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 19th 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:
- Black people complain about white racism
- White people rationalize white racism.
- 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
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