Black Guy on the Phone

Martin Baker, meme named “Black Guy on the Phone,” is a Republican politician and political consultant. He was born in southeastern Missouri in 1970, where he continued to live at the time of his meme birth. He first ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1st Congressional District of Missouri in 2012 and again in 2014. He was defeated in both races by white candidates.

## Black Guy On The Phone

Republican politician and political consultant Martin Baker

### Platform(s) of Spread

The Guardian, Lipstick Alley Forums, Black Twitter

Martin Baker rose to infamy in 2014 but not for his political campaigning. In August of that year, Baker was photographed talking on his cell phone at a public rally in support of Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson who fatally shot eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson on August 9, 2014.

On August 17th, 2014, *The Guardian* published an article about a support rally in St. Louis, Missouri for Darren Wilson, and the Ferguson Police Department. The piece referred to Martin Baker as the sole Black supporter in the crowd, despite the racial injustice and police brutality against Black lives. There were 125 people in attendance. One hundred twenty-four were white, and Baker represented the entire minority presence.  On August 20th, just three days later, Martin Baker emerged on online forums and Black Twitter especially, with users posting pictures of Baker and captioning them with humorous jokes about the spectrum of hypothetical phone calls he could be making, giving birth to "Black Guy on the Phone".

### Recognizable Features

When considering what makes Black Guy on the Phone recognizable, the characteristics of the meme can be broken down into two categories: the meme's subject and the meme's presentation.

###### Subject:

* It’s a Black man. A meme titled “Black Guy on the Phone” has a specific expectation of recognition.
* The Black man's arms are crossed, and he is slightly coiled in on himself. Martin Baker’s body language is key because this meme is not about a boisterous Black man, a jolly Black man, a ghetto Black man, or a fetishized Black man. Baker is reserved, unsure, and not hyper-masculine. Memes of Black people are often crafted with white supremacist viewpoints of personality and physicality. Digital Blackface has become a modern way of perpetuating the problematic representation of Black bodies on the internet and spreading the racist artistic viewpoint throughout social media and popular culture.  Therefore, a Black man whose body doesn’t conform to these familiar categories will be more easily recognizable.
* The look of worry, disproval, nervousness, annoyance, or snitch-like vibes is one of the most recognizable features of this meme’s subject. The face is expressive and can be interpreted and repurposed in various ways. Everyone has some personal connection to having someone give them a look with one of these emotions.
* There is direct eye contact with the viewer. In photo memes with a sole person, eye contact, or lack thereof, becomes extremely important when creating a narrative. In this meme, seeing Baker’s face and the look in his eyes makes it hilarious, distinctive, and somewhat personal.

###### Presentation:

* The phone clutched on his face is the most iconic feature. The pulse of the meme is Baker looking as if he’s making a call on his phone. This detail does most of the heavy lifting because “Black Guy” isn’t distinctive enough regarding memes. Black men are a unit of culture and have been since the days of *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,* *an American Slave*, *Uncle Tom’s Cabin*, and *The Birth of a Nation*. Likewise, the continuation of the joke is due to Baker potentially making a call. It’s an action that has immediate relevance to most people, and the smartphone isn’t too dated in appearance. The meme can always seem current.
* The fact that there are only white people in the background is the second most recognizable feature of the meme’s presentation. This detail also does a lot for the narrative of this meme. It’s a Black man looking worried or disproving while on the phone in a room full of white people. The mere description is a punchline, leaving so much room for narrative, interpretation, and relatability. It’s nearly a creative writing prompt the way this background is almost constructed as a backdrop.
* Martin Baker is wearing a bright blue polo shirt. This is a sometimes overlooked but important feature. It’s a nice polo often associated with ideas such as “preppy” behavior, athletics, and young white men. But the body inside this unit of culture is a middle-aged dark-skinned disproving Black man. It’s a dramatic contrast of expectation and culture, and this meme would not have the same impact if Baker were wearing perhaps a green, black, or white shirt.

### Cultural Context

The murder of Michael Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson is how Black Guy on the Phone came into existence because the photo was taken at a rally supporting Darren Wilson. Some thought the image was satirical click-bait or a piece from *The Onion*, but another picture of Martin Baker soon surfaced, showing him in front of a police department building smiling while holding up a Darren Wilson T-shirt. This meme cracked American culture, particularly Black America, to see something so paradoxical. It is a dark-skinned Black male republican in favor of how white police officers handle encounters with Black citizens they perceive as suspects or threats.

