Backlash Against Magazine Schools Internet on the True Meaning of 'Black Girl Magic'

The February editions of Essence and Elle magazines have one thing in common: Both glossies feature women of color on multiple versions of their covers. But the similarities appear to end there, thanks to the outlets' differing approaches to the popular hashtag #BlackGirlMagic. The controversy has gone beyond sparring between the magazines, with black women taking to social media to express their disapproval of Elle's seeming dismissal of the hashtag.

On Wednesday, Elle published an op-ed by Linda Chavers, a black writer and scholar with a doctorate in African American studies from Harvard University. She details her complaints about the hashtag in a piece titled “Here’s My Problem With #BlackGirlMagic." Black Lives Matter activist Johnetta Elzie and actors Teyonah Parris and Yara Shahidi appear on individual Essence covers; the phrase "Black Girl Magic" accompanies their images in bold pink letters. Chavers criticizes Essence’s use of the phrase.

Chavers argues that the hashtag—often used to showcase powerful black women, from Serena Williams to First Lady Michelle Obama—perpetuates the “strong black woman archetype” and can be just as damaging as dehumanizing sentiments about women of color.

Chavers may not be the only woman to take issue with the hashtag, but from the looks of the online reaction, she is in the minority.

Essence published a response piece on Thursday in which it described Chavers’ op-ed as an attempt to “throw cheap shade by declaring Black Girl Magic a problem" and asked its followers to tweet examples of what the phrase means to them.

"Black Girl Magic" started with a tweet from CaShawn Thompson in 2013—“black girls are magic”—and is a “celebration of the beauty, intelligence and power of Black women everywhere," according to Thompson’s website.

While most appearances of the hashtag make it clear that users don't think black women can wave a magic wand or cast a spell to get things done, Chavers’ interpretation is more literal.

“Saying we're superhuman is just as bad as saying we're animals," Chavers wrote, "because it implies that we are organically different, that we don't feel just as much as any other human being.” She wrote that this inference is particularly damaging because black women are “still being treated as subhuman,” naming bias in police arrests, school discipline, and health care. Chavers recalls the death of Sandra Bland in a Texas jail cell, the violent confrontation between a teen and a school security officer in South Carolina, and her own battles in the health care system dealing with multiple sclerosis. Chavers isn't wrong about institutional racism. Unarmed black people are twice as likely as white people to be killed by the police. Black students are more likely to be suspended in school than their white peers. A study published in the January issue of Journal of Pain and Symptom Management found that doctors fail to communicate with patients of color, leading to subpar care.

The editorial responses and Twitter rebuttals don’t dispute Chavers on these points but instead argue that "Black Girl Magic" serves as a support system to counter, rather than fuel, daily discrimination.