Vishawn is a play on an image of Vision from WandaVision. But what does this meme mean?
This week is the five-year anniversary of Marvel TV’s WandaVision, which gave rise to the ‘Vishawn’ meme. It’s time to look back at five years of Vishawn and what lessons we can learn from the meme’s popularity.
So, how did this meme start?
Black Twitter jumped in when people saw Vision wearing a black turtleneck and striking a cool pose. According to Know Your Meme, this scene appeared in the season finale on March 5, 2021.
“That day, Twitter user @goonicorn tweeted two photos from the scene, with the caption, ‘I think we can all agree that Vision…’ The tweet received more than 84,000 likes and 17,000 retweets in less than three days,” according to Know Your Meme. “That day, Twitter user @LuxangelllAngel posted the earliest known usage of the name ‘Vishawn’ in this context. They wrote, ‘Baby that’s not Vision that’s Vishawn.'”
After that, people started photoshopping Vision into photos with gold chains, durags, cornrows, or beards. Some fans even joked that Vision was Black since he’s made from vibranium, which comes from Wakanda.
Why are Black people doing this to Vision?! 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/0YBgezwAuN
— Kevín (@KevOnStage) March 6, 2021
Well he is half Wakandan 🤔 I love Black Twitter. #ViShawn #Vision #WandaVision pic.twitter.com/k2Jyl6hgr8
— Jill THEE WRITER – Fangirl🐬 (@JillRobiFangirl) March 6, 2021
It ain’t Vision anymore. It’s ViShawn. #WandaVision pic.twitter.com/7JO5CIQIIE
— Brandon Pope TV (@BpopeTV) March 6, 2021
What? Your man don't let you have a false reality to process your trauma? #ViShawn pic.twitter.com/bRhH2F02Ye
— Krystina Arielle (@KrystinaArielle) March 7, 2021
But what does this meme actually mean?
I’m not sure if anyone has written a deep analysis of the Vishawn meme, but I think it comes from Black people’s tendency to turn media that wasn’t made for us into something we can relate to.
For years, Black audiences have found ways to deal with not seeing themselves in media. One way is to pick out characters whose values or personalities feel familiar and add them to a mental list of ‘good white characters’ or just ‘good characters.’
Think about Andy Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show, Matlock (also Andy Griffith), Lucille Ball, Judge Judy, Mark Paul Gosselaar in his later roles, and Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. Black people have quietly made a list of white (or half-white, like Gosselaar) celebrities and characters who are always invited to the ‘cookout.’ Some, like Tony Goldwyn from Scandal and the wider Shonda Rhimes universe, comedian Gary Owen, and Joseph Sikora from Power, have even built careers as white ‘Black’ guys. Do all of them really deserve a spot on this list? Maybe not, especially if you consider their politics. Still, they’re on it. (For the record, Andy Griffith was a Democrat who supported Obama, so he’s on my personal list, not just because I grew up watching him with my mom, who loved The Andy Griffith Show.)
With social media, Black viewers are getting even more creative. They’re not just celebrating white characters who’ve been accepted into Black culture—they’re giving these characters Black traits. There’s the Vishawn meme, where Vision wears a gold chain and durag, Chris Evans memes with acrylic nails, and Wanda Maximoff as ‘LaWanda’ with braids. And that’s just the Marvel memes.
While strongly identifying with white characters comes from years of underrepresentation, is social media making this problem worse? Could it even cross the line into digital minstrelsy?
Should Vishawn even get an invite to the cookout?
I wrote about the meme when it first started spreading on Twitter. At the time, I didn’t realize it would be one of my last lighthearted articles before my dad passed away the next month.
Back then, I felt about the same as I do now about why the meme started. But I didn’t really talk about whether making Vishawn was a good idea in the first place.
What do we, as Black people, really get from giving Black traits to characters who aren’t actually Black? Vision is shown as a white man—that’s how Wanda imagined him in her fantasy. Marvel Studios sees him as white. Paul Bettany, who plays Vision, is white, and if he thinks about the character’s race, Blackness probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. From my perspective, making Vision a Black character doesn’t bring us any closer to Marvel, Bettany, or Vision himself. Instead, Marvel benefits by making the character more popular, which means more money for them. We’re not going to see any of that money for creating ‘Vishawn.’
This leads to a bigger question Black people are asking: when should we start gatekeeping our culture? We made Vishawn say, “What is swag, if not drip persevering?” But are we really letting our style last if we give it away so easily?
What I’m saying is that many hit shows—like WandaVision, Game of Thrones, Sleepy Hollow, and others—owe a lot to loyal Black fans. But even with all that support, Black audiences rarely get rewarded. WandaVision gave us Monica Rambeau (played by Teyonah Parris), but she was mostly treated as the Black Best Friend in Wanda’s sitcom world. Game of Thrones had only a few Black characters, and they were usually in servant roles; only the recent spinoff put Black people in power. Sleepy Hollow never gave fans the Abbie and Ichabod romance they wanted, and Nicole Beharie was mistreated behind the scenes and written off the show.
Vishawn and what’s next for Black memes
I don’t think debates about gatekeeping will stop people who really want to give non-Black characters a taste of Blackness. Honestly, part of why Color Coded exists is because we’ve seen Blackness in characters where it might not be. I’ll admit, I do it too—I still say ‘Piccolo is Black,’ even though he’s green.
Still, I think we should pause and consider what message we send when we casually give a character or celebrity a ‘Black pass.’ We should expect more from people who want to be part of our culture, because what we have is real culture. Black culture isn’t just pop culture slang and fashion—it has deep meaning, shaped by people who mixed memories of their African roots with the culture they had to adopt. It deserves respect, not just to be turned into a meme because we like a character. Digital blackface from others is already a problem; we don’t need to add to it ourselves.
What do you think? Share your thoughts below.