CNN writer John Blake accused white people of wearing “digital blackface” if they shared memes or gifs featuring black people and expressions in order to “convey comic relief or express emotions.”
Referring to the most popular memes and gifs as “radicalized reactions,” Blake argued that black people “get a pass” for using them — but when white people did so, they had “inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.”
Blake went on to quote a 2017 Teen Vogue article written by Lauren Michele Jackson — in which she argued that people often cherry-picked gifs that featured black people when attempting to express extreme emotions.