Digital Blackface: Adultification of Black Children in Memes and Children’s Books
Abstract
:What shall I tell my children who are BlackOf what it means to be a captive in this dark skin?What shall I tell my dear one, fruit of my womb.Of how beautiful they are when everywhere they turnThey are faced with abhorrence of everything that is Black?Margaret Burroughs, “What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black (Reflections of an African American Mother)” (Burroughs 1963)
1. Black Children and Anti-Blackness
While our essay is not a history of internet racism, we recognize unmistakable connections with early US children’s books. Our contention is that a certain genre of Black visualization in memes engages Black children in adult politics, reinforcing the same problematic messages that plagued early children’s books written primarily by non-Black authors invested in creating and sustaining the illusion of white superiority. This online adultification of Black children in memes extends the tenants of systemic racism that deny Black children—and by extension, Black people and entire Black communities—justice and humanity.Despite original projections that the Internet would provide a safe space for individuals belonging to marginalized groups, racial prejudice and discrimination persists online…. Internet memes are a popular and pervasive phenomenon that may contribute to the climate of racial discrimination that can exist in online communities. Internet memes are individual bits of cultural information… that are widely shared electronically. Although Internet memes are often intended to be social commentaries, they can be racist in nature. (Williams 2016)
The mammy, the pickaninny, the coon, the Sambo, the Uncle. Well into the middle of the twentieth century, these were some of the most popular depictions of Black America…. These were the images that decorated our homes, that served and amused and made us laugh. Taken for granted, they worked their way into the mainstream of American life. Of ethnic caricatures in America, these have been the most enduring. Today, there’s little doubt that they shaped the most gut-level feelings about race.
As a “New Jim Code,” children and adults fall prey to creators’ seemingly unending ways to keep Black people in their places of social subservience.an overt simultaneously private and public anti-blackness wherein technologies often hide, speed up, and even deepen discrimination, while appearing to be neutral or benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. This set of practices … en-compasses a range of discriminatory designs–some that explicitly work to amplify hierarchies, many that ignore and thus replicate social divisions, and a number that aim to fix racial bias but end up doing the opposite. (Benjamin 2019, p. 8)
Recovery rests at the heart of Black studies, as a scholarly tradition that seeks to restore the humanity of black people lost and stolen through systemic global racialization. It follows, then, that the project of recovering lost historical and literary texts should be foundational to the black digital humanities. It is a deeply political enterprise that seeks not simply to transform literary canons and historiography by incorporating black voices and centering an African American and African diasporic experience, though it certainly does that; black digital humanities troubles the very core of what we have come to know as the humanities by recovering alternate constructions of humanity that have been historically excluded from that concept. (Gallon 2016, p. 44)
2. No Innocence for Black Children
Including memes that present both pre-teens and teenagers in our exercise underscores the fact of Black dehumanization and adultification from which no Black child is exempt. Considering teens also highlights that Black children are rarely allowed to exist in a world that does not make them victims of systemic racism and adultification. Anissa Durham explains this particular adult bias that other adults create and perpetuate:In the 1920s and 1930s, children’s books seemed to foster prejudice by planting false images in the minds of children. Most authors were white. With little knowledge about black life, and yet they wrote as if they were authorities. No wonder it was an accepted fact in children’s books that blacks were lazy, shiftless, lived in shanties, had nothing and wanted nothing, sang and laughed all day…. Consequently, few children knew that blacks lived just as other people lived, having the same aspirations and hopes. (Baker 1975)
Durham’s definition contextualizes these memes and children’s books as adult spaces wherein Black childhood as a social construct is denied even a semblance of the illusory innocence and purity of white children who are socially valued and worthy of adult protection and attention.Adultification bias is a stereotype based on the ways in which adults perceive children and their childlike behavior. It’s rooted in anti-Black racism that goes back to chattel slavery—as enslaved Black children were used for their labor, often working in the field with no recreation or means of gaining an education. This stereotype often treats Black children like they do not deserve to play. They need less nurturing, protection, support, and comfort. (Durham 2022)
Black girls are also perceived and treated as being less innocent than white girls, as Monique Morris notes:Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent. (Goff et al. 2014)
Childhood innocence, then, is a privilege and luxury not afforded Black children in the same way that white children inhabit this ubiquitous, safe, and elevated social, political, and cultural space. For Black children, violence is normalized and pervasive, past and present, physical or representational.The assignment of more adult-like characteristics to the expressions of young Black girls is a form of age compression. Along this truncated age continuum, Black girls are likened more to adults than to children and are treated as if they are willfully engaging in behaviors typically expected of Black women. This compression strip[s] Black girls of their childhood freedoms [and] renders Black girlhood interchangeable with Black womanhood. The lack of protection and innocence leads to the criminalizing of Black children and making it impossible for Black children to make mistakes without severe consequences.
