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Сентябрь
2019

Why is Justin Trudeau’s brown face picture so offensive?

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It's important to understand the history if you're wondering what the fuss is about.

American actress and singer Judy Garland (1922 - 1969) in blackface as Judy Bellaire in 'Everybody Sing', 1938. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
Judy Garland in blackface as Judy Bellaire in 1938’s Everybody Sing’ (Picture: Getty Images)

It’s been roughly 200 years since performers started ‘blacking up’ to mock enslaved African Americans and surprisingly it’s still a thing today.

Despite numerous headlines about why it’s so hurtful, drunken students, and parade organisers still keep finding themselves in hot water over the troubling practice.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now been forced to apologise for a yearbook photo showing him in ‘brownface makeup’ at an Arabian Nights themed party in 2001.

As the Liberal Party leader conceded: ‘Yes it was. I didn’t consider it racist at the time, but now we know better.’

Before anyone jumps in to say ‘it’s just a bit of fancy dress’ or ‘it’s political correctness gone mad’, it’s worth learning about the history of blackface to understand just how offensive it is.

What is blackface?

September 1931: Minstrel show performers Alexander and Mose. (Photo by Sasha/Getty Images)
White minstrel performers Alexander and Mose pose for the camera in 1931 (Picture: Getty Images)

White performers started blackening their faces with burnt cork or shoe polish for minstrel shows in 1830s New York.

They wore ragged clothing, painted wide and red lips on themselves and imitated Africans forced to work in southern slave plantations.

Historian Dale Cockrell said the shows were popular with working class white people who felt ‘squeezed politically, economically, and socially from the top, but also from the bottom’.

They peaked as hostility grew after slavery was abolished following the American civil war and black people started demanding civil rights.

In other words the shows were a form of punching down in which the audience were made to feel better about themselves by laughing at stereotypes of lazy, buffonish and ignorant African Americans.

UNSPECIFIED - JANUARY 01: (AUSTRALIA OUT) Photo of Al JOLSON; With blacked up face in the Jazz Singer (Photo by GAB Archive/Redferns)
Minstrel performances were popular among white working class people who felt threatened by the idea of black people gaining civil rights (Picture: GAB Archive/Redferns)

The idea was conjured up by New York born actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice, known as the ‘Father of Minstrely’, who reportedly drew inspiration for his Jim Crow character from slaves he saw in the southern states.

US State and local segregation laws which running from the late 1800s to 1965 were even known as Jim Crow Laws, after the stage character.

The idea of white performers painting their face black actually stretches back to old productions of Shakespear’s Othello, but blackface has become more closely associated with American minstrel shows which really emphasised hurtful portrayals of Africans.

Many years later the performances made their way into radio, TV shows and movies, with the likes of Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney blacking up.

Blackface soon caught on in other countries including Britain, where the Black and White Minstrel Show only finished in 1978.

Why is it so offensive?

Scene from the 1929 film Why Bring That Up?. (Photo by ?????? John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
Actors playing caricatures of black people has helped enforce negative stereotypes for centuries (Picture: Corbis/Getty Images)

Blackface ‘allows society to routinely and historically imagine African Americans as not fully human. It serves to rationalise violence and Jim Crow segregation,’ says David Leonard, a professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies at Washington State University.

In a 2012 essay for the Huffington Post, he said: ‘Blackface is part of a history of dehumanization, of denied citizenship and of efforts to excuse and justify state violence.

‘From lynchings to mass incarceration, whites have utilized blackface (and the resulting dehumanization) as part of its moral and legal justification for violence.’

He said the very idea of blacking up is far too loaded to ever be brushed off as a harmless bit of fun.

Mr Leonard says blackface still helps to reinforce racist views about black people being dangerous criminals or lazy unemployed people which many still hold today.

On November 17th, 2018 in Zaandstad, Netherlands. Like each year the first Saturday after 11 November, the red-and-white-clad Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) arrives by steamboat to great fanfare. During the parade anti-racism demonstrators protest against the Sinterklaas helpers, called Black Petes. It's been six years since the "Black Peter is Racism" campaign was launched. Though blackface caricature much longer is a painful annual phenomenon Black Dutch, now seems all Dutch society to be aware of the discussion. The UN has reported that Black Pete is directly related to the Dutch slavery state. Hundreds of police officers have been called there for ensuring that the arrival of Sinterklaas in Zaanse Schans without problems. There was a lot of tension between the demonstrators and some pro Black Pete people who stayed in front of the anti demonstration. (Photo by Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The Dutch tradition of ‘Black Pete’ has been increasingly diving opinion (Picture: NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Ann Sothern, George Murphy, Ethel Merman, Eddie Cantor singing with the Goldwyn girls in a scene from the film 'Kid Millions', 1934. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)
Blackface is now seen as a way of dehumanising black people, but the message is still lost on many people at Halloween parties and stag-dos (Picture: United Artists/Getty Images)

The practice has been extended to other minority ethnic people, hence Trudeau using ‘brownface’ as a character of a an Arabic man.

Leonard also argues it doesn’t matter if you think it’s not racist or if you had no idea it could be seen as racist.

He added: ‘The ability to disparage, to demonize, to ridicule, and to engage in racially hurtful practices from the comfort of one’s segregated neighborhoods and racially homogeneous schools reflects both privilege and power.’

Other variations of blackface including Zwarte Piet, or ‘Black Pete’, a Christmas character in the Netherlands, are often defended as a form of historical tradition.

But anti-racism campaigners still say the mischievous sidekick of Sinterklaas who kidnaps naughty children and takes them to Spain, still promoted harmful stereotypes.

Anti-racist groups protest during the Saint Nicholas arrives In Netherlands in Zaandam on 17 November 2018. Saint Nicholas arrives one more year from Spain to Netherlands. This year the national celebration of this festivity has been in the town of Zaandam, famous for its picturesque windmills. From there, St. Nicholas will depart to the rest of Dutch cities. Once again the celebration has been affected by the controversy created by anti-racist groups that accuse this tradition of having racist components. Specifically, in the character of Zwarte Piet, a character who appears as a black man who serves as a servant to St. Nicholas. Against the anti-racists, the defenders of the tradition argue that Zwarte Piet is not a black man, but that his face is black because of the soot from the chimney where he comes down to leave gifts to children. (Photo by Nacho Calonge/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Anti-racism groups protest as Saint Nicholas arrives witch Black Pete in Zaandam, the Netherlands (Picture: Getty Images)
circa 1925: A portrait of Al Jolson, the original head of Christy's Minstrels. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)
Minstrel shows stretched well past the Civil War into Hollywood (Picture: Getty Images)

Founder of podcast festival ShoutOut network Imriel Morgan told Metro.co.uk she remains ‘astounded at the level of ignorance’ about donning blackface for Halloween parties.

She added: ‘The reality is that if you’re a non-black person you have the privilege and luxury of not having to deal with all of the biases the world places on black and brown skin.

‘Chances are your skin tone isn’t automatically viewed as suspicious, you’re not perceived as lazy until proven otherwise, or labelled disruptive or as a class clown because you have learning difficulties.

‘So when we say painting yourself black is racist, we’re not saying it to be difficult or to ‘play the race card’, it’s to acknowledge the fact that the very act of doing so reinforces these baseless mythical assertions about blackness and our skin’s ability to override our humanity.’

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