Back in Blackface

This is Halloween, this is Halloween...

It’s blackface season again.  It’s that time of year where we get to hate-share images of clueless white people donning black face paint for a stupid Halloween costume that was a bad idea without the makeup.  Every Halloween we are guaranteed the annual spread of clueless white people being clueless followed by a fake-ass apology.  I used to get outraged about it, but at this point in my life I have given up hope that clueless white people will stop doing stupid racist shit. 

Clueless white people will never stop doing blackface, because they don’t understand why it is racist.  Hell, even some of the people spreading images of these clueless assholes don’t understand why blackface is racist.  There is the LONG history of minstrel shows of the 19^th century.  Those existed to dehumanize blackness in the new era of black freedom.  White people no longer owned black people as property and rather than except black people into society as equals we got segregation and subjugation.  Blackface was a purposeful part of that.  Make black people a joke and you never have to take them seriously. 

This history alone should be enough for white people to never do blackface again, but with clueless white people being clueless white people, it is not.  If there is one theme to American Racism it’s:

1.  Black people complain about white racism
2. White people rationalize white racism.
3. White racism continues.

So shockingly we still have blackface.

The clueless Halloween white people see nothing wrong in grabbing some face paint or shoe polish to play dress up as a famous black person.  The joke here being, “Hey look at me! I’m black!” The clueless white people who we see in these images don’t see anything wrong with blackface today because how else can they play a black person? 

Black people are only the color of of their skin. When this young woman thinks of Nicki Minaj she doesn’t think of one of the most unique success stories in pop music.  She only sees black skin and a big ass. When this clueless white man, who is a teacher, thinks of Kanye West it's black skin and some glasses from a video that's ten fucking years old.  I mean goddamn. Kanye wears some tacky shit, but this guys outfit is nothing like anything Kanye would wear. ( A backwards cap? Fuck this guy for his laziness alone.) To clueless ass white people famous black artists are characters; characters worthy of imitation and mockery. The joke IS the color of their skin.  The black skin and the big ass are the only things they see that distinguish Nicki Minaj as anything other than nothing. 

These clueless assholes get to be "black" for a night and wash it away.  And if they are really lucky they get to go viral and apologize because they didn't think they did anything wrong. We will mock them and hate them.  Then some idiots will defend them.  Then we wait to do this again next year.

Happy Halloween.

Picture of the Week

Baedolf Hitler

This may get me into some trouble...

My twitter feed is currently full of people making jokes about “Baby Hitler”.  NYT Magazine asked its readers if they could go back in time and kill Baby Hitler would they?

This has been a common question forever and I have long noticed people who say if they have access to a time machine they would go back and kill Hitler. It's rarely end slavery or save Martin or Malcolm. It’s almost always kill Hitler. It's because he's the most identifiable evil white person ever, right?  “Let's get that motherfucker off the books!” Nobody's hypothetically going back to kill Genghis Khan. Hitler is the biggest villain of this era and no one else is even close. Bin Laden is jealous of Hitler’s PR team.

I sort of appreciate Hitler. Not in the I agree with anything he said or did (I do not, to be clear), but in the what he says about white people sort of appreciation. Hitler is still our human embodiment of evil.  He's our go to every time we want to call someone awful or evil. Hitler is also white. Super fucking white. You can't shake how white he is. Honestly, a part of me is really happy that the world’s biggest villain is a white man. You just can’t ignore his awfulness, racism, or his whiteness. (Though many people do! Racism be crazy) He can’t be whitewashed away easily.  When I think about it more and more though I do think Hitler has endured in infamy in part because of that whiteness. White people get to have the world’s biggest bad guy. We are a culture that loves villains. I don’t put it past racism to elevate the evil white person’s stature over an evil minority.  (I am not complaining about that!) It’s the smaller vilification of minorities that is more troubling.  Hitler is such a big bad white villain other white offenses are easier to overlook in white eyes.  (Jim Crow and Japanese Internment)

I think the Baby Hitler hypothetical comes up so often because if someone did go back and kill Hitler, and you’re a white person, your world doesn’t really change much.  White people get to enjoy him both ways. They can hate him and live in the world in which he was defeated.  And they can know the fact that if he had won, they would still be on top. 

Picture of the Week