Friday, March 6, marks the first annual BlackOut Day, a day dedicated to “celebrating the beauty of Blackness” on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms of choice. As one of the founders of the event, Tumblr user expect-the-greatest says,
I got inspired to propose Blackout day after thinking “D***, I’m not seeing enough Black people on my dash”. Of course I see a constant amount of Black celebrities but what about the regular people? Where is their shine? When I proposed it, I thought people would think it was a good idea, but not actually go through with implementing it. Luckily people wanted to get behind the idea, and @recklessthottie created the #Blackout tag.
The idea caught on, and according to Twitter, #BlackOutDay has been mentioned 160,000 times in the last 24 hours. As another creator of BlackOut Day told Buzzfeed, “Originally I thought the idea was, like, just a fun thing, but as I got into it, I sort of realised it also backs up the ideals I talk about: seeing more diversity in our media.”
