This image above is a reproduction of a 1900 minstrel show poster, originally published by the Strobridge Litho Co., shows the blackface transformation from white to “black”.

For those who don’t understand “BlackFace”

Simple answer:

BlackFace is deeply rutted in racist bigotry.

Longer answer:

Blackface is make-up used by non-black performers to represent a racist caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereotypes such as the “happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation” or the “dandified coon”. By the middle of the century, blackface minstrel shows had become a distinctive American art form of an openly racist culture. Early in the 20th century, blackface branched off from the minstrel show. In the United States, blackface had largely fallen out of favor by the turn of the 21st century and is now considered offensive and disrespectful, though the practice continues in other countries. ref, ref

Blackface was a performance tradition in the American theater for roughly 100 years beginning around 1830. It quickly became popular elsewhere, particularly so in Britain, where the tradition lasted longer than in the U.S., occurring on primetime TV, most famously in The Black and White Minstrel Show, which ended in 1978, and in Are You Being Served?’s Christmas specials in 1976 and finally in 1981. ref, ref

The racist inspired Minstrel shows were performed by white people in make-up or blackface for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and all-black minstrel groups that formed and toured under the direction of white people. Minstrel shows lampooned black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. ref, ref

Minstrelsy’s racism (and sexism) could be rather vicious. There were comic songs in which blacks were “roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements”, and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman’s eyes. On the other hand, the fact that the minstrel show broached the subjects of slavery and race at all is perhaps more significant than the racist manner in which it did so. Despite these pro-plantation attitudes, minstrelsy was banned in many Southern cities. ref, ref

Racism made black minstrelsy a difficult profession. When playing Southern towns, performers had to stay in character off stage, dressed in ragged “slave clothes” and perpetually smiling. Troupes left town quickly after each performance, and some had so much trouble securing lodging that they hired whole trains or had custom sleeping cars built, complete with hidden compartments to hide in should things turn ugly Even these were no haven, as whites sometimes used the cars for target practice. Their salaries, though higher than those of most blacks of the period, failed to reach levels earned by white performers; even superstars like Kersands earned slightly less than featured white minstrels.[69] Most black troupes did not last long. ref, ref

In both the United States and Britain, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition. Early white performers in blackface used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish[citation needed] 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. By the late 19th- and early 20th-century American and British stage where it last prospered featured many other, mostly racist ethnically-based, comic stereotypes: conniving, venal Jews; drunken brawling Irishmen with blarney at the ready; oily Italians; stodgy Germans; and gullible rural rubes. ref, ref

Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrels not only played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes, and perceptions worldwide. Minstrelsy’s reaction to Uncle Tom’s Cabin is indicative of plantation content at the time. Tom acts largely came to replace other plantation narratives, particularly in the third act. These sketches sometimes supported Stowe’s novel, but just as often they turned it on its head or attacked the author. ref, ref

Minstrel songs and sketches featured several stock characters, most popularly the slave and the dandy. These were further divided into sub-archetypes such as the mammy, her counterpart the old darky, the provocative mulatto wench, and the black soldier. Minstrels claimed that their songs and dances were authentically black, although the extent of the black influence remains debated. Among the appeals and racial stereotypes of early blackface performance were the pleasure of the grotesque and its infantilization of blacks. ref, ref

They have been decried on many levels but one is that they as falsely showing happy slaves while at the same time making fun of them; segregationists thought such shows were “disrespectful” of social norms as they portrayed runaway slaves with sympathy and would undermine the southerners’ “peculiar institution”. Thomas Dartmouth Rice’s successful song-and-dance number, “Jump Jim Crow”, brought blackface performance to a new level of prominence in the early 1830s. At the height of Rice’s success, The Boston Post wrote, “The two most popular characters in the world at the present are [Queen] Victoria and Jim Crow.” ref, ref

By the late 18th century, blackface characters had begun to appear, usually as “servant” types whose roles did little more than provide some element of comic relief. Eventually, similar performers appeared in entr’actes in New York theaters and other venues such as taverns and circuses. As a result, the blackface “Sambo” character came to supplant the “tall-tale-telling Yankee” and “frontiersman” character-types in popularity, and white actors such as Charles Mathews, George Washington Dixon, and Edwin Forrest began to build reputations as blackface performers. ref, ref

From the Current News:

