Current Event I

Blackfishing is a term which has been used recently and is describing people, especially women, who are accused of pretending to be black on social media. They use make-up, tanning and sometimes surgeries to achieve a different appearance. This trend appeared in November when people on Twitter started calling on people to post women who pretended to be black. Consequently, the tweet had more than 23,000 retweets and many responses criticizing these people for doing such thing. They also provided pictures before and after, which show huge differences and changes in their skin tones. However, these accused Instagram users claim that their intention is not to change their appearance in order to look black (Petter, 2018).

Swedish Instagram influencer, Emma Hallberg, is the most infamous for blackfishing. After two visibly different pictures of her were posted online, she had to defend herself. She told Buzzfeed that she sees herself only as white and that she gets her tan naturally from the sun.

There are more examples of women accused of blackfishing. For instance, twenty years old Aga Brzostowska said that her skin is naturally “not pale”, but she admits that she makes it darker by tanning. Comparison of two pictures of her on Twitter do not look good for her, though. There is a seven years difference between those pictures and she says it can confuse people who do not know her and that the transformation is crazy. She doesn’t have the need to stop doing things that are, according to her, beneficial and enjoyable. She also claims she has had no surgery (Virk & McGregor, 2018).

The thing about blackfishing that upsets people is that women who appear to be posing as black do not realize struggles that women with black skin have to go through to be accepted as who they are. “When you see that people who benefit from white privilege that are able to get both sides of the coin, it’s very troubling,” says Wanna Thompson, the freelance writer who started the viral Twitter thread. Although blackfishing is a new term, there were few people pretending to be a different race in 2015 (Petter, 2018).


See the video about Emma Hallberg below:

For more information, see: WHAT IS BLACKFISHING? THE INFLUENCERS ACCUSED OF USING MAKEUP TO 'PRETEND' TO BE BLACK and Blackfishing: The women accused of pretending to be black. 

References:

Petter, O. (2018). WHAT IS BLACKFISHING? THE INFLUENCERS ACCUSED OF USING MAKEUP TO 'PRETEND' TO BE BLACK. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/blackfishing-what-is-it-influencers-instagram-makeup-racism-black-white-social-media-a8667961.html

Virk, K., & McGregor, N. (2018). Blackfishing: The women accused of pretending to be black. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-46427180