Quote:
Originally Posted by 421Fill
seriously? don't you have anything else more important to worry about, brassmonkey? just some dumb halloween costume that seemed to be going over fine with her peers. in my opinion, if it's not accepted with a negative reaction, then it's just that... a costume, and all in the spirit of the holiday party.
besides, wasn't 'blackface' done when black people weren't allowed to be in movies or plays because of racial segregation? this is hardly a case of a black actor not getting the job in lieu of the white chick with corny makeup.
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im not worried about it i heard it on the radio thought i would chat about it
Blackface is theatrical makeup used by white people to play black people. In the United States, where the practice became popular during the 19th century, it became associated with certain archetypes of American racism such as the "happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation" or the "dandified coon ". Hence Blackface has become associated with racism, particularly in the USA, so that the term may be used in a broader sense to include similarly stereotyped performances even when they do not involve blackface makeup.
Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for roughly 100 years beginning around 1830. It quickly became popular overseas, particularly so in Britain, where the tradition lasted even longer than in the US, occurring on primetime TV as late as 1978 and 1981. In both the United States and Britain, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition, but it predates that tradition, and it survived long past the heyday of the minstrel show. White blackface performers in the past used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Later, black artists also performed in blackface.
Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrelsy played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. In some quarters, the caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist to the present day and are a cause of ongoing controversy.
By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface makeup used in performance in the U.S. and elsewhere. It remains in relatively limited use as a theatrical device, mostly outside the U.S., and is more commonly used today as social commentary or satire. Perhaps the most enduring effect of blackface is the precedent it established in the introduction of African American culture to an international audience, albeit through a distorted lens. Blackface's groundbreaking appropriation, exploitation, and assimilation of African-American culture?as well as the inter-ethnic artistic collaborations that stemmed from it?were but a prologue to the lucrative packaging, marketing, and dissemination of African-American cultural expression and its myriad derivative forms in today's world popular culture.