Then comes the more sinister side of this. Similar cases happen all over the comments section virtually anywhere, with or without a photo, often prefaced with statements like ”as a black man..." before proceeding to sound like anything but. In other instances, digital blackface is an orchestrated attempt by white supremacists to disrupt black organizing. Writer Shafiqah Hudson started the hashtag #yourslipisshowing to document instances of digital blackface in real time, joined by other black women writers and theorists such as I'Nasah Crockett, Sydette Harry, Mikki Kendall, Trudy, and Feminista Jones. As the name of the tag suggests, online minstrels are no more believable than their in-person counterparts to anyone who knows black culture and black people, rather than a series of types. Unfortunately, digital blackface often goes unchecked unless a black person does the work to point out the discrepancies in someone's profile.
But while these examples are particularly noteworthy for their malicious intent, digital blackface has softer counterparts, just like offline blackface. Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act — the act of inhabiting a black persona. Employing digital technology to co-opt a perceived cache or black cool, too, involves playacting blackness in a minstrel-like tradition. This can be as elaborate as anon accounts like @ItsLaQueefa or as inadvertent as recruiting images of black queer men to throw shade at one's enemies. 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.
