Black Memes Matter: #LivingWhileBlack With Becky and Karen

Abstract

“BBQ Becky” and “Karen” memes reference real-world incidents in which Black individuals were harassed by White women in public spaces. In what I term the BBQ Becky meme genre, Black meme creators use humor, satire, and strategic positioning to perform a set of interrelated social commentaries on the behavior of White women. By conducting a visual Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) of BBQ Becky memes, I argue that Becky and Karen memes are a cultural critique of White surveillance and White racial dominance. I find that memes in the BBQ Becky meme genre call attention to, and reject, White women’s surveillance and regulation of Black bodies in public spaces—making an important connection between racialized surveillance of the past and contemporary acts of “casual” racism. This meme genre also disrupts White supremacist logics and performative racial ignorance by framing Karens and Beckys as racist—not just disgruntled or entitled. Finally, in a subversion and reversal of power dynamics, Karen and BBQ Becky memes police White supremacy and explicitly call for consequences, providing Black communities with a form of agency. Hence, I conclude that Black memes matter in the struggle for racial equity.

#StayMadAbby: Reframing affirmative action discourse and White entitlement on Black Twitter.

“…This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Jones & Reddick, 2017;Lee et al, 2012;Monk-Payton, 2017;Morrison, 2019;Tanksley, 2019;Williams, 2020). Black creation of counternarratives on Twitter enables emotional release and promotes well-being and remaining grounded by: (a) expressing anger and exasperation at bias, stereotyping (such as assumptions of non-White inferiority), and presumed incompetence and (b) individually and collectively expressing positive emotions (such as feeling uplifted and laughing), healing, communicating pride in racial identity, celebrating culture, as well as maintaining dignity and an optimistic outlook (Bryant-Davis, 2005;Carson, 2009;Correa & Jeong, 2011;Monk-Payton, 2017;Morrison, 2019;Tanksley, 2019).…”

“…Crenshaw et al (1995) provides a CRT legal analysis of how Affirmative Action challenges Whiteness and the associated racialized privileges, as well as the subordination and racialized denial of non-Whites. Individual use of the #StayMadAbby hashtag enabled a collective discussion of race in the Black public sphere on Twitter (Brock, 2018; Williams, 2020). Abigail Fisher’s legal case has implicit ideologies present that are a racial project rooted in White entitlement and White fragility (Omi & Winant, 2014).…”

Do It for the Culture: The Case for Memes in Qualitative Research

“…I particularly position memes as units that reflect specific contexts and meanings discernable to some and less discernible to others. For example, Jackson (2019) and Williams (2020) assert that many facets of popular meme culture and aesthetic cannot be understood without the contexts of Blackness and Black experiences they are derived from (see Figure 4). As Geertz (1973) illuminated through the example of what may appear to be a wink or an eye twitch; a researcher needs more cultural context for accuracy in identifying the eye movement.…”

Comic Memes and Sexist Humor in India: Tools for Reinforcement of Female Body-Image Stereotypes

“…In this lieu, many theorists examine the gravity of enormous power in the digital media tools to reinforce dominant ideology such as, inequality, marginalization and such other social issues through the audio-visual-textual medium (Nakamura, 2014;Petray & Collin 2017;Dickerson, 2015) as much as it establishes the counter-ideology (Mallya & Susanti, 2021;Moreno-Almeida, 2021). At the global level, "BBQ Becky" and "Karen" memes (Williams, 2020) as well as Scambaiting trophy images (Nakamura, 2014) have exercised racial insensitivity even in this century. Nakamura adds:…”