The Daily BuzzSocial selfie movement celebrates black happiness
A social media-driven campaign to express identity positivity amongst blacks has provided a stark contrast to the sorrow and negativity in the aftermath of the Charleston shootings.
Over the weekend, the second installment of Blackout Day (#blackoutday) took place, primarily on Tumblr.
The thought behind the movement, first proposed by Tvon Green is simple: to get black people to share their faces in a positive manner.
“I got inspired to propose Blackout day after thinking “Damn, I’m not seeing enough Black people on my dash (Tumblr dashboard where user posts appear).” Of course I see a constant amount of Black celebrities but what about the regular people? Where is their shine? When I proposed it, I thought people would think it was a good idea, but not actually go through with implementing it.”
Blackout Day is scheduled to take place every three months on the 21st; the second happened on June 21. While pictures were opted to Instagram and Twitter as well, most of the posts happened on Tumblr, where the vibrant black community was eager to show off a smile.
Green has curated hundreds of posts from Blackout day on his Tumblr. But there’s a second layer to this weekend’s mass selfie love-in. Rather than just amplifying a community’s positivity, Tmblr is awash in posts from people who might have otherwise been hesitant to post their faces at all.
The impetus for these posts may lie in one that resonated during the first #blackoutday in March. a 16 year-old Tumblr user named Racquel posted about her ongoing battle with Crohn’s disease.
The second Blackout Day saw a lot more of these kids of posts - and the support they got was incredible. Racquel’s post got 1546 notes (similar to “likes” in Tumblr parlance); this weekend lots of similar posts got upwards of 16,0000-22,000 notes.
And since it's Pride week in Ontario, let's commemorate this amazing post, tagged "blackout" and posted a couple of weeks ago. Twice the happy!
If you have a chance, head to Tumblr and check out all the posts for #blackout,” “#blackoutday," “#blackout2015” or “#theblackout.”
