The Sudden Surge Of Black Artists Within Zines

Graphic by Maya Swift

As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to gain momentum nationally and globally, the creative community is finally giving their “appreciation” to black creators. Right now, a handful of Zines- a shorter term for the word “magazine”- are highlighting black artists on their platforms, others are writing articles to educate their readers about current topics which relate to the Black Lives Matter Movement. Many are also even donating profits to organizations which help fund the movement.

This sudden explosion of support for black-owned brands and information about the industrial prison complex has flooded many zine accounts, which is a great thing; however, the question is, why weren’t they doing this before? How much of this is genuine? Looking through a zine account one might find the following posts from newest to oldest: an article or two about injustices in America such as police brutality or white privilege, a photographer of color or a photo with a person of color (POC) featured, a post with a phrase like “ACAB” or “Black Lives Matter” slapped onto a graphic design which maintains the Instagram feed’s aesthetic, a post about expansion or submissions, and then photos before the protests which are mostly white or white-passing models. Pre-protests, many zines ignored black writers, photographers, and other creatives even if they had proclaimed themselves as “woke”. 

As many know, June is known as “Pride Month'' which is dedicated to celebrating the LGBTQ+ communities around the world along with LGBTQ+ history. Pride intersected the protests which shined a light on many black activists during the Stonewall riots who haven’t received their well-deserving credit in the past years. Activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Stormé DeLarverie were being pushed to the spotlight because for the first time both black people and LGBTQ+ people were receiving attention at the same moment which is a rare sight. This brought an excitement within me, as I knew many zines would prepare for their pride issue while also including black creatives. That wasn’t the case. While some zines successfully included both black and gay creatives within their pride issues, some failed miserably. For instance, one zine’s pride month issue dedicated an entire page to a digital drawing of a gay furry but didn’t include a single black creative. The entire zine was full of white models.

Unfortunately, this is very prevalent in zines that still claim themselves woke. Even zines with a mass following do the same on their Instagram accounts while including a “token” black photographer in between their articles about what would happen if the police were defunded or organizations that people can donate to. One example which comes to mind is a particular zine that has posted many underground or less known creatives (who are all white or white-passing) with one post featuring the very well known Salem Mitchell shot by the talented Alissa Ashley. Most of the white creatives on that account weren’t big names like Mitchell or Ashley, it’s like they couldn’t be bothered to find or uplift lesser-known black creatives. The post was lazy. 

This isn’t an attack on zine creators if this were to be an attack the zines would’ve been named and called out. If zine creators consider this article to be an attack, step back and reevaluate why you’re actually angry. The point of this article wasn’t to bring down the zine community because there have been many other zines that have given black creators a voice in their product, not only in the present but also in the past. What zine creators should realize from this article is how they’ve contributed to the problem in the past and provide actual change. Zine creators have to do more than just write one article on systemic racism while ignoring the problems that they have within their own all-white (or almost all white) creative teams. Because if zines truly are for all visions then they should start showing that.

By Jagpreet Brooks

Edited by Halima Jibril (IG: @h.alimaa)

Graphic by Maya Swift (IG: @mayaisabelswift)