These days, with so many demands on their time, it is common for students to experience stress. While there are many causes for this, schoolwork is a stressor that frequently sticks out as more significant. While there are many coping strategies people employ to control and lower their stress levels, comedy is often used. Humor is a short-term solution for managing emotions; it allows you to laugh it off and put your current problems behind you. Most of the time, the comedy that occurs is taken directly from an online meme. The meme image I selected represents two teams of people. The team of white people clinging, helping each other to push up the tree, while on the other side is a pair of Black people, one clinging over the other. It is a duo racial pictorial representation of the society in which we all drift towards the same goal, but the racial mentality defines the success of the team. The picture is inscribed with the phrase, “THIS IS DEEP, BUT MOST OF Y’ALL WON’T GET IT.” The meme represents multiple rhetorical implications of racism and the racial thinking process in controversy and provocation, cultural critique and appropriation, and corruption of the original narrative.
Fig 1: (Who Can Interpret This Picture? – Education – Nigeria, n.d.))
The image has intentionally drawn controversy by their action, where the team of white people helps each other reach greater heights despite both of them being in the same position literally. On the other side of the same tree represents the pair of the Black people who decide to drag each other performance down by clinging on the others so that they could more in a descending at the same pace and time. Initially, the meme created an illusion of racially attributed disparity in thinking where a white person may help his colleagues to scale the higher ranks than an African American helping his fellow Black reach a higher state.
This meme appeals to pathos and represents a racially constructed criticism on the nature of people that instead of a Black man to assist their colleague by pushing them to success, they will want to compete for the same opportunities, resources, and potion while at the same time competing with the white community. It is a duo competition; however, one of the group is clouded with prejudice against each other.
Moreover, by associating with the ascribed text, “THIS IS DEEP, BUT MOST OF Y’ALL WON’T GET IT”. It appeals to Lagos where it calls critically analyzing the meaning of the text beyond superficial outlook of it. The meme brings an additional degree of intricacy by employing Lagos into the race and social dialogue in the symbolic and language use to provoke critical thinking and reflections. It compels people to highlight and assess the nature of trust and unity between the two races. In the deeper essence, it appears that a black man cannot trust his colleague will help him if he pushes him to success, and thus, he chooses to compete with him, unlike the white community team.
The analysis of my meme is related to the context of the article, for it highlights the central aspect of social and racial profiling and embraces the idea that unity and trust are lacking among the black community, making it impossible for them to catch up with the white community in various aspect of development. It brings out the impression that African America is confined to mentally structured mistrust that hinder their competition with other community.
Conclusively, the meme refers to how one thinks about unity, cultural diversity, and trust within the races while making their decisions. The image provokes the thoughts of the black community and urges them to be united and help to reach the goals they strategize to achieve. It is only in trust that the one to be helped will have the same trust.
Works Cited
Who Can Interpret This Picture? – Education – Nigeria. (n.d.). Ww.nairaland.com. Retrieved December 8, 2023, from https://ww.nairaland.com/4763485/interpret-picture
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