• Blackface scandal doesn’t surprise people of color
• Blackface lynch pics from Roy Cooper 1979 North Carolina yearbook
• Blackface on Northam’s yearbook page “disgusted” school‘s first black graduate
• Gov. Ralph Northam retracts apology, denies being in racist yearbook photo, then admits to being in blackface
• Blackface scandal hits second US politician
• Blackface in Virginia, other incidents show how deeply rooted anti-black racism is in America
• Past or Present: Here’s Why Blackface Is Unacceptable
• Blackface Controversy Hits Home At Wake Forest University; School Addresses the Issue
• Sultan: Blackface in white sororities and fraternities, is as common as cheerleaders 
• Blackface, other insensitivities ran rampant in ’80s culture
• Attorney Investigating Northam’s Blackface Photo Belonged To A Country Club With No Black Members
• SMITH: Blackface isn’t a part of the University’s past, it’s our present
• Perspective | Yes, politicians wore blackface. It used to be all-American (racist) ‘fun.’
• School issues apology after principal appears in blackfaceas Steve Harvey at staff meeting
• Analysis | From America to China, blackface is a global problem
• Florida state GOP lawmaker says high school blackface photo is ‘decontextualized’
• Photo Appears to Show Simsbury High Students in Blackface: School Officials
• As he tries to recover from blackface scandal, Virginia Democratic Gov. Northam calls slaves ‘indentured servants’
• When We’re Surrounded by Blackface
• Jefferson School Director Discusses History of Blackface, Impacts on Central Va.
• High school coach fired over blackface photo
• Another student from Northam’s med school seen in blackface in yearbook photo
• Virginia’s painful ‘blackface‘ past and present
• School apologises after children perform Black History Month poem in blackface masks

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Tin windup toy of “Ham and Sam The Minstrel Team.”

“The pervasiveness of stereotypical images like these made the civil rights efforts of African Americans even more difficult. The black people represented here were irresponsible, laughable, and difficult to understand. If white people accepted these stereotypes, it became that much easier to deny African Americans the full rights of citizenship. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Collection of James M. Caselli and Jonathan Mark Scharer.” ref

“Historian Dale Cockrell once noted that poor and working-class whites who felt “squeezed politically, economically, and socially from the top, but also from the bottom, invented minstrelsy” as a way of expressing the oppression that marked being members of the majority, but outside of the white norm. Minstrelsy, comedic performances of “blackness” by whites in exaggerated costumes and make-up, cannot be separated fully from the racial derision and stereotyping at its core.  By distorting the features and culture of African Americans—including their looks, language, dance, deportment, and character—white Americans were able to codify whiteness across class and geopolitical lines as its antithesis. “ The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify.” ref

“The first minstrel shows were performed in 1830s New York by white performers with blackened faces (most used burnt cork or shoe polish) and tattered clothing who imitated and mimicked enslaved Africans on Southern plantations. These performances characterized blacks as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice. Thomas Dartmouth Rice, known as the “Father of Minstrelsy,” developed the first popularly known blackface character, “Jim Crow” in 1830. By 1845, the popularity of the minstrel had spawned an entertainment subindustry, manufacturing songs and sheet music, makeup, costumes, as well as a ready-set of stereotypes upon which to build new performances.” ref

“Blackface and the codifying of blackness— language, movement, deportment, and character—as caricature persists through mass media and in public performances today.  In addition to the increased popularity of “black” Halloween costumes, colleges and universities across the country continue to battle against student and professor blackface performances.  In each instance, those facing scrutiny for blackface performances insist no malice or racial hatred was intended.” ref

ref

We Should Confront the Toxic Legacy of Blackface

“Racist 19th-century minstrelsy survived into 1970s Britain.” ref

“Hidden away in the storage facilities of Hollywood movie studios and entombed in the vaults of museums and libraries – both in the UK and in the US. These toxic collections are the artistic and physical detritus of a form of entertainment that from the late 1830s right through until the 1960s and 70s. While the songs are today never performed and the films either never broadcast or heavily edited, the central image of this genre remains vivid and grotesque – a white face “blacked up” with burnt cork.” ref

“Blackface minstrelsy was a bizarre and disturbing form of racial impersonation founded on cultural appropriation. It took the creative output of enslaved African Americans and weaponized it against them. Minstrelsy was not merely a reflection of American racism – it also became one of the great engines of that racism, propagating and reinforcing ideas that were used to justify slavery and then segregation. It disseminated racial terms and racial stereotypes so potent that some are still with us in the 21st century. It was literally racism made into an artform.” ref

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Racist Black Stereotypes

“Originating in the White man’s characterizations of plantation slaves and free blacks during the era of minstrel shows (1830-1890), the caricatures took such a firm hold on the American imagination that audiences expected any person with dark skin, no matter what their background, to conform to one or more of the stereotypes:

1. Jim Crow: The term Jim Crow originated in 1830 when a White minstrel show performer, Thomas “Daddy” Rice, blackened his face with burnt cork and danced a jig while singing the lyrics to the song,
“Jump Jim Crow.”

2. Zip Coon: First performed by George Dixon in 1834, Zip Coon made a mockery of free blacks. An arrogant, ostentatious figure, he dressed in high style and spoke in a series of *malaprops and puns that undermined his attempts to appear dignified. *the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound. Jim Crow and Zip Coon eventually merged into a single stereotype called simply “coon.”

3. Mammy: Mammy is a source of earthy wisdom who is fiercely independent and brooks no backtalk. Although her image changed a little over the years, she was always a favorite of advertisers. *PepsiCo (Aunt Jemima syrup and pancake mix) and Mars (Uncle Ben’s Rice) finally announced in 2020, that they were removing the characters that began as minstrel show stereotypes from their packaging and brands. 