3. Children’s Books and Memes
3.1. “Did I Do That?”: Urkel and Epaminondas
In keeping with the prevailing stereotypes of the late nineteenth century, Kemble’s blacks are portrayed as nappy-headed, saucer-eyes, broad-nosed, thick-lipped, grinning, ragged subhumans whose misfortunes were an unending source of humor for whites….Kemble’s crude parody of black dialect creates the illusion of a black narrative voice caught up in a pathetic display of self-mockery. The visual images and the verses convey a powerful message about the way whites perceived blacks at the turn of the century. (Holt 1986, pp. 307–9)
From the Scottsboro Boys, who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women, to the “Exonerated Five” to Christopher Cooper, the man a white woman falsely told police had threatened her life in May, Black and brown men in America have continued to be perceived as dangerous, violent, and hypersexual. The harmful and racist stereotypes of Black men as predators has contributed to Black men being incarcerated at higher rates and to wrongful conviction. (Selby 2020)
Their most explosive argument is a blunt declaration that blacks as a group are intellectually inferior to whites…. Murray and Hernstein say the evidence of a black-white IQ gap is overwhelming. They think the difference helps explain why many blacks seem destined to remain mired in poverty, and they insist that whites and blacks alike must face up to the reality of black intellectual disadvantage. (Morganthau 1994, p. 53)
That white adults label this Black child here as difficult shows how adults across the racial spectrum adultify Black children.I went through all of my schooling without being diagnosed with ADHD; no one picked up on it. All my teachers just assumed I was being defiant, and my impulsive outbursts were seen as me being rude. They associated my behavior as a child with words you would use to describe an adult—they saw me as calculating and disrespectful, not just a young child struggling. They never gave me any grace as a child. (Mohdin 2022)
A Black child’s being talked to by adults in this way underscores the white patriarchal threat that shadowed all Black males—children and adults—for any real, suspected, or even fabricated racial transgression. Upon finding Till’s dead body, Sheriff H.C. Strider recounts this inherent Black male child adultification: “The body we took from the river looked more like that of a grown man instead of a young boy” (Famous Trials). The lack of childhood innocence denied Black children correlates to real-world violence toward Black children, as in the cases of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Alexander McClay Williams1, George Stinney2, and so many others.The men searched the occupied beds looking for Till. Coming to Till’s bed, Milam shined a flashlight in the boy’s face and asked, “You the n***ah that did the talking down at Money?” When Till answered, “Yeah,” Milam said, “Don’t say “yeah” to me, n***ah. I’ll blow your head off. Get your clothes on.” (Famous Trials)
3.2. No Tears for “Crying Black Girl” and Pinky Marie
A non-Black person fascinated with Black culture and Othering it by calling it “loud” and “weird” and then making a digital blackface profile engages in misogynoir, a specific humanity-denying sexism specifically towards Black women and girls.When I created Wanda, … I was living in northeast Washington DC, AKA ‘Chocolate City.’ I was surrounded by black culture at the time. I loved it and I miss it …. There is such a thing as black culture. It exists. And it’s great because it’s honest and loud and proud and it’s got character and funkiness and weirdness and backbone. (Jones 2020)
Graham is more interested in the joke of Pinky Marie’s pain and adultification by forcing her, at least visually, into a one-dimensional stereotypical mammy role. The source of the humor, then, is having a Black girl experience a traumatic event, denying her the ability to act out her emotions and connecting her with adulthood. The lack of care for the pain and emotions that the Black girl is experiencing in the meme and this children’s book is itself a form of anti-Black violence. Rebecca Epstein explains this common adultification of Black girls:The narrative’s solution to this trauma is to give Pinky Marie a bandanna to wear, making her a younger embodiment of her Mammy mother: her Pappy “pulled out his big red-and-blue-and-green hanky and tied it around Pinky Marie’s scrumbled-scrambled, kinky, wooly head just like Mrs. Washington Jefferson Jackson tied hers. And then he said, ‘There you is, honey. You looks fine again’” (n.p.). The adult “father” birds’ violently forcing this young girl into womanhood is similar to the many narratives of the sexual and other types of “adultification” of Black girls in contemporary times. (Lester 2022)
Casting Black girls into adult situations means that they are not granted the grace of presumed childhood innocence that white children and white people inherently and automatically receive. In these instances, adult creators and adult audiences turn a Black girl child’s pain and suffering into a spectacle for adult entertainment and amusement.Beginning as early as 5 years of age, Black girls were more likely to be viewed as behaving and seeming older than their stated age; more knowledgeable about adult topics, including sex; and more likely to take on adult roles and responsibilities than what would have been expected for their age. (Epstein et al. 2017)
