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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMy wife had an "a...haaa...." moment
I'm married to a high school teacher who's always been level headed. (More than me.) She doesn't post anything weird on social media as a teacher, she doesn't drink, she doesn't swear. She grew up a Mennonite from a very Amish community. So a few days ago I saw some Amish clothing in our house and asked what the heck? She told me she and another teacher were going to dress up as Amish woman for Halloween? Rather surprised I asked if that was a good idea or is that making fun of Amish? Then I asked if she would get in trouble if she dressed up like a Muslim woman or a Hasidic Jew? The look on her face.
So now she's going as a whoopie cushion full with the fart noise maker.
Vinca
(50,273 posts)In particular, I never understood the brouhaha about the white actress who wore black face and went as a character from "Orange Is the New Black." It's not making fun of someone, it's wanting to be them for a few hours.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)Vinca
(50,273 posts)Can they be white? This is the kind of snowflakiness people hate. I've seen people dress as Native Americans and put on war paint and nary a peep. I know I'll get a millions responses to this and I probably shouldn't have bothered posting because it's just too stupid. We're on the brink of nuclear war and suddenly everyone is going to be horrified about Halloween costumes.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)And did you miss the same issue on Native Americans? Not OK
Vinca
(50,273 posts)The actress who dressed as the "Orange Is the New Black" character loved the character and was paying her homage. It's got nothing at all to do with slavery. But, as I said, sorry I posted this when we should be talking about nuclear annihilation. It's not going to matter whether we're in or out of black/white/brown/red/green face when we're incinerated.
demmiblue
(36,859 posts)Blackface first made the news this holiday season when a former Dancing with the Stars participant darkened her skin to honor her favorite actor from Orange is the New Black. News recently broke of a group of Italian fashion executives including designer Alessandro DellAcqua donning blackface, complete with jet-black skin, and distended whitened mouths and white gloves at a Disco Africa party.
And lets not forget the Florida man who blackened up to portray a mortally wounded Trayvon Martin. Perhaps folks need a refresher course on why blackface is not a great idea for their next costume party.
Blackface minstrelsy first became nationally popular in the late 1820s when white male performers portrayed African-American characters using burnt cork to blacken their skin. Wearing tattered clothes, the performances mocked black behavior, playing racial stereotypes for laughs. Although Jim Crow was probably born in the folklore of the enslaved in the Georgia Sea Islands, one of the most famous minstrel performers, a white man named Thomas Daddy Rice brought the character to the stage for the first time. Rice said that on a trip through the South he met a runaway slave, who performed a signature song and dance called jump Jim Crow. Rices performances, with skin blackened and drawn on distended blood red lips surrounded by white paint, were said to be just Rices attempt to depict the realities of black life.
Jim Crow grew to be minstrelsys most famous character, in the hands of Rice and other performers Jim Crow was depicted as a runaway: the wheeling stranger and traveling intruder. The gag in Jim Crow performances was that Crow would show up and disturb white passengers in otherwise peaceful first class rail cars, hotels, restaurants, and steamships. Jim Crow performances served as an object lesson about the dangers of free black people, so much so that the segregated spaces first created in northern states in the 1850s were popularly called Jim Crow cars. Jim Crow became synonymous with white desires to keep black people out of white, middle-class spaces.
Minstrel shows became hugely popular in the 1840s exposing white audiences in the North with their first exposure to any depiction of black life. They would often feature a broad cast of characters; from Zip Coon, the educated free black man who pronounced everything incorrectly, to Mammy, a fat, black faithful slave who was really just obviously played by a man in a dress. Black children were depicted as unkempt and ill raised pickaninnies. The running joke about pickaninnies was that they were disposable; they were easily killed because of their stupidity and the lack of parental supervision.
Minstrelsy desensitized Americans to horrors of chattel slavery. These performances were object lessons about the harmlessness of southern slavery. By encouraging audiences to laugh, they showed bondage as an appropriate answer for the lazy, ignorant slave. Why worry about the abolition of slavery when black life looked so fun, silly, and carefree? Even the violence of enslavement just became part of the joke.
These erroneous portrayals of black life were seen by thousands of Americans in the decades before the Civil War. Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln attended and enjoyed minstrel shows. President Lincoln had the Union band play Dixie at Lees surrender; the comic dialogues in Huckleberry Finn are reminiscent of minstrel performances. Minstrelsy became Americas first national popular culture.
Minstrelsy lived on long after the Civil War, with African-American performers donning blackface to perform as minstrels on stage. In horrifying irony, white audiences would reject black performers not wearing blackface as not appearing to be black enough. The preeminent African-American vaudeville performer Bert Williams donned blackface for his stage performances. Audiences refused to allow him to perform without blackening up.
