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5 Emojis White People Use To Gaslight BIPOC Online

So you can point it out or stop using them yourself.

6 min readSep 3, 2021

We all know having any sort of debate on social media is pointless. But the rise of social media gave a platform for BIPOC to finally share our own experiences and to attempt to control our own narratives. That power is threatening to folks who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Using bad faith techniques, these online trolls will belittle, harass, dismantle, and confuse in order to keep white supremacy front and center both online and off.

Some of the best racial gaslighting come in the form of cutesy emojis, largely because they represent a friendly and informal interaction. It’s frighteningly effective to any onlookers to an online conversation.

The Laugh React. (😆)

Ahh. The laugh react. The OG cyberbullying emoji.

I’ve been in Kafkaequese conversations with white people on Facebook where regardless of my tone and the seriousness of the topic (Black children facing higher levels of police brutality, for example), they have laugh-reacted at everything I said before responding in a trolling manner.

The person who uses this particular emoji even when the topic doesn’t call for humor is mocking emotional responses…

To me, this comes across as rather performatively woke. All of these emojis are used in completely harmless manners too, far more frequently than they are used for hatred: And for hatred, any emoji can be used, depending on the context. None of…

These are emojis - bullies of all colors use them. You sound like you have taken your white hate to a different level - that of paranoia. How would you know what a white person could truly be feeling when using these emojis? You don't and you know…