Minstrelsy is the performance act of white actors painting their faces Black to portray caricatured and stereotypical versions of Black people. Performed on stages and in theatres, it was led by 1830s poor white Northern youth who wanted to rebel against the moral standards set by wealthy adults.
It was a rebellion because minstrels’ Black raunchy caricatures were seen as immoral. Since the performances showed raunchiness, they gave the viewers a sense of acceptance of raunchiness and, therefore, a sense of freedom. Poor white youth enjoyed this because they were taught by adults and the wealthy, moral standards to avoid it, even though raunchiness is a natural human trait.
However, these shows put all of the raunchiness in the white person wearing blackface. The white person wearing blackface was supposed to allude to a Black person. In these performances, the black figures existed to act tainted and “immoral”, and the white figures existed to act the exact opposite, pure and moral. This upholds the white supremacist idea of white people and Black people existing at opposite ends of a binary, with all of the positive traits existing in white people and all of the negative traits in Black people.
Due to its design, minstrelsy became an incredibly popular tool for white supremacists to disperse their ideas. It functioned to rid Northerners of their guilt in not doing enough to end slavery.
The Northeners felt free of their guilt because the caricatures portrayed Black people who were happy to be enslaved, and convinced Northeners that slavery benefited enslaved people and did not need to be abolished.
Later, once slavery was abolished, minstrelsy was used to create public panic about the morality of Black people and advocate for and justify legal segregation from them.
Minstrelsy’s original stage form died out as society changed, but white supremacy evolves to meet the needs of the time. Minstrelsy evolved into stereotypes of Black people in other entertainment, and presently, social media depicts a strikingly similar performance to minstrelsy.
Black social media influencers are individual people, yet they are often believed to be a representation of all Black people, like minstrels. This problem worsens with the culture around these influencers.
Although these performers are actual Black people, they are encouraged to act as caricatures. Influencers are harassed and abandoned when they do not fit into racist ideas of Black people, and when they do fit into them, they are rewarded with subscribers, money, and adoration from fans, social media algorithms, and media publications, swaying their actions.
These caricatures are often over-the-top, shocking, self-degrading, and anti-Black, as seen by popular creators Kai Cenat, iShowSpeed, and Quenlin Blackwell. The traits of being excessive and having shocking behavior are signs of white supremacy that want to portray Black people as unruly and immoral, and needing to be contained and saved by white supremacist values.
Due to the similarities between these influencers and stage minstrelsy, many have called this art digital minstrelsy and criticized the harm it has on both influencers and viewers.
For the influencers, it turns real Black people into a spectacle to be watched, into something to gasp over and laugh at, and encourages influencers to not be in touch with or portray their full humanity for fear of being degraded online or losing job opportunities
The anti-Black ideas that influencers say hurt them and their viewers. Anti-Black ideas are either said seriously or said with humor, and the humor ignores the harm of the idea and makes it seem unimportant, even though these ideas are harmful to all Black people and our well-being.
This also helps the goals of white supremacy. This conditions us to find “humor”, enjoyment, and pleasure in the degrading Blackness and Black people, making us more likely to degrade ourselves and others.
Presently, many people are talking about artificial intelligence (AI) minstrelsy, of AI being used to create white supremacist images of Black people. Now, technology can continue the work of white supremacy without white people in blackface or Black influencers at all. It is another worse step.
Stage minstrelsy has evolved to digital minstrelsy, and now there is AI minstrelsy. It keeps evolving with the times because it’s a cemented cultural norm. As people living in America, this is the entertainment legacy that we have inherited and become comfortable with. It is our responsibility to break it, for ourselves and for all generations.
It equates Blackness with unruliness and encourages people to degrade both of these qualities. This media, referred to as digital minstrelsy, encourages Black people to hold racist ideas at the expense of their self-esteem.
The audience is encouraged to laugh at these caricatures of Black people.
It forces them to only exemplify these traits of unruliness and anti-Blackness. This turns real people into spectacles for popularity and encourages them to lose touch with their full humanity. It affects the viewers as well.
Black people have few representations of ourselves, and we are forced to see Blackness degraded.