Snapchat’s Bob Marley filter isn’t harmless fun, it’s ‘digital blackface’

With Snapchat defending its recent use of a Bob Marley filter, debate continues about the line between cultural appreciation and appropriation.

In case you missed it, the mobile app released the filter on 4/20 — a day widely associated with the smoking and celebration of marijuana — letting users see themselves with dark skin, dreadlocks and a Rastafarian cap. Backlash was immediate, with many people understandably outraged, calling the filter a form of blackface.

Snapchat then issued a statement saying that the filter was intended as a tribute to the musical legend, and that it even had the blessing of Bob Marley’s estate.

Two Canadian experts on cultural appropriation don’t buy Snapchat’s response or reasoning, though. Whether it’s celebrities dressing up as black people on Halloween or the widespread use of this filter, they say blackface – in any form – is racist and unacceptable.

Naveen Joshi, a professor of liberal studies at Humber College in Toronto, says that even if the filter’s creators never intended to be racist or disrespectful, its very existence points to a lack of understanding of blackface.

ALSO SEE: Snapchat’s 4/20 Bob Marley filter is all kinds of wrong

“Blackface is steeped in a specific history that people need to know about or be aware of,” Joshi tells Yahoo Canada. “People need to know that a lot of these earlier [blackface] characters…were justifications for slavery themselves, even within Hollywood films—people like the Mammy, the Sambo, the Zip Coon.”

Those characters during the era of minstrel shows in the 1800s served to disseminate racist stereotypes originating from white people’s beliefs that blacks were racially, socially and intellectually inferior.

“There was a need to preserve this idea of slavery, so they created characters that became part of the culture,” Joshi says, noting that when blackface is used online, people tend to forget about or disregard so much historical meaning and relevance.

At a time when the Oscars are being mocked for being too white, the casual use of the image of someone as complex and revered as Bob Marley, Joshi says, makes it seem as if little progress has been made in terms of racism and black rights: “Those are fears people have when they see filter like this: have we moved on at all?”

Joshi says the best thing to do when it comes to a filter like this is to stay away from it. And he says it is possible pay tribute to a culture you’re not a part of without appropriating it, pointing to Eminem as an example. “It’s about historical context,” he says. “Whether he’s sincere or not, when Eminem wins awards, what does he do? He gives props to the gods of hip hop. Whether it’s genuine or not, at least he’s saying ‘Kool G, Run-DMC, Grand Master Flash’… He’s showing he has some history and he’s not necessarily culturally appropriating; he’s making his own thing.”

ALSO SEE: Where do we draw the line between cultural appreciation and appropriation?

Handel Kashope Wright, the director of the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Culture, Identity and Education, meanwhile, notes that people who see the Bob Marley filter as harmless fun may pass off objection to it as political correctness. He describes the filter as “digital blackface.”

“The idea that the filter gives people a new way to show their appreciation of Bob Marley and his music is simply ludicrous, and the declaration that Snapchat respects Bob Marley’s life and achievements is highly dubious when one takes the resulting image produced by the filter,” Wright says. “There is nothing in that clutter of stereotypical props, that digital appropriation of black skin, that signals music appreciation let alone respect for the man and his achievements. There is indeed something new here in what can be accomplished through digital manipulation, but the results are…a reminder and remake of the old racist production of blackface.”

Wright says he’s puzzled by the “comeback” of blackface and is especially perturbed by the filter’s inclusion of Rastafarian symbols, such as the cap in its colours of red, gold and green and an actual Rastafarian flag.

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“The filter goes beyond the already quite racist problem of a static, non-performance version of blackface; it reaches into a black religion, and by appropriating its symbols reduces Rastafarianism quite literally to exotic colour for an already spurious and completely superficial depiction,” Wright says. “There is nothing of Bob Marley in Snapchat’s vacuous lens. Where is the man who took the words of a speech by Haile Selassie and made them into lyrics of the most stirring and rousing anthem of black African liberation? Where is the vegan, the fitness conscious man who was a football (soccer) fanatic and played every chance he got? Where is the gifted musician who was a member of one of the most influential, indeed formative reggae bands, the Wailers? Where above all is the philosopher and activist who was a most articulate spokesperson for the religion of Rastafarians; who envisioned the return of diasporic blacks to the African continent; who was able to mediate between rival political parties and their leaders in his native Jamaica while remaining above the fray of party politics?”

Wright says that Snapchat should issue an apology for ever having released the filter.

What do you think about the line between cultural appropriation and appreciation? Is there a way to pay tribute to a culture you’re not part of without being insensitive? Let us know by tweeting @YahooStyleCA.