The comedic content of both this meme and picture book denies Black children a full range of emotions by ignoring them altogether or making light of their pain. This one-dimensional blurred minstrelsy mammy/pickaninny image appears across multiple anti-Blackness children’s texts, among them Pickaninnies Little Redskins (1910), wherein the rhyme asks: “Mammy, mammy, I love you so,/What shall I do when I shall grow,/Too big, this tired head to rest/In slumber on they kindly breast?” A later page shows two Black children in a kitchen anxiously waiting: “On a griddle mammy bakes” (np). Thus, the cycle of societal and historical subservience for Black women and Black girls continues this minstrel interconnected representation between mother and young daughter.The Internet is one of the few sites where racist humor can be accessed and shared without being censored…. [Internet memes can provide] a critical understanding of how race matters, how racism works, and how issues around race and racism affect people’s lives …. Even if the intention of these memes is satirical, they function to create a space where people can mock and ridicule people of color. Furthermore, racial and ethnic humor should not be discussed in terms of the speaker’s intentions, but with regard to its impact on people of color and the whole society. (Yoon 2016, pp. 93–94, 109)
3.3. “African Kids Dancing” and Ten Little N***er Children
This combination of smiling, dancing, and bug-eyeing is a visual minstrel performance in this meme. The imagery of dancing Black children is also part of the quaint appeal of the children’s book Kinky Kids (1908), wherein the Black children dance much like the Black adults who are footloose and fancy-free with not a care in the world: “Way down South in the land of cotton/… That’s where the little darkie children/Play all day in the sun;/Dancing, singing, eating, sleeping, My! But they do have fun” (np). Again, these images intersect with the historically racist stereotypes of Black adults as simple, close-to-nature, animalistic, irresponsible, and prone to little more than watermelon eating and being controlled by their carnal pleasures and self-gratification (Figure 3).Picaninny [children] … have big, wide eyes, and oversized mouths—ostensibly to accommodate huge pieces of watermelon. The picaninny caricature shows black children as either poorly dressed, wearing ragged, torn, old and oversized clothes, or, and worse, they are shown as nude or near-nude. This nudity suggests that black children, and by extension black parents, are not concerned with modesty. The nudity also implies that black parents neglect their children. A loving parent would provide clothing. The nudity of black children suggests that black people are less civilized than whites (who wear clothes). The nudity is also problematic because it sexualizes these children. Black children are shown with exposed genitalia and buttocks—often without apparent shame. (Pilgrim 2000)
The digital commodity is humor at the expense of Black children’s complicated lives and experiences. As such, this meme furthers the adultification of Black children.On many occasions photographs and videos of Black people, sometimes in distress, have been used as part of the creation of a Graphics Interchange Format (GIF). These GIFs are commonly intended to be humorous but may be used in ways that involve complete disregard of the original context in which such Black people are depicted and indicate much disinterest in their possible upset in response to images of them being remixed in this way. Such digital activity can involve a Black person’s mannerisms, facial expressions, image, and overall humanity being treated as though it is nothing more than a mere digital commodity and means to communicate online. (Sobande 2021)
Six little n***er girls/ Playing near a hive,/ A honey-bee stings one/ And then there are five./… Four little n***er girls/ Taking their tea,/ A bird flies away one/And then there are three./ Three little n***er girls,/ Went to the Zoo,/ The polar bear hugs one/ And then there are two./ Two little n***er girls/ Paddling in the sun,/ A big fish feels hungry/ And so there is one. (Case 1957, pp. 42–48)
4. Not Allowing Black Children to Be Children
Internet memes on racism should be investigated as a site of ideological reproduction. Popular discourse including humor is an ideal lens through which to examine how everyday interaction and social dynamics are influenced by ideology and the social structure. … Internet memes impact people on the macro level in that they shape people’s mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions, despite that they are spread on a micro basis. (Yoon 2016, pp. 93, 96)
Hence, these books and digitization make it easier and more palatable to practice, perpetuate, and sustain global anti-Black bias manifested in racial discrimination and continued social injustice.Digitally, internet memes are widely used rhetorical vehicles, reaching large and broad audiences. The roles these artifacts play in the reproduction and transmission of racist ideology is often obfuscated by the perception that internet memes are “just jokes”. …Memes act as mechanisms through which culture in its various forms is produced, disseminated, and reproduced. Digital spaces often function as mechanisms through which the culture of society at large is reproduced resulting in a digital world that mirrors the oppressions of the real world. Digital social platforms create new spaces and methods for discussions where the stereotypes and racial biases of the physical world are often reified, an issue that may potentially be exacerbated as the divide between our digital and corporeal identities grows thinner. (Fairchild 2020, pp. 2–3)
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | See Maryclaire Dale’s story of the exonerated 16-year-old Alexander McClay Williams, the youngest person in Philadelphia executed in 1931 for allegedly stabbing to death a white woman (Dale 2024). |
2 | Fourteen-year-old George Stinney, Jr. was executed in South Carolina, allegedly for killing two young white girls in 1944. See (Fourteen-Year-Old George Stinney Executed in South Carolina n.d.). |
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Farrior, C.; Lester, N.A. Digital Blackface: Adultification of Black Children in Memes and Children’s Books. Humanities 2024, 13, 91. https://doi.org/10.3390/h13040091
Farrior C, Lester NA. Digital Blackface: Adultification of Black Children in Memes and Children’s Books. Humanities. 2024; 13(4):91. https://doi.org/10.3390/h13040091
Chicago/Turabian StyleFarrior, Christian, and Neal A. Lester. 2024. "Digital Blackface: Adultification of Black Children in Memes and Children’s Books" Humanities 13, no. 4: 91. https://doi.org/10.3390/h13040091