’t okay to do on social media — it’s unacceptable, for example, to hack, or harass, or catfish others. But sometimes it gets a little blurry. That’s when the question of digital blackface comes in.

On the latest episode of After After Party, writer Mamoudou N’Diaye described it best: “Digital blackface is when people use Black likenesses on the internet to express their own feelings and reactions.” Think of popular emojis, reaction GIFs, or online slang — a lot of it was created by and features images of Black people, and particularly Black women. Thanks to virality and social media, the internet has made a lot of this content accessible to straight white users who may not actually look or talk this way in real life.

“How many trends have Black women started?” comedian Rebecca O’Neal asked. “I feel like a lot of really funny content comes from Black Twitter, and I think the further removed from the source material, the muddier it gets. Like, what do you mean by it? Is this for you?”

N’Diaye and O’Neal were joined by writer Dylan Marron, who added that a lot of this comes down to intention.

“On the one hand, when we’re advocating for more representation in media, essentially what that boils down to is that you’re wanting diverse bodies to represent diverse thoughts. So the idea of having an emotion and using a GIF that features a Black person specifically — it’s kind of nice,” Marron said.

Check out the conversation in the episode below!