“How ELSE are you supposed to dress up like a Black Guy??”: negotiating accusations of Blackface in online newspaper comments

Abstract

This study examines how individuals talk about race and racism, and the resonance of their discourses with existing narratives. For this purpose, this article investigates users’ comments (N = 887) on four newspaper articles from the US and France about Antoine Griezmann's Blackface in December 2017. A thematic analysis revealed (i) the vast majority of users shared similar views of racism by emphasizing individual agency over structural and historical systems of oppression. Although (ii) users actively referred to colour-blindness, their comments appeared to be based on different understandings of “race” shaped by national discourses. Finally, (iii) users vastly criticized political correctness, which revealed expressions of Whiteness as well as the intersection of class and racism. The findings underline the gap between users’ views and scholarly discourses. This study also highlights the limitations of methodological nationalism in the study of racism, and importance of examining discourses emanating from various imagined communities instead.