On July 17th, 2014, only twenty-three days before the death of Michael Brown, a Black male in Staten Island named Eric Garner was murdered by Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department officer. The officer put Eric Garner in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him on suspicion of selling single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps.  There was video footage of the murder posted across social media platforms, which generated global attention and raised questions about the use of force by law enforcement and police brutality against Black bodies. Likewise, in November of 2012, two years before these Black men were murdered by police officers, Jordan Russell Davis, a seventeen-year-old Black boy, was killed at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida, at the hands of a forty-four-year-old white man who shot him ten times.  Nine months before Jordan Russell Davis' life was stolen, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old Black boy in Sanford, Florida, was shot and murdered by twenty-eight-year-old male George Zimmerman.  Trayvon Martin’s death is often referred to as the catalyst for Black Lives Matter, much like Emmett Till was a catalyst in the 1950s for the Civil Rights Movement. So, while America was still chanting “*I Can’t Breathe”* and spreading BLM across the country, Martin Baker attended a republican support rally for Michael Brown’s killer and seemed happy to wear Wilson’s name on his body.

Once both photos went viral, Baker received backlash and harassment for his involvement with Darren Wilson, and the bulk of Black culture wanted nothing to do with him. But instead of canceling Martin Baker, he was quickly turned into a comical meme, stripping him of power and connection to Darren Wilson.

### Audience

Black Guy on the Phone was for and by Black Twitter in its infancy. It started as a comical racial meme, flipping Martin Baker narratively and making him someone who calls to complain about white people or calls to complain about Black people in various cultural ways, such as cooking, celebrating, and music. Either way, Michael Brown and Ferguson were permanently removed, and the white people in the background of the meme weren’t relevant. For the reasons mentioned earlier, and the meme becoming more popular and widespread, so too did the audience for its consumption. While Black Twitter still claimed ownership of its inception, white meme makers began to use Black Guy on the Phone to have Martin Baker call and complain about anything, such as homework, ex-girlfriends, and bad life choices.

In 2014, Black Americans were the target audience for makers and consumers of the meme, mostly to heal and come together following all the police brutality and murdering of Black bodies happening daily in America. However, in 2022, the meme is up for grabs to the general online public, always applied for a shallow laugh.

### Circulation

On August 17th, 2014, *The Guardian* was the first to publish an article about the Darren Wilson support rally in St. Louis, Missouri, and mention Martin Baker. A journalist for the publication tweeted a photograph of Baker holding his pro-Darren Wilson T-shirt at the rally and captioned the tweet with, “There are Perhaps 125 people at this pro-Darren Wilson protest. 125 white people and Martin Baker, aged 44.” The same day Martin Baker was revealed to the public, an online forum called *Lipstick Alley Forums* gained a thread titled "Meet the one black man that showed up at the rally for the cop that killed Mike Brown.” The forum presented another picture of Baker, in which he is shown holding his cellphone up to his ear while at the rally, seemingly alone. This particular photo of Martin Baker would become Black Guy on the Phone.

On August 18th, 2014, the online journal *UpRoxx* published an article about the backlash Martin Baker was facing for attending the republican rally and supporting Darren Wilson, which invited more public opinion and exposure to Baker and the murder of Michael Brown.  By August 20th, Black Twitter had taken up Baker’s cellphone picture and flooded the internet with comical memes. By August 27th, a member of *Nike Talk Forums* posted a thread titled "Is Black Guy on the Phone the Hottest Meme in the Streets?," which gathered more than 300 replies over the next two months.

A new iteration of Black Guy on the Phone called Black Guy at the Podium was created on Imgur on September 17th, 2014. A user uploaded two memes of Baker at the podium and asked other users to join in on creating new memes. The template is a photograph of Martin Baker standing at a podium of what appears to be some sort of congressional meeting. He looks cheerful as if he is about to give a speech, countering his original famous meme. The meme quickly circulated to Tumblr and Twitter, creating new narratives for Martin Baker. The memes created from this image are still comical in nature but carry a slight sinister or sarcastic tone, meaning Martin Baker became solidified as a meme villain. While Black Guy at the Podium hasn’t gained the same amount of usage and circulation, it is now the B-side to Black Guy on the Phone.

Black Guy on the Phone saturated the meme market, but new content of Martin Baker resurfaced on February 22nd, 2017. A Twitter user uploaded a photograph of Baker at a soda shop, reaching for a drink and looking at the camera, and it’s captioned, "I think I just found the guy from the meme in a soda shop lmao.” Within forty-eight hours, the tweet gained over 19,000 likes and 11,000 retweets. When posted on /r/BlackPeopleTwitter, it gathered upwards of 14,900 votes (94% upvoted) and 350 comments within twenty-four hours. Finding Martin Baker “out in the wild” brought his original Black Guy on the Phone meme back into the mainstream meme pool.

