CNN is being pilloried online after its news site posted an analysis piece singling out white social media users as guilty of “digital blackface” if they use a GIF or meme featuring an African American celebrity.
John Blake, a writer for CNN.com, is the author of a piece titled “What’s ‘digital blackface?’ And why is it wrong when White people use it?”
According to Blake, white people who share internet memes featuring black people “may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.”
He cited popular GIFs and memes featuring Tyra Banks from the reality TV show “America’s Next Top Model” as well as the “Crying Jordan” meme showing a teary-eyed Michael Jordan.
Another well-known meme features Kimberly “Sweet Brown” Wilkins, the survivor of a 2012 Oklahoma City apartment fire who was immortalized online when she told a local newscaster: “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
Blake then went on to define the phenomenon known as “digital blackface” as “a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions.”
He wrote that white people who use “digital blackface” are “play-acting at being Black.”
Blake cited a Teen Vogue essay by writer Lauren Michele Jackson who wrote that the trend is part of white people who view black people as “walking hyperbole.”
Jackson wrote that digital blackface “includes displays of emotion stereotyped as excessive” including “so happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud.”
“No matter how brief the performance or playful the intent, summoning black images to play types means pirouetting on over 150 years of American blackface tradition,” according to Jackson.
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“Blackface” is a reference to a form of entertainment that took hold before the Civil War in which white performers painted their faces in minstrel shows.
White men would 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 Post has sought comment from CNN and Teen Vogue’s parent company Condé Nast.
CNN’s story prompted widespread criticism, with one Twitter user saying the network was “essentially calling for the segregation of memes.”
Another Twitter user told CNN: “jesus f–king chris shut the f–k up.” Elon Musk, the Twitter owner, responded with a “100” emoji.
Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and frequent critic of CNN, wrote: “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.”
Others made sure to use prominent African Americans as gifs and memes in response.
In November, CNN was widely mocked for an article claiming that Daylight Savings Time “disproportionately” impacts people of color.
