I wasn’t really shocked to see another ugly Twitter
trending topic about black women emerge Sunday night. #StopBlackGirls2013 isn’t
the first time I’ve seen Twitter become a web war zone littered with pieces of
black women’s mauled images scattered across its digital battlefield.
#StopBlackGirls2013 didn’t surprise me but it did
hurt. First, there was the photo of a gorilla leaning back with its hands on
its hips that made me gasp. Then I saw photos of grown black women’s bodies
placed next to animals and objects. Here's a Storify of some of the tweets.
But the photos of little black girls were really
disturbing. Girls sitting in classrooms, trying on clothes at stores and taking
selfies all got sucked into this ugly trending topic.
The #StopBlackGirls2013 Twitter trend seemed to
attempt to showcase perceived ignorance among black women and girls. But even
working at desks in classrooms, acting out the opposite of a stereotype,
these black girls couldn’t win.
#StopBlackGirls2013 hit me in the gut because I saw
it grow so fast and the women and girls seemed so familiar. Some of those
women’s bodies look like mine. A few of those little girls’ selfies remind me
of pictures my baby cousin takes of herself.
#StopBlackGirls2013 reminds me that black women’s
bodies aren’t valued and neither are the spirits that reside in them. Historic
stereotypes make it easy to reduce us to a funny photo that appears to be
meaningless. But there is meaning in these ugly images of black women that are
etched in the American psyche and continue to be recycled.
Twitter users also sent tweets using
#StopWhiteGirls2013, #StopIndianGirls2013 and #StopHispanicGirls2013. Those
were also sexist and degrading. People of all backgrounds sent all tweets,
including black folks.
But #StopBlackGirls2013 had a stronger and longer
Twitter life. At 8:30 p.m. I noticed it was the number five trending topic. It
was in second place 20 minutes later. #StopWhiteGirls2013 trended more than an
hour later at number six but it didn’t stay a top 10 Twitter topic for long.
The #StopBlackGirls2013 hashtag is part of
America’s historical legacy of objectifying and demeaning black women’s bodies
for sport and entertainment. Social media is just a new platform where it
happens and the technology allows stereotypes to amplify quickly.
Twitter especially often transforms into a cyber
combat zone where black women and girls are abruptly ambushed simply for
existing. On Twitter black women always seem to be under attack and troops
remain armed with an arsenal of stereotypes, memes and hashtags (such as
#GhettoBabyNames and #BlackBitches) ready to strike. Remember how Rachel Jeantel was attacked.
I felt the sting of the #StopBlackGirls2013 hashtag
more because just two days before I presented at the Gender, Race and
Representation in Magazines and New Media conference at Cornell University’s
Africana Studies and Research Center.
The keynote address from Kimberly
N. Foster, founder of the online community For Harriet,
reminded me of the ways that black women are using digital media to create
their own images.
Blogging by black women allows them to “defy those
codes of silence and break down those walls of shame,” Foster said. “This work
that black women are doing online is a reclamation of our power.”
Black women and others entered the
#StopBlackGirls2013 stream to disrupt the discourse and defend black women.
More disruption and reclamation are needed to #StopBlackGirls from being
the punchline.