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How Memes Contribute to Struggle of Racial Equity

ABSTRACT

Although more obvious manifestations of racism have decreased, racial bias is still subtly

evident. For example, in its face-to-face experiences and online environments, people of Color

encounter racist micro-aggression (e.g., subtle slights or "put-downs." This study investigates

whether subtle racial discrimination online, especially racial Internet memes, may affect the

interpretation of online material. Results suggest that while both People of Color and Whites

consider that racial thread memoirs are more offensive than non-racial thread memories (check

pictures), past segregation has projected racial thread memorandums for People of Color; racial

themes memorandums are classified as more offensive if they report more racial micro-

aggressions in daily settings. For non-racial thematic memoirs or White subjects, the same series

of effects did not arise[ CITATION Wil20 \l 1033 ]. Findings provide initial proof that racial

micro-aggressions can contribute to persons from ethnic minority groups becoming more likely

to perceive online racial discrimination. This report discusses how memes have contributed to

the struggle for racial equity.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................................1

TABLE OF CONTENTS..........................................................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3

ACTIVIST AND POLITICAL MEMES.................................................................................................4

METHODOLOGY....................................................................................................................................5

PRESENTATION......................................................................................................................................6

Figure 1...................................................................................................................................................6

RESULTS...................................................................................................................................................6

CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................8

REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................10
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INTRODUCTION

While the Internet was originally projected to offer safe spaces for disadvantaged

communities, there remain online ethnic prejudice and discrimination. In the United States, 51%

of African Americans and 54% of Hispanic internet consumers have suffered online abuse,

relative to 34% of whites. Internet memories are a common and ubiquitous phenomenon that

may lead to the atmosphere of online racial discrimination. Internet notices are single sections of

cultural content, such as an electronically shared picture with a subtitle. Though Internet reports

are mostly meant to be satirical social reviews, they can be discriminatory in nature[ CITATION

Bre17 \l 1033 ]. Despite their popularity, the variables affecting the perception of internet

monographs are little understood. The thesis explores how personal variations in experience

racial discrimination of the line (in face-to-face interactions) can affect experiences of racially

subjected Internet pictures to bridge this divide and better grasp the understanding of racial

discrimination in online environments.

In the summer of 2020, Black lives were seen to be unable to survive in the USA. Since

Black people, they were given the freedom to survive past 2020 by Ahmaud Arbery, George

Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks. For each fresh murder, Black people face a feeling of

impotence and the knowledge that white police officers and bystanders will still destroy them

(Greer). White and dangerous supremacy has shown that Post-Race America is an error.

White citizens are now accustomed to the hegemonic white dominance of institutional

control. White citizens leverage their power and influence to ensure that Black people stick to

white concepts of civility by subtle incidents of White Supremacy, such as calling the coppers on

a picnic at a Black family in a public park. White Women use (or try to use) police force, in
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particular, to prosecute Black people for messing with their welfare and public domination

(Breheny). I propose in this article that Whites participate in extralegal patrolling, surveillance,

and intimidation of Black organizations in public areas to uphold white-nationalistic law and

order principles. Becky and Karen's memes reflect a widespread outcry against police. These

memes generate counter-narratives that subvert White supremacy behaviour and demand

restitution for ethnic harassment and illegal actions.

Christian Cooper, a Black male, was threatened with police brutality in Central Park in

May of 2020. Amy Cooper, a.k.a. "Central Park Karen," was enraged after being confronted

about breaking a pet leash code and retaliating by threatening to call the cops. She said, "I'm

taking a photo and calling the police..." when utilizing her White supremacy to guarantee a Black

man complied with her wishes[ CITATION Hag20 \l 1033 ]. I'm trying to inform them that an

African American man is posing a danger to my life". While Christian Cooper did not pose a

danger to her safety, The disappointment is founded on coded layers of ties of ethnicity.

