Digital Blackface

written by Ifueko Osarogiagbon // art by Emma Lehman

For a movie made an entire decade ago, “Bring It On” really was ahead of its time. The 2000s cheerleading film starring Kristen Dunst and Gabrielle Union brought the issue of cultural appropriation to the big screen by telling the story of how a white upper-class cheerleading squad made their name by stealing the dance routines of a rivaling team of entirely Black inner-city students. But between the amount of white female influencers using deep tans, dark makeup, body surgery, and textured wigs to pose as racially-ambiguous women on Instagram (blackfishing as coined by Black culture writer Wanna Thompson and Twitter user known as Deja) and the number of non-Black teens on stan Twitter speaking in butchered African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), non-Black people have moved to an even deeper level of theft than the teen comedy could ever imagine.

It’s hard to see how blackface has advanced digitally without understanding how it was first derived. The form of blackface most people are familiar with dates back to the 1820s, when white people would put literal brown and black paint makeup on their faces in order to perform crudely exaggerated performances of Black people in minstrel shows, a popular form of white entertainment made up of comedy skits, dancing, and music. These performances cut deep into American culture as they not only paved the way for many of the racist stereotypes Black people currently struggle with today, but also shaped post-Reconstruction legislation. The Jim Crow laws of the deep South were named after one of the earliest blackface characters created, Jim Crow.

The internet and social media subsequently have created a digital dystopia where it is now easier than ever before for non-Black people to be Black without the baggage of anti-Blackness. Meanwhile, actual Black people are left to be the bellhops of our own culture. Apps like Twitter where interactions are generally all done through text gives non-Black people unfettered access to actual Black people’s different dialects and speaking patterns as written out in AAVE. The Internet and social media’s interconnectivity has made it to where non-Black people now have an all-access pass to phrases and terms you’d normally have to be physically be a part of Black queer communities and the Black community in general to even know about. Meanwhile, our styles and aesthetics are laid out for everyone to see through photo-based apps like Instagram. It doesn’t help that social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram operate with a level of anonymity that allows people to build an entire identity others have no choice but to presume is true as long as your performance is consistent enough. This is part of why Emma Hallberg’s performance fell apart so fast. The Swedish influencer was one of the many white women caught cosplaying as Black by Thompson and Deja’s Twitter threads. People were able to dig through her Instagram history to find photos exposing what she actually looked like, not to mention Hallberg herself had made videos on YouTube showcasing step by step how she’d use makeup to drastically alter her appearance. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But when you look at the way these modern forms of Blackface all come at the expense of actual Black people, imitation proves to be much more sinister than what the quippy proverb could ever capture.

Just by putting on these digital performances of Blackness, non-Black people are able to leverage their fabricated likness in order to gain access to spaces actual Black people–Black women in particular–are blocked from ever entering. Danielle Bregoli’s— otherwise known as Bhad Bhabie—claim to fame was threatening her mother with a blaccent in an episode of “Dr. Phil.” Her belligerent attitude and botched attempt at AAVE created the viral “Cash Me Ousside” moment that quickly reached meme status on Twitter. Her newfound fame later earned her a million dollar music deal with Kevin Abstract and Ty Dolla $ign’s record company, her own reality tv series “Bringing Up Bhabie’’ on Snapchat, and a $900,000 beauty deal. Now Bregoli has decided to dip her toes a bit deeper in her performance through the Kardashian cheat code of body spray, lip fillers, and textured hair. And before being exposed, Emma Hallberg had already been featured as a beauty figure in publications like “Teen Vogue” on top of being an Instagram influencer with a sizable following. She now models for PrettyLittleThing.

Meanwhile Black girls and women are disproportionately disciplined within education and the workforce for having a hint of an attitude as well as barred out of these same spaces for simply existing as ourselves. Actual Black influencers struggle to be reposted by beauty and fashion brands’ Instagram pages and be paid equally to their non-Black peers.

Despite their clear connection to the racist performance, many people still deny that these performances have anything to do with Blackness and Black people. When Wanna and Deja’s blackfishing threads made their way through Twitter, many people came to the defense of all the white women being exposed for their appropriative behaviour. Some tried arguing that the girls weren’t actually trying to look Black but were really just to achieve the same look as the Kardashians or that the women were simply just trying to achieve the “Instagram baddie” look. This excuse helps pinpoint the problem with the appropriation of Black women’s aesthetics and attributes. The styles they’ve adopted from Black women become divorced from their true creators leaving the Kardashians and other nonBlack women with all the credit while they continue to coopt Black women’s creativity. Regardless of who non-Black women believe they’re adopting their aesthetics from, Black women created those aesthetics. No matter what they are still trying to look like lite editions of Black women. Kim Kardashian and her crew paved the way for this particular kind of appropriation. Not to say that they were the first ones to. But the Kardashian–Jenner klan were the ones to really create the blueprint for blackfishing, going on to build their entire entertainment by being Black adjacent in dress and drama.

And when it comes to blaccents, many times nonBlack people (of color in particular) like to claim that growing up and being around Black people justifies their misuse of AAVE. Some even go as far as to say it’s the same as how actual Black people code-switch. But if this kind of cultural osmosis really were a thing, then Black people would also be able to speak the many languages non-Black people speak in their own communities. NonBlack people aren’t penalized for using standardized English in any way that would require them to speak AAVE. Black people, however, code-switch from AAVE to standard English inorder to escape racist stereotypes attributed to the language. Most notably though, non-Black people don’t even have a proper mastery of AAVE to even claim it as a language that they can code-switch from.

When it comes to curbing this kind of cultural theft, Black people are caught in a double bind. In a society that trivializes and ignores how we’ve been harmed, oftentimes the only way to offset offences made against us is by teaming up on social media and bringing as much media attention to an issue as possible. From getting schools to reprimand racist students and staff members to pressuring businesses to own up to racist behaviour, many times this method of holding others accountable have worked quite well for the Black community. Unfortunately, getting outed for engaging in anti-Black behaviour can be a springboard for non-Black people’s success. Budding figures like Bregoli and Hallberg need any bit of attention they can get no matter how bad in order to gain access to greater status. Infamy is far better than being invisible. So by putting the pair on blast, the Black community not only built them an audience, but also brought them opportunities that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to access on their own. On the flipside, leaving them be would mean letting them continue their con game. When outing these anti-Black offenders on the Internet is its own kind of gamble, bringing mass attention to the actual creators and innovators of Black culture and making sure that they’re credited is a great way to fight back against digital Blackface. This worked great for bringing credit back to Jaleigh Harmon, the creator of the popular ‘Renegade’ dance. The creator of the phrase “on fleek” Kayla Newman, also known as Peaches Monroe, was finally able to get some compensation for her cultural contribution the same way. Rihanna’s beauty brand Fenty Beauty had Newman recreate her famous Vine video as an ad for the launch of their Brow MVP brow pencils. Before this collaboration, Newman had struggled to get proper credit for her words despite countless brands and businesses using them for their marketing.

If there’s one thing digital Blackface does for Black people, it is to affirm the fact that Blackness is beautiful and that Black Americans do in fact have their own unique culture, one that’s coveted by so many others outside of it. But as long as Black people are disrespected while our culture is revered, this affirmation is nothing but an empty gesture.