White Instagram Influencers Have Created a New Form of Blackface

Digital media has spawned a pervasive, elusive performance that’s dangerous to Black culture

They say that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” an idea that posits that emulation is rooted in a subconscious desire to be someone else and is done in good faith. While the first may be true, when dealing with imitation of culture or the self, the motivations become much more sinister. On the internet, it’s possible to transform into whomever you want and curate your aesthetic without limitations, but what happens when aesthetics can’t be divorced from their cultural importance?

After the Civil War, as the dust from the battlefield was settling, so was the powder setting White actors’ faces with oil, paint, coal, or any jet-black substance found to satirize the newly freed Black Americans. The practice of blackface (or minstrelsy) in America started as a form of “comedy” in the urban North. At its inception, it was viewed as a bonding instrument, as a tool to help mend a “divided nation.” The acts often included songs and vaudevillian plots depicting these larger-than-life caricatures blundering through life, trying to navigate their new freedom. Later, characters such as Little Black Sambo and Amos ’n’ Andy helped to grow the popularity of the…