Source: Eva-Katalin / Getty
Blackfishing is a thing. For those who are unfamiliar, it’s when White girls or women make themselves appear darker or Black in order to garner attention and even fame for themselves. See Instagram influencer Emma Hallberg and perhaps the most famous blackfisher of all time, Kim Kardashian. And most recently, there was an incident involving an annoying girl y’all made a celebrity by supporting her rap career. I considered writing about her for MadameNoire but decided she didn’t need any more publicity.
But there are people who could stand to learn a lesson about Blackfishing and racism in general. Plus, it would behoove us to keep up with all the ways people seek to disenfranchise Black folks.
So here we go.
Tik Tok is an application dominated, like much of social media, by Black people. People dance and perform skits to Black music, by Black artists. The challenge videos and popular themes have been created by Black young adults. What would it be without us? The answer is: not poppin’.
Still, we can’t even get the respect of not having our looks for a trend or popularity. The idea of making yourself look Black only to “take it off” later is a luxury Black people, who are demonized for those very same features, do not have.
Yet, this Tik Toker did it. And when she was called out by a Black person, her true colors emerged.
The controversy began when a White girl, in darker makeup, danced to a song with lyrics like, “Brown skin, pretty brown eyes.”
An actual Black girl called her out for failing to fit the criteria and said that Tik Tok should remove her video.
Of course, they weren’t willing to do that.
But the girl in the video responded. And it was nothing nice.
“This is for the Black thing that started on me earlier. So if you’re not her, keep scrolling. Now, I feel like this needs to be said because you’ve said what you wanted to say to me. So I’m going to say it to you now. You’ve got some cheek talking about me when you’re wearing clothes like this. You look like you’re wearing your father’s jeans. That’s if you have a father because he’s probably still at the shop getting ‘milk.’
The state of your hair. Serious? Sort it out.
You look like you’ve been drug through a bush backwards, love. And you’ve got the audacity to say stuff about me on a Tik Tok that I posted. Saying, ‘I don’t know what color I am.’ I know what color I am and I prefer to be this color than yours. And at least with my fake tan my color washes off but your color ain’t coming off. So get back to the cotton fields and go make me another t-shirt.”
Then baby girl included a picture of slaves getting whipped.
You can watch it all below.
Truly trash behavior.
I guess, this young White girl didn’t recognize that what she posted on the internet would stay there for the entire world to see.
And they did.
It wasn’t long before people learned her name, Lacey, the name of her school, and the school’s Twitter account.
They began petitioning the school to enact some type of punishment against her.
Eventually, the school responded saying they had been made aware of the video and were appalled by the things Lacey said in it.
Eventually, they reported Lacey to the police.
Who knows what will come of this. But hopefully, she and the White girls and women like her do the same. We’re tired.
