Joe Feagin contends that while it is important to acknowledge that white racial framing helps legitimize systemic racism, it is also essential to understand counter-framing. He suggests that racial counter-frames are typically, though not exclusively, developed by Indigenous peoples and people of color as a way of making sense of persistent racial disparities.

A good illustration of counter-framing presented itself when some familiar names, who happened to be Star Wars fans and/or supporters of the casting choices for the 2015 film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, pushed back against #BoycottStarWarsVII. African American director (Selma and 13th) Ava DuVernay created the hashtag #CelebrateStarWarsVII, which served as a powerful counter-frame to #BoycottStarWarsVII. People of color, like DuVernay and the film’s star John Boyega, do not share whites’ material investment in whiteness. They have a necessary investment in counter-frames. So, too, does Aaron Barksdale, an African American Star Wars fan turned Huffington Post writer. Regarding #BoycottStarWarsVII, he wrote:

[R]ace relations in space are not light-speed ahead of our own challenges in the real world. I hope that more diversity is able to shine in the follow-up films — fingers crossed there will at least be one black female human character. One thing is clear, the force is definitely woke.

As #BoycottStarWarsVII started trending, counter-framers took charge of the hashtag. Accordingly, the bulk of the tweets began to counter the systemic racism and white racial framing behind the hashtag’s origin. Counter-resisters, for example, wrote:

“I would love to see the Venn diagram of #BoycottStarWarsVII supporters and Trump supporters, but I’m pretty sure it’s just one circle.”

“I’m going to #BoycottStarWarsVII because I missed the entire point of science fiction and all the morals it tries to teach?”

“Lunatic #BoycottStarWarsVII racists, weren’t you serving drinks in Mos Eisley cantina? (‘We don’t serve their kind here.’)”

“Aliens that speak English, bad physics & WOOKIES, but you people can’t deal with a black guy?”

#CelebrateStarWarsVII accentuated and extolled the diversity of the film’s cast and Star Wars fans. Boyega chimed in too, stating,

I’m in the movie, what are you going to do about it? … You either enjoy it or you don’t. I’m not saying get used to the future … [it] is already happening. People of colour and women are increasingly being shown on screen. For things to be whitewashed just doesn’t make sense.

According to Feagin, counter-frames such as anti-racist counter-frames and home-culture frames have long provided people of color with “important tool kits enabling individuals and groups to effectively counter recurring white hostility and discrimination” (p. 166). Successfully countering the recurring white hostility and discrimination he faced, Boyega recognized the systemic nature of the whitelash, as opposed to seeing it as simply individual prejudice. He explained,

It’s Hollywood’s fault for letting this get so far, that when a black person or a female, or someone from a different cultural group, is cast in a movie, we have to have debates as to whether they’re placed there just to meet a [quota]. … ‘He’s just placed there for political correctness.’ I don’t hear you guys saying that when Brad Pitt is there. When Tom Cruise is there. Hell, when Shia LaBeouf is there, you guys ain’t saying that. That is just blatant racism.

The counter-frame of which Feagin has so skillfully written is plainly seen in DuVernay’s and Boyega’s responses to #BoycottStarWarsVII and other systemic racism and white racial framing surrounding The Force Awakens.