Social media has given a powerful voice to people of color, complementing an often one-dimensional mainstream when it comes to representing controversial racial issues.
Specifically, African-American users on Twitter have become a particularly powerful force. Termed “Black Twitter” (or #BlackTwitter), this networked group of users has emerged as the 21st century extension of our barbershops, salons, college campuses, and church socials.
In this virtual space, issues such as feminism, race and politics are disseminated and dissected with the abandon often reserved for live conversations on topics about which many blacks are passionate.
What is “Black Twitter”?
Black Twitter has grown in influence and popularity recently, coming into its own just as the black blogosphere has risen into prominence as an alternative to the traditional press. Denizens of the Black Twittersphere include activists who seamlessly interact with widely recognized media personalities, popular bloggers with large followings, and everyday people.
This mysterious sub-culture to many mainstream Twitter users can be a gift and a curse.
Political analyst and author Goldie Taylor, who is arguably a Black Twitter star, opines that it is problematic and powerful in its scope.
“One first has to understand that one in four Twitter users is African-American,” shares Taylor. “Such a platform, including the ability to cloak one’s self in anonymity, affords space for both the profound and the pathetic. I am always a bit bemused with #BlackTwitter. As with any other digital segment, #BlackTwitter can be profound, pathetic and even profoundly pathetic.”
Black Twitter brings power to the people
Yes, people use this web of interconnected African-Americans to engage in loads of celebrity gossip, among other frivolities.
Yet, even with the negativity sometimes witnessed on this broad platform, #BlackTwitter has also been a virtual political tool for an intelligent and eclectic group of thought leaders.
These Black Twitter power users are changing how race and privilege are perceived and re-examined.
Never has this been more obvious than in the last month, as accusations of “black privilege” spread like wildfire through the Twittersphere, sparked by a Tumblr blog entitled “This Is Black Privilege.”
The #BlackPrivilege backlash
In late April, the blog, written by a young white woman, was introduced to the micro-blogging network otherwise known as Twitter.
The backlash from Black Twitter was sharp and instantaneous.
Although it might have drawn emotional picket lines in the real world of the ’90s, the assertion that something dubbed “black privilege” could trump ever-present white privilege was met with dripping with irony and bitter humor on social media.
Black Twitter transformed into a bully pulpit through the use of the #BlackPrivilege hashtag. A hashtag on Twitter — a word or phrase without spaces following a “pound” or number sign — can be used to connect tweets between users who may have nothing in common but the desire to weigh in on the idea the hashtag represents.
The #BlackPrivilege hashtag on Black Twitter became a beacon, like a flag during a revolution, drawing all verbal fighters to a battle against the idea that some whites are suffering, as the Tumblr creator believes, under conditions created by blacks getting “too much.”
The ironic privileges of being black
The #BlackPrivilege hashtag emerged with poignant ferocity, tackling the wide-ranging stereotypes that define the racial landscape that often comes with being black in America. Ripe with scathing satire, one Twitter user described his “black privilege” as always having the sidewalk to himself because people are afraid he’s going to rob them. Another described her “black privilege” as having to carefully choose her child’s name so it won’t be negatively profiled later in life.
From the “extra” criminal profiling, to the belief that to be intelligent is to be the exception among blacks, the allegedly oppressive “gifts” enumerated as #BlackPrivilege trended (meaning “garnered attention and participants”) provided a hilarious, heartbreaking, frightening glimpse into the daily lives of some African-Americans.
For many observers, myself included, the invisible lashes that blacks endure that each tweet described became increasingly painful to endure and brought tears to the eyes.
Was #BlackPrivilege racist?
“The irony here is that some of those same people would call the very creation of such a [hashtag] ‘racist’, ‘exclusionary’, or even proof that #BlackPrivilege exists,” Taylor says of those who believe in the concept. “In so many ways, it does exist. I unconsciously exert any number of privileges on the daily. But whatever corner of privilege I may have carved out for myself takes a backseat to my white counterpart most of the time. And even then, all of my privilege is accessible to them. The converse simply is not true.”
Taylor challenges privileged white Americans to select one era, indeed, one hour, where they would choose to be black if they could.
“As a nation, we’ve always felt the presence of — even if we did not wholly understand — white privilege,” says Taylor. “But nothing, I mean nothing, underscores its prevalence quite like #Whitesplaining. An old phenomenon reborn in the age of Twitter, a group comprised mostly of white liberals have come to believe that it is their duty to explain racism to the rest of us.”
This may be been the idea behind, the This is Black Privilege blog, an example of a recent vocal movement among some whites who think they are being left behind socially because they are not black, gay, or otherwise a minority.
“This sort of patriarchal approach has been met with strong backlash,” Taylor says of Black Twitter’s backlash. “But no response could have been more profound – and tragically comedic – than #BlackPrivilege.”
Black Twitter as political tool
In an enlightening lecture on white privilege, anti-racist essayist and author Tim Wise explained that, “Privilege affects both those who have it and those who do not… white privilege generates anxiety among advantaged white people because they are constantly afraid of others gaining on them.”
As the fear that Wise described continues to manifest itself in arguably racist blogs and throughout social media — or even in the #Whitesplaining that claims black people are getting over — Black Twitter will undoubtedly remain an effective tool to combat the perpetuation of racial stereotypes. In a nation where white privilege is being dismantled slowly but surely, perhaps this privilege is witnessing its last gasp of supremacy and the dawning of a truly equitable and equal society.
Perhaps.
But one thing is for certain: with Black Twitter serving as the fluid and indelible cultural footprint of a generation, the rise of the #BlackPrivilege hashtag will be remembered as the day that some Americans online were forced to recognize the treacherous terrain many black Americans must walk — and the resilience in our collective response.
Follow Kirsten West Savali on Twitter at @KWestSavali.