A Question of Anti-Blackness
So this is really meant as a question for us as non-Black Latinxs to ponder upon. If we were to go through our posting histories in our respective social media accounts, how many times have we used the imagery of Black people to express something personal about ourselves?
There is no question that historically in the U.S. sociocultural and economic landscape, the bodies and faces of Black people have been commodified and used as political and commercial tools, in everything from selling soap to use in propaganda. So it’s surprising that in this era of overwhelming information on social media that memes with the imagery of Black people continue to be used to convey a wide variety of messages.
But have we as non-Black Latinxs ever stopped to think why use habitually post memes with Black people’s faces to convey our own emotions, thoughts, ideas? How complicit are we in this culture of commodification?