What Is The Obsession With Blackface?
It’s so shocking that so many people don’t seem to understand why Blackface is so offensive. There have been way too many times this week where I’ve seen people brush it off as a joke or as a way to pay homage instead of what it is, racism. It is so confusing to see people defend those like Antoine Griezmann or the Star Sports Bookmakers who decided to show a man wearing blackface as part of a Diane Abbott costume at a darts competition. It is completely clear that these people were using blackface to mock the people they wanted to imitate and they wanted others to laugh with them which is why I’m not sure if people are doing it on purpose because they actually are racist or if they’re just being plain ignorant. Just in case you live under a rock and weren’t sure of the history of blackface, here is a short lesson.
The first minstrel shows were performed in 1830s New York by white performers with blackened and tattered clothing. They mostly imitated and mimicked enslaved Africans on Southern plantations. These performances characterized blacks as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice. For anyone who thinks this was just an American thing, in medieval Europe, blackface was often used for entertainment. For example, in France and Italy, black masked figures would act out antisocial behaviour such as violence or dark/evil magic.
Blackface and the imitation of blackness and black people i.e through language, movement, deportment, and character as caricatures continues through the media today. How many times have we seen a group of people in blackface, whether it be as Halloween costume, or part of a social or whatever stupid reason they have, at colleges, universities or work insist that it was all for fun and there was no malice or racial hatred intended as soon as they are faced with any criticism. So what about people who say they are using blackface as a form of homage? Here again, we should return to the question of power and control.
One of the main reasons blackface is so offensive is because it has frequently been used to perpetuate demeaning and horrible stereotypes of black people. I challenge anyone to find a video of a performance using Blackface, where the black person being imitated is shown in a positive light. This is because at its heart, “blackface” is about power. Specifically, using one’s power to take something important from someone else and use it for ridicule or entertainment.
Another reason blackface is unacceptable is because it reduces billions of people to the one thing they had in common, their skin colour. Do people seriously believe that black people are so similar that you can’t dress up as one without painting your skin black? Black skin is not a costume, there are thousands of ways for you to ‘pay homage’ to any black celebrity in the world without darkening your skin.
Regardless of your intent, you just can’t separate blackface from its disgusting history – because the negative effects of this history still shape people’s lives today. No one should have the right to take someone else’s ethnicity for a day to use it for their own selfish purposes and then drop it when it no longer suits them. If you’re still unsure of whether you should use blackface to dress up as your ‘favourite’ black celebrity, check out this clear and concise diagram:
