by Fuzzy Slippers at legalinsurrection.com
The whole thing is complete cringe to read; it’s poorly written, ill-considered, and poorly supported–apparently, a freshman at UC Berkeley wrote about it, and that’s the “academic paper” the person who penned this drivel cites.
In a nutshell: you can’t post memes about black people because it’s just like (JUST LIKE) minstrel shows from the past. Minstrel shows have been deemed racist and have been banned by the lily white woke left. It doesn’t matter that there hasn’t been one in well over a hundred years. Instead, this portion of American cultural history is being dug up, dusted off, and used as a cudgel to beat contemporary Americans over the head with our supposed “systemic racism.”
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.”
. . . . 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 ‘yaas’ moments,” Jackson writes. “The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders.”
. . . . 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.”
. . . . “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 is the “academic” who penned that paper when she was a freshman at UC Berkeley (archive link). You can’t make this stuff up.