White People Named Black / Black People Named White Reaction Meme
Dialogue
Overview
This is a two-panel reaction meme that uses screenshots from the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy to deliver a wordplay joke. The top panel features the character Vanya Hargreeves (portrayed by Elliot Page) with a shocked expression, looking out from a car window, paired with the text: "White people with the last name 'Black'". The bottom panel shows character Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) with a similarly shocked, bewildered expression, also in a car, with the text: "Black people with the last name 'White'". The humor comes from the ironic contrast between a person's racial identity and their surname, playing on the dual meaning of "Black" and "White" as both racial descriptors and common English last names. The exaggerated shocked expressions of the characters emphasize the absurdity of this contradictory naming scenario.
Origin notes
The meme is a remix of a scene from the popular Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy, repurposing existing show screenshots with added text to create a new joke. The watermark "made with mematic" in the bottom left corner confirms it was created using the Mematic app, a widely used tool for generating memes on social media platforms. This type of two-panel reaction meme is commonly shared on sites like Reddit, Twitter/X, Instagram, and Facebook, where users adapt pop culture imagery to comment on everyday, humorous observations. The original scene from The Umbrella Academy does not feature this text; it was added post-production to create the wordplay joke.
![This is a 2-panel reaction meme using the well-known Mr Bean exam cheating scene template. In the first panel, the student sitting on the left is labeled 'Europe', focused on writing on his exam paper, while Mr. Bean sitting to his right is labeled 'Americans naming cities' and is sneakily glancing at Europe's paper. In the second panel, Europe looks up with an annoyed, surprised expression at Mr. Bean, who is caught looking, with text next to Mr. Bean reading '"New [City name]"'. The joke satirizes the common naming convention used for many United States cities, where the prefix 'New' is added to the name of an existing European city for newly established settlements, such as New York, New Orleans, New Hampshire, and New London.](https://gagbase.com/i/c/memes/96/58/df/90/9658df90d3c4d5bf9899ba1e9a441daa.jpeg.webp)
