Black culture and ‘internet slang’
The internet is becoming a main actor in the hybridization of culture worldwide. We have never been able to share ideas and connect across borders in this form: instant and easy. However, with this intensified worldliness comes issues with cultural appropriation. Cultural artifacts are misused and misrepresented all across the globe, all because someone saw it online and thought it was cool. This is prevalent in the discussions surrounding the appropriation of Black culture on social media.
Have you ever noticed that a lot of people use a certain voice or specific mannerisms when trying to be funny? There’s nothing wrong with a little dramatization for effect, but the problem lies in when these actions appropriate and bastardize the culture of a marginalized group. For a lot of non-Black people, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and other Black dialects are synonymous with ‘internet slang’. You see Black people tweeting, using words you’ve never heard before, and you think it’s the norm for online etiquette. This is the problem with the hybridization of internet culture. People fail to realize that Black people talk like that in real life, and it’s not just a funny internet persona; they get called unintelligent and unprofessional for speaking that way. This is an example of how the context of cultural items is lost in internet spaces. Non-Black people will then go on to turn AAVE into a joke and get tired of it after a while, never understanding the meaning behind their words nor the intricacies of the dialects they appropriate. This further marginalizes Black people. The racist undertones of this type of behavior is not lost on us. To me, it feels like people put on a mask online, using Black dialects to look cool, and then take it off when they log out, never experiencing the struggles of actually being Black. I’ve heard people describe this phenomenon as ‘digital blackface’ or ‘digital minstrelsy’. This shows how the impact of hybridization and appropriation on the internet has the power to isolate people, even in our growing interconnectedness.