The centuries of racial fears which white people depict at that time as vulnerable to the

ferocious, oversexualized Black man were used by Amy Cooper. White women must at all

expense be protected, even though it requires a Black male, according to the ordinary racialist

stereotypes[ CITATION Bre17 \l 1033 ]. Under our present political and historical era, the risk

that such a challenge entails—calling the cops and reporting a Black man as a threat to one's life

—can not be overstated. Nonetheless, the number of complaints to the police about Black people

breaking "orders" unfamiliar to most of society is increasing.

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ACTIVIST AND POLITICAL MEMES

Activist and political memes research varies depending on how activism and politics are

defined. However, some consensus activists memes are an element of participatory modern

media culture that, according to the concept of memes, intervenes and responds to traditional

media culture as "a medium by which the citizens will respond in the direction of democratic or

more profoundly entrenched reactionary attitudes." Alternative narratives, modern meaning,

party groupings, and manipulating popular movements have also been illustrated through

political and protester memes[ CITATION Phi17 \l 1033 ]. During the Gezi Park protests,

Turkish teenagers developed protest art memes that increased civic literacy and helped express

oppressed political viewpoints.

Memes often engage in boundary work, which involves the performance and negotiation

of culturally relevant standards and values found in daily photographs. For example, during

Occupy Wallstreet, the Pepper Spray Cop meme went viral, revealing competing myths about

the American Dream[ CITATION Bre17 \l 1033 ]. Similarly, memes portraying Vladimir Putin

as a gay symbol act as a criticism of Putin as well as a proponent of gay rights in the Russian

Federation

METHODOLOGY

I have collected tweets and reports on the #Blacklivesmatter campaign from the 4th of

July to the 6th of March 2019. Almost all fresh reports of the event were already made on 29

April 2018, while the initial occurrence of BBQ Becky (Jennifer Schulte) occurred. The BBQ

Becky corpus (n=15,321) includes retroactively collected new memes and memes. Data from 14

more racialized instances were also collected from this report on 4 July 2018 (n=38,487). The

total amount of tweets sent was 89,059, but the BBQ Becky corpus is focused on this study. I
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spent an additional 15 months engaging in the Becky distribution analysis after the original

period of the data collection on Twitter and later in Karen (Hagh). I believe that the tweets that

are being investigated fall into the digital public domain, in which the content for debate is

circulated. I pursue the footsteps of scientists who view Twitter as a site for ethnographic

research and the reading of human memoirs. This subset of tweets, I contend, reflects a rare

counter-public in that the vast majority of its consumers are not members of the prevalent,

popular internet community.

PRESENTATION

Figure 1

Under the broader framework that I discussed above, my study yielded three themes:

Beckys and Karens follow a cultural, White nationalist logic that allows for the policing of Black

bodies. As a result, Black Twitter users draw exposure to and subvert this overarching societal

influence by generating memes that criticize White nationalist attitudes and agendas. BBQ

Becky memes propagate a countercultural logic that emphasizes the absurdity of the continuous

surveillance and criminalization of Black bodies. (1) Everyday Policing of

Blackness/Disciplining of the Docile Body; (2) Historical Connections to White Supremacy and
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White Surveillance; and (3) White Tears Weaponized appeared as common themes around the

three major subject clusters (race, White, and police).

RESULTS

In the era of racial and aggressive police, Black bodies are being transformed in the

immediate danger of brutality inextricably associated with White people. Explicitly, white

brutality is a punitive power and this disciplinary force on docile Black bodies is redeveloped as

a threat to impending violence. People recognize the basis of their discipline; in this situation,

my analysis of the BBQ Becky memoirs indicates that the main punitive power, white brutality,

is an obstacle to real liberty[ CITATION Gre20 \l 1033 ]. Will someone else, if President Obama

cannot avoid White Supremacy's punitive and administrative force? Each disciplinary initiator is

synonymous because every identifiable violent offender, be they police or Beckys and Karens,

disciplines docile bodies. The actors expand Whiteness' disciplinary control. Repeated measures

that allow docile bodies to fear authority retain disciplinary influence.

