We seem to need a Blackface History Month – Chico Enterprise-Record
But this February has been overwhelmed by some perplexing news events that give me reason to think that some black history lessons are in order. If white men in power are as cavalier about smearing black shoe polish on their faces to mock their fellow black citizens as news reports suggest, then we ought to have a serious discussion about history. Not black history, but American history.
The sojourn of black people in this country is, after all, part and parcel of American history — not some footnote or sidebar that is separate and distinct from the story of this nation. And much of that story, if told accurately, must dwell on the brutality, oppression and rank discrimination that black Americans have endured.
The popularity of minstrelsy and blackface in the 19th century came out of that era’s ugly insistence on white supremacy and black inferiority. In minstrel shows, white performers smeared their faces with burnt cork to lampoon black folk as lazy, stupid, libidinous and criminally inclined. As whites portrayed them, blacks were happily enslaved, desperately in need of the “civilizing” hand of their white masters.
And their success spawned many imitators. Frederick Douglass once called blackface minstrels “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.”
Northam has, so far, refused to resign, insisting on presiding over a statehouse struggling in a tsunami of scandal. (Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would presumably take the office if Northam resigned, has been accused of sexual assault.) Indeed, after first apologizing for appearing in blackface in a photo in his medical school yearbook, he later said he wasn’t in the photo. (Northam did, however, admit to smearing black shoe polish on his face to imitate Michael Jackson during a college dance contest.)
He plans to hire a private investigator, according to published reports, to solve the mystery of a how such a photo could have appeared on his yearbook page. In the picture, by the way, the person in blackface is standing next to someone dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, another costume meant to be … amusing?
We seem to need a Blackface History Month – Chico Enterprise-Record
But this February has been overwhelmed by some perplexing news events that give me reason to think that some black history lessons are in order. If white men in power are as cavalier about smearing black shoe polish on their faces to mock their fellow black citizens as news reports suggest, then we ought to have a serious discussion about history. Not black history, but American history.
The sojourn of black people in this country is, after all, part and parcel of American history — not some footnote or sidebar that is separate and distinct from the story of this nation. And much of that story, if told accurately, must dwell on the brutality, oppression and rank discrimination that black Americans have endured.
The popularity of minstrelsy and blackface in the 19th century came out of that era’s ugly insistence on white supremacy and black inferiority. In minstrel shows, white performers smeared their faces with burnt cork to lampoon black folk as lazy, stupid, libidinous and criminally inclined. As whites portrayed them, blacks were happily enslaved, desperately in nee
d of the “civilizing” hand of their white masters.
And their success spawned many imitators. Frederick Douglass once called blackface minstrels “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.”
Northam has, so far, refused to resign, insisting on presiding over a statehouse struggling in a tsunami of scandal. (Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would presumably take the office if Northam resigned, has been accused of sexual assault.) Indeed, after first apologizing for appearing in blackface in a photo in his medical school yearbook, he later said he wasn’t in the photo. (Northam did, however, admit to smearing black shoe polish on his face to imitate Michael Jackson during a college dance contest.)
He plans to hire a private investigator, according to published reports, to solve the mystery of a how such a photo could have appeared on his yearbook page. In the picture, by the way, the person in blackface is standing next to someone dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, another costume meant to be … amusing?