justmethoughs-blog

[justmethoughs-blog]

The unfortunate consequences of Youtube family channels.

Many family channels have managed to garner success on YouTube. Despite this success there are many(including me) worry about the consequences of children essentially growing up online and being exposed to millions of strangers on the internet. I don't think that children can give consent to hvimg their every waking moment being documented. There is a difference between occasionally showing your children to your audience and exploiting your children to get famous.

The decisive moment that made me want to look more into this issue was when Austin from the ACE family, a YouTube channel with 17.7 million subscribers,  said with pride that he taught his 3 year-old daughter, Elle, to act on cue. Now people would argue that this is no different for children acting in films or for TV, but it isn't. There is a separation between normal life and being on set, but there isn't that distinction for children growing up on YouTube. As controversial as the ACE family are, this post is going to focus on a different family channel. The Prince family is a channel that is run by Biannca Raines and Damien Prince, they also run a channel called D&B Nation a prank channel with 3.6 million subscribers. In their prank video,"Picked My Husband In An Uber Under Disguise" Biannca dresses up as a dark skinned black women. She fully transforms herself into what she believes best represents a black women.Adopting a persona ,altering her voice and calling herself 'Bebe Shaquita'. In the video she says that she wants to look 'rachett, ghetto and ugly'. This statement alone shows that Biannca has no respect for dark skinned black women, if she did then she would not have said this. They have a team and an editor, who deemed this idea acceptable.

To me this is reminiscent of Blackface. Blackface is a form of theatrical make-up used by non-black performers to represent a caricature of a black person. A practice that gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereotypes,such as black people being lazy and idiotic. This representation was a contributing factor to the oppression of black people in the USA because it could be used as a justification for why black people were considered inferior. Some people tried to suggest that it was not black face because Biannca is a mixed race woman. Biannca's race does not excuse this type of behaviour. Furthermore, Bianca applied dark makeup and mimicked what she believed to be a typical black woman. She intentionally mocked black women made them seem trashy, ignorant and uneducated. This is exactly what was done by performers in the 19th c. So to suggest this isn't what she did would be unwise and ignorant.

Although I'm sure this video was created in some part to be as outrageous as possible in order to draw attention to their channel, their previous actions suggest they are colourist. For example, shorty after giving birth to their second child, Biannca complained about how dark her newly born child was. She also added how disappointed because her daughter did not have light eyes like her's. It would be easy to dismiss this video as a unique case of one mixed race women being disappointed about her child's skin colour. Unfortunately, it just highlights the value placed on lighter skinned black people and how they are preferable. These views are however deeply engrained in society as a result of slavery. It is a known fact that lighter slaves, often the children of slave owners, were given privileges not extended to their darker skinned counter parts. So naturally lighter skin and more European features have subsequently been as a good thing.

The video is sad because it reinforces the deeply embedded societal view that is a legacy of slavery that, dark skinned women, like me, are ugly and worthless that are only good to be laughed at. Damien called her the ugliest uber driver he'd ever seen. He seems to be complicit, in fact he seems to encourage this kind of behaviour. This is sad because he is a dark skinned man so it would be expected for him to explain to her how detrimental her behaviour is especially with such a large audience--many of them being children.

Maybe talking about them is just giving them the attention and publicity they want, but that doesn' mean they should not be held accountable. The best way to deal with this situation is to not give them the views they so desperately crave. I also think that YouTube should be held accountable. They allow channels like these to profit from ignorance but demonitise educational channels.