The Ballad of The Blackfish
I wonder, I really do, about why black bodies are of such concern to white folks. The lust they attach to them or the thirst to reside within them seems ever-present. The horrid nature of the white psyche, a nature that all but forces them to see another consciousness as less-than while in every way coveting the body that houses it, still perplexes me. There is no physical body simultaneously under more scrutiny while at the same time the victim of more envy than the black body; specifically, the body of the black woman.
As Jordan Peele’s Get Out theory would suggest, the uses, mysteries, wonders, and sensual dangers of the black body are seemingly endless to the white subject. Their brutal imaginations, therefore, can not be satiated by simply inflicting violence, sexual predation, subjugation, or oppression on black people. Like some body-snatching alien or impalpable ghoul, the lust of the white subject is nothing short of a wraith; it seeks to inhabit, if not outright posses, the black subject. Relegated to some tangible form of afterlife, white subjects cling to and find life in the idea of the black body. Perhaps then it is envy that drives the white oppressor to such lengths as to blackface and, now, to blackfish.
Please do not confuse my use of envy with your understanding of jealousy. Jealousy is the want to have what someone else has. I do not think that white folks want what black people have. No, I think they are envious of what black people have. Envy, here, is used to mean the want to have what someone else has because you think they are not deserving of it. That you are entitled to their beauty, power, intellect, culture, or outright glory because somehow you, alone, are better suited for it. Because you, alone, are better. That is what I think white people feel towards their black peers.
Blackface is thus quickly understood. Rather than wanting simply to belittle black people, somehow the envy of the white subject prompts them to put on blackness. To try their best to imitate and, albeit through gross misrepresentation, regurgitate what they understand as blackness. The white subject is therefore like a boy who secretly wears his mother’s makeup or dresses in her all too revealing nightgowns, curiosity leading him to try his best to embody the experience of a different body. Curious about what it is like to be the woman he admires now, but all too soon will grow to tyrannize. The same curiosity and expression of inner desire that guides him, finds its more sinister form in blackfacing.
What does that say of blackfishing, however? The common practice, typically by females of European descent (white), of using artificial tanning and makeup to manipulate their features to appear to be of African Ancestry (black). What of these women, the most notable of whom are social media stars? What does it mean when a white young woman can give a makeup tutorial instructing her impressionable young followers to look as black as possible? To wear as much pseudo-blackness as they can before being found out?
They too are insidiously possessed by the same devil that Al Jolson bargained with, likewise exchanging their souls for fame. The real cost, however, being paid by groups who cannot step out of their black bodies. Who live every day in the existential joy and mortal terror of those bodies. The coloniality of power and the clout of the color line are thus grotesquely intertwined. Yet, the ratio is not one to one. While the proximity to whiteness grants power in society, being undisputably white (especially for the white man) grants supreme power. On the other hand, while proximity to blackness grants power in society, being undisputably black (especially for the black woman) is the lowest of all stations.
This system privileges white people who look black, or white artists that sound black, or even white people that act black. The controversy of Elvis should serve as example enough. Hell, even Taylor Swift and Madonna have tried their hand at rapping. All of which seeks to take black culture and the black visage and set it on a pedestal, while paradoxically eliminating black people from the equation.
I was asked recently by an academic if I thought blackfishing was cultural appropriation. As a matter of fact, he punctuated his inquiry by reminding me that the dictionary definition of appropriation is the taking of another culture ultimately for profit. Furthermore, he was eager to get my take on a defense of one such perpetrator, “You all should really be ashamed for sending Emma Hallberg so much hate. That girl felt the need to explain herself when I could look at her & tell it wasn’t cultural appropriation. Maybe your approach should have been different & from a point of curiosity and not assumption.” When he said this, I chuckled. My response? “Funny. I thought it was Ms. Hallberg who was assuming. Assuming blackface. Do you think she was just curious? Even if she was just curious, even if Al Jolson was just curious, is it okay then?”
In all fairness though, I don’t fully disagree with that particular supporter. I too could look and tell you that wasn’t cultural appropriation. Like one Ms. Dolezal before her, Ms. Hallberg, and many of her fellow self proclaimed Instagram models, did profit from their visible proximity to blackness. That I cannot dispute. I cannot dispute that they appropriated either. The beauty of the black woman was bottled and sold to and by them for whatever nefarious ends they saw fit. But this is not culture. By that I mean, to say some look or some hairstyle or manner of dress is our culture is to diminish all that we are to only that which is visible.
Blackface is wrong. Blackfishing is wrong. It is inappropriate. It is appropriation. But it’s an appropriation of racial iconography, largely stereotypical iconography. The traditions by which black people dress or the legacy passed down from foremother to mother as she teaches her daughter how to manage her curls cannot and will not be claimed by a social media model. Not a white one using makeup tutorials to subtly write black women out of their own narrative and accept sponsorships meant for them. Furthermore, black culture is so much more than what is visible. It’s so much more than even that which is audible. Our literature, art, science, exploration, music, film, dance, food, all of it is rich. So rich its impossible to fully steal. And not for lack of trying either.
In a world dominated by a porcelain zeitgeist, it’s hard to acknowledge the spirit that inhabits the black consciousness. African Diasporic people, black people, have forged their own destinies, carried their own torches, bore their own crosses. And quite frankly, I’ll be damned if I give Ms. Hallberg the credit to appropriate all of that. To steal all of that. So, to answer my colleague’s question, I would never give a blackfish the credit to claim they are appropriating culture.
