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Y’all wanna talk about the pervasiveness of consumption of Black Culture with Black people removed from it on this here Thursday night?
(I’m bout to anyway: Thread)
(I’m bout to anyway: Thread)
So, I’ve noticed cause this is a problem I have a lot; that when you use gif search functions as a Black person looking for Black gifs because they’re the ONLY time the nuances of Black body language, if not a lot of Black people posted the gif, your search results are hella off
Honestly I’m not even talking about digital Blackface that’s a whole ass other related thing I’m not gonna get into. What I’m talking about, is when I’m communicating with other Black people online and using AAVE; it’s hard af to find the correct kinds of gifs
Ex: just a min ago I was talking to @quiet_spheres and I had said “Girl, I KNOW” to some nonsense and I know other Black people know exactly the body language that accompanies it as like, a fake incredulous context
So here I go looking to convey that and I was originally ONLY going to use the gif because AAVE really has a specific non verbal layer that’s part of the language and not to drysnitch on all us, but that’s why y’all non Black people keep getting caught out trying to use AAVE
We can tell when you don’t know the body language or only a racist version cause you type like you think you clap on the 2 &4 but you really don’t. ANYWAY; so here I am looking for the Right™gif and I first put in”bitch”cause y’all know the”Girl I Know”version I was tryin to get
The closest to what I needed was the first gif but the expression reads that the topic is (probably) more personal; like talking bout someone you know or encounter a lot. The rest of the gifs were just variations of Sassy Black Woman™ (img of first screen of gif search)
So I put in “okay?!” And didn’t get anything close either I had also put without the ?! and it was basically the same (img: first screen of gif search for “Okay?!”)
So I’m a lil frustrated cause you know no one wants to spend all kinda time going through gif when you’re in an active conversation with another Black person. People are just as rapid fire wit online as in real life. So I put in “Girl I know” and got nothing too (img: gif search)
So that’s when I’m confronted with a decision that I know every Black person online has had. Do I check the microaggressive tags? Unless you know the exact name and/or character name of the person in the exact media in the exact clip you’re looking for, this is what you gotta do
Unless you’ve ever had to look up your culture being displayed by your people using racist stereotypes of what people outside your culture THINK you’re doing, there’s really no way to describe that feeling accurately. And it’s not a feeling you get used to (or should have to)
I didn’t do it because I’m not in the emotional space to subject myself to that shit so I ended up just replying “Girl I KNOW”
“Who cares, Coyote” I can hear people say. We should all care tbh. Black culture is part of American culture. Like any culture our history includes
“Who cares, Coyote” I can hear people say. We should all care tbh. Black culture is part of American culture. Like any culture our history includes
The way we communicate intracommunity-wise. We gotta be our own historians and our own linguists because no one is going to be able to represent us better than us. Like. I think that linguistics got to be a special interest to me cause autistic people stay having to learn abt it
And it just got me hooked but even as a Black person in general, once you start doing the work to untangle yourself from internalized anti Blackness, you see more microaggressions for what they are. And it’s mad exhausting because as Black people we’re already inundated with that
On top of whatever Memaws Down Home Regular Aggressive Racism we put up with all the time. I don’t really have a solution outside we need have it be a priority to center our voices about ourselves so it wouldn’t be a surprise to some people that this happens, but I think
Especially white people who claim they’re putting in work to combat their inherent racism need to know this happens. Y’all need to be conscious of how you tag images of Black people being Black people beyond the blatant racist shit. Racism is subtle af a lot of the time; that’s
Why it’s so pervasive. That’s why white people in particular think Black people talking about microaggressions is just nitpicking or just “looking for something to be mad about” like we don’t already got 400 years of shit to be mad about
