Photo Credit: Getty Images
#BlackMenSmile is celebrating its 10-year anniversary amid DEI attacks spurred by President Donald Trump’s administration, per NBC News.
A decade ago, Carlton Mackey founded Black Men Smile as the internet was overwhelmed with images of death, anger, and unrest in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown. Mackey found that popular hashtags at the time like #BlackLivesMatter, #MikeBrown, and #HandsUpDontShoot were filled with depictions of sadness, pain, and frustration.
Mackey was inspired to try to find images of Black joy, so he typed the hashtag #BlackMenSmile. When he found zero results, Mackey said he decided to take action.
“This is an opportunity to claim a space and make it a place where you can go and see and know there is another modality of existence. One of joy and reflections of our life,” he said. “The hashtag #BlackMenSmile was an opportunity to take up a space that had not been claimed.”
#BlackMenSmile became a movement as men across the county shared smiling images of themselves with captions of joy and optimism. Today, the brand boasts over 100,000 Instagram followers and has expanded into apparel and YouTube series.
Mackey said the original message of #BlackMenSmile “was about celebrating the way we saw ourselves. It was about placing value and emphasis and priority on what we have to say about ourselves and not the stories that are being told about us.”
Amid attacks on DEI, Mackey and his business partner, Jeremiah Griffin, hosted an Instagram Live session where they engaged with their followers about how to expand their Black Joy movement following rollbacks from major companies.
“The doubt, the fear, the uncertainty in our community just rises at times like this,” Griffin said.
“With that being known, that’s the work we do. In those times is when we come together, we rally, we use the platform we’ve created to encourage, to uplift, to reflect the joy that is inside and that we have access to, to re-empower our community, re-empower ourselves. The work remains the work.”
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