The punitive role of this violence extends to repeated incidents of racial violence. Many

that call the police to complain that a Blackman is menacing a White woman or throw the

weapon into unarmed protesters are expanding the discipline of white supremacy[ CITATION

Soh20 \l 1033 ], where maintaining racial hierarchy is a primary objective of white supremacy. I

argue that the impending danger of violence faced by Karens and Beckys is an expansion.

Remember, the fight between Central Park and Karen started when Christian Cooper

called Amy to break the leash regime. A black man's call as opposed to the White law of

supremacism. Amy Cooper reacts with the constantly present disciplinary look and attempts to

reclaim authority and re-establish White Comfort using an overt threat of abuse (by the police).
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The effect is an intradisciplinary feature #LivingWhileBlack that liberates Black docile bodies by

returning and asking white racist actors to be accountable.

The power of social media to generate agency was heatedly discussed. What does it

imply to claim that #LivingWhileBlack gives Twitter agency to Black users? I use the

understanding of agency by Emirbayer and Mische to place this subsection of users in the

broader community of social networking. Agency is a smooth social commitment mechanism

CONCLUSION

The academic world has recognized the position of new technology in current social

movements over the past decade. BLM is perhaps the most influential and prominent example of

a social movement that uses common energy on both media to generate online and offline social

change but is not the only one to do so. Movements were connected to Twitter and Facebook in

different countries. In social movements and identity movements, Memes plays an important role

in transmitting cultural coded language, social criticism and ideology content. This study helps to

explain Black memes by research by emphasizing how racialized memories act and comment on

US relationships. The BBQ Becky meme genre (including Karen memes) has many interrelated

social functions which underline movements like BLM., as I argued in this post.

In particular, BBQ Becky and Karen report that White women monitoring and regulating

Black organizations in government spaces are a significant link between racialized monitoring

and contemporary activities of the past, and condemn them. "coincidence" racism. These

memoirs often disturb white nationalist logic and performative cultural ignorance among racists,

not only disgruntled and entitled[ CITATION Wil20 \l 1033 ]. Karens and Beckys. Finally, these

reports generate debates about legal and social consequences for whites who threaten Black
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people (for example, work loss). Secondly, the foreign dialogue between Karen and Becky has

been launched on racial relations and Whiteness worldwide.

These reports offer the world a visual shorthand that can be quickly recognized and

conveys a special kind of white racist indifference and white rights. The element of humour is

one area that is up for discussion about the usage of Black memories in social revolutions.

Names such as Becky and Karen say that they are "too nice" and divert themselves from the

main question: white brutality against Black people in supremacy. As a tactic for participating in

uncomfortable dialogues about race and bigotry, I read Black points to satire. Other researchers

followed specific methods. Humour is a good means of resistance and societal criticism. In

Memes, people are encouraged "to play with the news" and ingest the news while making new

context.
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REFERENCES

Breheny, Caitlin. "By any memes necessary": Exploring the intersectional politics of feminist

memes on Instagram." (2017).

Greer, Richard A. The rhetoric of dream crazy memes: Attitudes about CSR, race, patriotism,

and racial capitalism. Diss. 2020.

Hagh, Anita. Therapy Is Expensive; Memes Are for Free: Reconceptualizing Resilience and

Care through an Auto-Theoretical Analysis of Meme Discourses and Cultures. Diss.

McGill University (Canada), 2020.

Mihailidis, Paul. "The civic potential of memes and hashtags in the lives of young

people." Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 41.5 (2020): 762-781.

Phillips, Whitney, and Ryan M. Milner. "Decoding memes: Barthes' punctum, feminist

standpoint theory, and the political significance of# YesAllWomen." Entertainment

Values. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017. 195-211.

Soh, Wee Yang. "Digital protest in Singapore: the pragmatics of political Internet

memes." Media, Culture & Society 42.7-8 (2020): 1115-1132.

Williams, Apryl. "Black Memes Matter:# LivingWhileBlack With Becky and Karen." Social

Media+ Society 6.4 (2020): 2056305120981047.