Liquor&Spice: Reaction gifs/images + blackface
Digging thru google for some posts I probably read. A lot of these links/blogs are dead, but here’s some text I copy/pasted from one of those terrible white libertarian blogs:
I can’t put my finger on why it makes me a weeee bit uncomfortable, but it really does. Maybe because it plays into and perpetuates racist stereotypes about Black people having ‘attitude’ or being funny? Maybe because it’s a little minstrel-y? Maybe because a non-Black internet user using a Black person to illustrate their feelings is a sort of strange virtual blackface? Maybe because so many non-Black people are fine with using a Black person to illustrate their feelings/reactions but aren’t interested in allowing Black people their own voices? Maybe because it seems akin to non-Black people adopting Black Vernacular English to be more … something?
We live in a racist culture. I can’t accept that the widespread popularity of these sorts of GIFs is totally innocent.
Ooh yeah, I think you’re onto something here, definitely.
(Cue internet freak-out when people angrily and defensively refuse to see subtle racism that they may be participating in.)
This, exactly. I also think those gifs are used as a co-option of Black people’s anger for somewhat trivial matters—or worse, as a way of trivializing the offending argument.
I think ~one (of many) of the things that makes me so uncomfortable about it is that reaction gifs are assumed to be only chosen for the reaction portrayed… people store and use them in accordance to the highly emotive portrayal of self they want to represent - like it can transmutate their identity somehow. And in that is where racism is perpetuated. Pop images of the “sassy black woman” becomes the go-to for people in a place of privilege. They rely on the easy stereotypes to suggest the humor in a white person acting like that - that black woman who is less than cultured or more cartoonish than any white person portrayed. Ugh. It goes double for gifs of RuPaul which suggests that she isn’t ‘quite womanly enough’ or that she is ‘too black’ in her reaction clip.
