One prominent feature of Twitter that's still there
is one that you may not even have heard of.
Fortunately, Roy Wood Jr. has the lowdown.
♪ ♪
WOOD:
-but it's huge.
And if you want to understand it, imagine a barbershop.
I know what you're thinking.
It's a barbershop, I'm a black dude,
we're about to do all the usual stuff.
LeBron James dunked on five crippled kids.
Man, shut your ass up.
Bootleg man, bootleg man.
-♪ ♪ -(whooping)
The boy's ain't got no daddy, Marquis!
You got a daddy that love you!
Look, for decades, the black barbershop
has been the epicenter of black cultural discussion,
but the Internet has changed things.
Let me introduce you to Black Twitter.
-Black Twitter is an entire... -WOOD:
Nah, I think we need somebody more qualified.
Let's go with Jamilah Lemieux. Executive, writer,
and, most importantly, black person.
Jamilah, what is Black Twitter?
It's just really an extension of how we communicate
in our neighborhoods, in our barbershops,
in our churches, in our schools. It is our village.
Think of Black Twitter as Harlem.
Black folks made it cool
and now white people are trying to move in.
What we do on social media and, of course, we over-index
and use it more than anybody else and we use it on mobile,
which means we have it, you know,
by our side 24 hours a day.
WOOD:
of the U.S. population,
25% of American Twitter users are black.
And they're three times more likely to post daily on Twitter
than white people. But that's not the only reason
Black Twitter's important.
And if anybody can back it up
it's a brother wearing a hoodie and a Kangol, Elon James White.
One of the major parts of-of "Black Twitter"
is the ability to force a conversation
that un... otherwise would be ignored.
#OscarsSoWhite made the Oscars more black.
You got Ferguson, Black Lives Matter,
Bring Back Our Girls...
Ferguson, when it first happened--
Mike Brown getting shot-- I knew about that
before it hit the news because I was seeing tweets
from St., uh, St. Louis and Ferguson
that his body hadn't been picked up yet.
Movements that once took weeks to mobilize
can come together in mere hours.
George Zimmerman, I believe,
would not have been arrested or-or tried at all
were it not for Black Twitter.
People love to say, "Oh, if Dr. King had Twitter
he would've got more accomplished."
Would he? How do you know he wouldn't have just been
up all night arguing with trolls?
(imitating woman's voice):
Coretta, I can't. Malcolm X still poppin' off at the mouth.
I'll snatch the bow tie off his ass.
Black Twitter is just as complicated and nuanced
as the black community itself. Like, within Black Twitter
you still have an intellectual Twitter,
you have academics and then you have Hotep Twitter.
Whoa! Everybody don't like to called a Hotep.
According to The Root, a Hotep is "a clueless parody
"of Afrocentricity, someone who's loudly, conspicuously
and obnoxiously pro-black," but I think that's a little harsh.
I prefer to call these brothers black enthusiasts.
That's why we got to be black,
do black, shop black, buy black,
date black, smoke blacks.
And, of course, you've got the Beyhive.
-One of them twins ain't even Jay Z's. -(door opens)
Who's talking about Beyoncé?
LEMIEUX:
shall survive.
She represents joy
for so many people, particularly black women.
She's on the wall with
Martin, Malcolm, Barack,
Beyoncé.
WOOD:
with the latest fashion, music and racial slurs.
Oof!
I have been called
every type of (bleep) on the planet.
"ER?"
-"ER." "A?"
-"A." -"AH?"
-"AH." -"IGZ?"
It's types of (bleep) I didn't know existed
until I got called them on Twitter.
Anybody can get it on Black Twitter, even if you're
in the NFL Hall of Fame. just ask Jerry Rice,
who thought it was all good to wear a fried chicken helmet
-in a Popeye's commercial.
there's ever an excuse for a chicken helmet.
You decide to put on a chicken helmet,
that's between you and your god.
Sometimes people need to be shamed.
Black Twitter has no qualms
about calling anybody out.
This is live footage of Jerry Rice
getting drug on Black Twitter.
-(clamoring) -Shame.
(bell rings)
Shame.
And it's not just people.
Corporations try to be too cool and they get on
the wrong side of Black Twitter all the time
by doing things like using black slang to sell pancakes.
IHOP is one of those brands that's just done weird,
like, "pancakes on fleek."
Pancake man!
Pancakes on fleek!
It's like, you-you just don't throw "on fleek"
behind something and call that, you know,
engaging with the culture.
Here's a general rule of thumb to all corporations:
if you wouldn't say it to a black person's face,
don't tweet it.
Boy, bye!
Yass.
Retweet to win.
You wouldn't say it, don't say it.
Just shut up. Sh-Shut the f...
WHITE:
in a way that we haven't seen before.
The black experience in America is diverse.
But, more importantly, it's vocal.
So if you're wondering how to find Black Twitter,
it's probably not for you.
They should just give us Twitter.
We have appropriated Twitter.
This is the first thing that black people
have effectively appropriated and made our own.
As long as Black Twitter's there,
the fight for justice just got a bit easier.
-Appreciate it. -Where's my money?
I gotcha.
I know where you work, okay?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
♪ ♪