Blackface was used to push products from cigarettes to pancakes while minstrel songs were turned into sheet music, sold and sung around the world. Classic American songs such as Jimmy Crack Corn, Camptown Races and Someones in the Kitchen with Dinah all began as minstrel songs. Childrens rhymes and games also are drawn from our minstrel past. Eeny Meeny, Miny, Moe, initially commanded that the listener to catch a ni**er by his toe. Do Your Ears Hang Low was originally the 1829 song entitled Zip Coon. The story of the childrens book Ten Little Monkeys was first published as Ten Little Ni**er Boys where each boy was killed as the story progressed.
Blackface became a mainstay of stage and later film performance in the twentieth century. Most often blackface was used as a comic device that played on the stereotypes of black laziness, ignorance, or crass behavior for laughs. Sometimes blackface was used simply to portray black characters. The 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, the first feature film to be shown in the White House, used blackface to portray Reconstruction era black legislators as incompetent and to paint all black men as threatening to rape white women. The first talking picture, 1927s The Jazz Singer starred Al Jolson, one of the most famous American performers of his day, in blackface. Even Americas sweetheart, Shirley Temple, donned blackface in 1935 film The Littlest Rebel. While none of the black actors in The Littlest Rebel film wore blackface, they performed in a style first created on the minstrel stage one hundred years earlier.
The history of blackface minstrelsy isnt talked about regularly today, but its cultural residue is all around us. Its painful to note that as one of the most unflinching portraits of American slavery hits the screens in 12 Years a Slave, people still continue to blacken up for laughs. Until we actively remember the ugliness of this history, people will continue to blacken their faces without recognizing the horror hidden beneath the paint.
http://thegrio.com/2013/10/30/a-brief-history-of-blackface-just-in-time-for-halloween/
Vinca
(50,273 posts)A white guy is Spanky, a black woman is Darla and another white guy is Buckwheat. Darla wears light pancake make-up to get in character. Buckwheat wears dark pancake make-up. Who do we go after and shame? Just the Buckwheat character? Darla? Halloween? I'm contemplating deleting this post because it's really too stupid and I regret starting it.
Neema
(1,151 posts)Neither is Native American war paint.
brush
(53,784 posts)and the other poster is right. It's never a good idea for whites to do blackface.
Why not bring back Al Jolson and "Mammy"?
Now let's hear the predictable response from defenders of blackface.
Gawd, why is it even necessary to explain this on a progressive site no less?
Here's an even better take on it:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029748415
Vinca
(50,273 posts)It's Halloween. It's not a political statement. It's bobbing for apples and begging for candy corn. If I see a little black child in white face because she wants to be the Little Mermaid for the night it will make me smile. If I see a little white kid in full Tonto mode, it will make me smile.
brush
(53,784 posts)Neema
(1,151 posts)be offensive in order to celebrate? Evolve. Choose a different costume. Have some fucking imagination. Blackface is never okay because of the history behind it. Whiteface is unnecessary but not offensive because white people are not oppressed. That's the difference. Anyway, I'd much rather see a little black girl dress up like the Little Mermaid WITHOUT putting on white face because the story is about a mermaid. Being white is not what makes her character interesting, having a mermaid tale is.
I remember when my university was considering taking the Native American mascot away. Some alumni and students were sooooo upset. I loved my school and I loved going to football games, but my answer was that was always why? Why have a mascot that is offensive when we can so easily change it? A young privileged white student running around the football field in Native American dress, mimicking rituals that are sacred to some people is just not okay. Tradition isn't a good excuse. We used to think it was okay to own slaves, we used to think it was okay for women to not have a vote or own property, we used to think it was okay for men to hit their wives. We've evolved.
titaniumsalute
(4,742 posts)Heck she has numerous Amish and Mennonite friends from where she grew up. She thought her inner city kids would have fun seeing her dress from her home county.
By the way...I'm going as the Amish women and she's going as an Amish guy to a private Halloween party LOL.
Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)We were the Serta Counting sheep (from the commercial) and she got a nasty comment because she was wearing black face paint.
The son of a former coworker got beat up for dressing as Tim Meadows's Ladies Man character.
Intent in both cases was clearly not demeaning, but we often only see what we want to see.
titaniumsalute
(4,742 posts)The term black sheep has nothing to do with black people. I have a tie with all white sheep and a black on in the middle. Not a race thing at all.
Vinca
(50,273 posts)Orsino
(37,428 posts)mercuryblues
(14,532 posts)titaniumsalute
(4,742 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,722 posts)I laughed. Of course, I was young back then and still trying to get over some school age experiences due to Sister Mary Agnes's strict demeanor.
Well, damn. I just realized she must have had something to do with giving me my Patron saint! Conned by a nun.
Seriously though, St. Agnes was something else.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)Blue_true
(31,261 posts)I must admit that a teacher dressed as a Vampress would almost cause me to return to school.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)Or would that insult someone...
As a child, mom and dad took us to a Unitarian church. I guess Ill dress up as a Unitarian.