### Ethical Issues

Though the memes are generally light-hearted, there are negative social implications for Martin Baker and the original context. Firstly, the meme was created without Baker’s knowledge, and while this is often the case with memes, it is particularly complicated when a person of color, such as a Black man, is involved. Autonomy in representation is hard to obtain in America for the disenfranchised, and personal narrative is often considered inauthentic. So, passing around Baker’s body through memes has stripped him of his humanity and turned him into a “Black Man does\_,” entering Baker into Digital Blackface. Anyone can wear Baker and give him a complaint and someone to call, and sometimes Black Guy on the Phone memes push stereotypes that the image naturally fights. What is more, people feel entitled to turn pictures they take of him into a meme, as if he is simply a meme generator. Any action he's captured engaging in will most likely turn into a Black Guy\_.

The meme also becomes entirely removed from its origin story the more it is spread, which in this case, isn’t negligible. The meme was originally a photo of a Black man supporting a white police officer who murdered a young Black male in his community. The subject of the meme is a republican who believes in heavy police force against unarmed citizens and supports a white supremacist murderer. Likewise, the white people in the background are not merely people at a gathering. They are also supporters of Darren Wilson and the Ferguson police force and would most likely be people who would’ve called Trayvon Martin a thug. However, the saturation of the meme has scrubbed off the cultural context. People no longer know that the Black man is named Martin Baker or that the crowd behind him are Darren Wilson supporters. Worst of all, fewer and fewer absorbers and creators realize the origin of this story is Michael Brown, a Black teenager killed by a white racist police officer in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014.

### Impact

Black Guy on the Phone has contributed three iterations to the Digital Blackface lexicon. Creators can choose if they want to invoke Martin Baker at a soda shop, a podium, or on the phone. The meme also helped spread awareness of Michael Brown’s murder immediately after they were created and released on social media. Michael Brown’s case was still plastered all over the news, so the meme naturally had him, Ferguson, and police brutality embedded into the conversation.

Additionally, Black Guy on the Phone is an anti-Karen meme. He is the sole Black person surrounded by white people and is on the phone, seemingly disproving or upset. But it is not definitive who he is calling or what he is calling for. His physical appearance gives nothing away, and the white people behind him don't provide enough information because nothing about them sticks out in American culture. This rhetoric impacts meme creativity, and the paradox of the image allows for meta-interpretation. Martin Barker can be a Karen while still living as a Black man. It complicates racism, misogyny, and masculinity.

Most importantly, Black Guy on the Phone brought the Black online community together during a torturous time of being Black in America. Before the meme became mainstream, it was an inside joke for the Black community and an outlet for Black cultural discussion. Who Baker was calling and what he was complaining about said a lot about how the creator was raised in their black households or how they felt about current aspects of Black culture or American culture at large. Creating and sharing the memes on Black Twitter was also a safe way to air out grievances about white America and white supremacy. What Baker was tattling on often symbolized the anger or resentment the creator felt toward white culture and the appropriation of Black culture. Similarly, the memes were also a visible reminder of Black Lives Matter. Evidence of this lies in how Black Twitter absorbed the 2017 uploaded picture of Baker in the soda shop, gaining nearly 14,900 votes and 350 comments within twenty-four hours, and turned the social media platform into another flood of Black culture, celebration, and connection. Martin Baker can be perceived as a meme villain, but he is also a magnet for Black joy, creativity, humor, and love.

### References

1. ↑ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/martin-baker
2. ↑ Ballotpedia - Robyn Hamlin, Daniel Elder
3. ↑ Murder of Michael Brown
4. ↑ https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1344341-martin-baker
5. ↑ https://www.teenvogue.com/story/digital-blackface-reaction-gifsfootnote
6. ↑ Murder of Eric Garner
7. ↑ Murder of Jordan Russell Davis
8. ↑ Murder of Trayvon Martin
9. ↑ Murder of Emmett Till
10. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/ferguson-supporters-police-killed-teenager-protest
11. ↑ https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/meet-the-one-black-man-that-showed-up-at-the-rally-for-the-cop-that-killed-mike-brown.751237/
12. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20140918021916/http://uproxx.com/smokingsection/2014/08/martin-baker-memes/
13. ↑ https://niketalk.com/threads/is-black-guy-on-phone-the-hottest-meme-in-the-streets-vol-martin-baker.605032/page-11
14. ↑ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/podium-guy-black-guy-at-podium
15. ↑ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/black-guy-on-the-phone
16. ↑ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/geraldo-rivera-trayvon-martin-benjamin-crump-hoodie\_n\_1532576
17. ↑ https://medium.com/the-awl/memes-and-misogynoir-c3fb3506613d