This article addresses Black-as-performed on social media platforms through the examination of a platform-specific meme, “El Negro de WhatsApp”, within the context of Spain. Therefore, I argue that the seemingly playful and apparently benign ritualized engagements with “El Negro de WhatsApp,” combined with WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption, actively contribute to cement white framing of racialized others and has an impact on an already racist society. Internet memes are “the mediating mechanisms via which cultural practices are originated, adopted and (sometimes) retained within social networks”. What is critical to establish is that white people’s commodification of Black bodies through this meme, and WhatsApp mediation of these interactions through design and (lack of) governance, contribute to perpetuate white racism. Male genitalia in the meme has been blurred by the author). This is the most common bait-and-switch use of “El Negro de WhatsApp” meme (screengrabbed by author, September 2018. When a WhatsApp user clicks on the image to zoom in or to see it full screen on the phone, the image on the right appears.
On the left, there is a picture sent on a WhatsApp chat showing that someone has gone mushroom hunting. The meme taps into racist fantasies of hypersexualized Black bodies (hooks, 2004), with the exaggerated, photo-shopped large penis a sign of a subhuman otherness.įigure 1: “El Negro de WhatsApp”. Popular culture has stereotyped Black bodies for centuries, and this meme follows this long tradition of commodifying Blackness to please the white gaze (hooks, 1992). The meme involves the posting of a picture of any current topic that looks legitimate in preview, but when clicked on reveals a lurking image of a semi-naked Black man with disproportionate genitals, a turquoise towel around his neck, and a plaid hat on his head (see Figure 1). “El Negro de WhatsApp” is a platform-specific meme particularly popular amongst Spaniards and Latin-American WhatsApp users. The challenges of private, encrypted services for the normalization of racism
Popular culture, the commodification of Black bodies, and digital blackface The article concludes outlining the challenges of private, encrypted services if we are to dismantle ‘platformed racism’. Second, I argue that encrypted services like WhatsApp facilitate and amplify what Picca and Feagin (2007) refer to as the “backstage” of racism.
As a first step, the paper links “El Negro de WhatsApp” meme with the long racist tradition of commodifying Black bodies in American popular culture and beyond. Through the examination of a popular WhatsApp meme in Spain, I show how everyday socio-technical practices on this platform perpetuate power hierarchies based on race. This paper explores how structural racism encodes itself into social media. 'El Negro de WhatsApp' meme, digital blackface, and racism on social media
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