I was surprised to see blackface make news headlines for the second time in the past two weeks, thinking that the first instance was an anomaly, a once in a blue moon kind of thing. Some Australian talent show showed white individuals who put on black face and fake afro wigs parading around as the "Jackson Jive" and now French Vogue is celebrating "super models" and parading them around in black face and 'culturally inspired dress' (when ironically enough no black models 'made the cut' as supermodels). Ironically enough, Japan has had performers sing in blackface and Mexico produced a national stamp that was honoring a comic book where the main character is an offensive, monkey looking, black youth and despite US pleas to not produce the stamp, they wre produced anyways. (all of these occurences are discussed in the CNN hyperlink posted below).
We know, most of us anyways, that in the US blackface is not something that is taken lightly AT ALL and I know that this part of our history probably isn't very well read or learned in other parts of the world so is it our responsibility to educate other communities as to why blackface is degrading? Is it our responsibility to say that it was used to portray the black community as idiots, buffoons, subservient, less human, etc. What do you all think? I know in the US a lot of people don’t take the histories of other communities seriously and a large part of that is ignorance. If people were to speak up and say, “Hey, that’s not right and this is why...” wouldn’t we listen? Maybe if we raised our voices collectively people would finally get the fact that blackface is simply NOT entertainment...
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