Black Voices have Been Hijacked. Again.

#BlackOutTuesday was created to amplify Black voices, then was weaponized against the very people it was supposed to boost.

Last Tuesday, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and saw nothing but black boxes and a simple caption: #BlackOutTuesday. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled through all the darkness until I saw another post asking users not to include the hashtags used by Black Lives Matter, as their hashtags are used to disseminate useful information for the movement. I saw a few variations on the black box, whether there was a barely visible “Black Lives Matter” or some other statement within the box.

I didn’t really understand what I was seeing.

I started seeing corrective posts asking that if the BLM hashtag was used, to delete the post completely and then repost because the algorithms had already “picked up” the posts with the wrong hashtag and it was still gumming up that feed.

Then I saw my Black friends posting black boxes and I was like, “What the hell did I miss?”

To say I was confused was an understatement.

I finally took to Twitter to find out what the heck was up and found a lot of Black folks were asking the same question. And here I thought I was the one missing something because I’m half Black. (I miss a lot of things because of that, if I’m going to be honest.)