4. Uncle Tom: Toms are typically good, gentle, religious, and sober. Images of Uncle Toms were another favorite of advertisers.

5. Buck: The Buck is a large Black man who is proud, sometimes menacing, and always interested in White women.

6. Wench/Jezebel: The temptress. During the minstrel era, wenches were typically a male-in-female garb. In film, wenches were usually female mulattos.

7. Mulatto: A mixed-blood male or female. In film, often portrayed as a tragic figure who either intentionally or unintentionally passes for White until they discover they have Negro blood or are discovered by another character to be Black.

8. Pickaninny: Picaninnies have bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips, and wide mouths into which they stuff huge slices of watermelon. These stereotypes were staples during the minstrel era and carried over into vaudeville, film, and television.” ref

Blackface on Broadway

“The most popular Black stage performer of the early 1900s was a brilliant comedian named Bert Williams, who performed a coon stereotype in blackface he called the Jonah Man. Williams teamed up with George W. Walker, and billing themselves as “Two Real Coons” they soon became one of the most successful comedy duos, while their act went from vaudeville to Broadway and evolved into full-scale musical comedy. They produced, wrote, and starred in In Dahomey (1902), the first Black musical comedy to open on Broadway. After his partner died, Williams became the first Black to headline a Ziegfield Follies show and the first Black comedian to produce and star in his own silent films.” ref

Silent Movies

“The popularity of early film brought with it the propagation of racial stereotypes to large audiences around the world. Early silent movies such as The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon in 1904, The Slave in 1905, The Sambo Series 1909-1911, and The Nigger in 1915 offered the existing stereotypes through an exciting new medium. The premiere of Birth of a Nation in 1915 marked a change in emphasis from the pretentious and inept Jim Crow stereotypes to that of the Savage Negro. In D.W. Griffith’s film, the Ku Klux Klan rescues the South, and Southern women in particular, from savage Blacks who have gained power over Whites with the help of Northern carpetbaggers. Griffith later admitted that his film was designed to, “create a feeling of abhorrence in white people, especially white women, against colored men.” ref 

Race Movies

“Northern Blacks responded to Birth of a Nation by producing their own movies. “Race movies” were all-black affairs that were made for Black audiences. The most successful Black film producer of the first half of the Twentieth Century was a former railway porter and novelist named Oscar Micheaux. His Chicago-based Micheaux Film Corporation, which operated from 1918–1940 produced over 44 films. Micheaux’s most important film was Within Our Gates (1920), an uncompromising look at racial attitudes and prejudice among both Blacks and Whites, and it included both a rape and a lynching. The growth of truly independent Black film production was cut short by the Great Depression and the added costs associated with the change in technology from silent to sound. Few of the small independent Black film companies survived the changes and even fewer remained independent once Hollywood stepped in and took control of Black filmmaking by providing the financing. Race movies then changed from organic Black entertainment to knock-offs of standard Hollywood fare; like westerns, crime dramas and musicals; but featuring an all-Black cast.” ref 

Racist Cartoons

“Between 1930 and 1950, animators at Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, MGM, Merrie Melodies, Looney Tunes, R.K.O., and many other independent studios, produced thousands of cartoons that perpetuated the same old racist stereotypes. This period is now known as the golden age of animation, and until the mid 1960s, cartoons were screened before all feature films. Later, these same cartoons would cycle endlessly for decades on broadcast TV or cable syndication. Eventually the worst of the racist cartoons were removed from television or heavily edited, but many are available on the internet if one knows where to look. To modern audiences, many of these cartoons are quite shocking and graphically illustrate how pervasive and institutionalized racism was in our culture just a short time ago. ” ref 

Racist Radio

“The most popular radio show of all time was The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show. The characters were created by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll; two white actors with blackface and vaudeville experience. NBC began broadcasting Amos ‘n’ Andy on radio August 19th, 1929 and it was an instant success. It was the first radio program to be distributed by syndication in the United States. The show ran as a nightly radio serial from 1928 until 1943 and as a weekly situation comedy from 1943 until 1955. Portraying blackface racist stereotypes on radio was a bit of a challenge because there were no visuals. The stereotypical voice characterizations needed to be even more exaggerated to help listeners distinguish between characters. Although Amos and Andy is cited most often as an example of blackface radio performances, there were many other stereotypical blackface characters in old-time radio shows like Two Black Crows, Beulah, and Aunt Jemima. Two Black Crows were based on coon stereotypes while both Beulah and Aunt Jemima were based on the “Mammy” stereotype. Beulah was a supporting character on the popular Fibber McGee and Molly radio series and became a spin-off show. The show was broadcast on radio from 1945 to 1954, and was originally portrayed by White actor Marlin Hurt. Hattie McDaniel eventually took the role on the radio and was one of four black women to play Beulah on the later television series.” ref

An Enduring Legacy

“In Bamboozled (2000), Spike Lee addresses the legacy of blackface minstrelsy, and raises the question of who is wearing the blackface now. Many of the Black characters in television comedies today are derived from the same racist stereotypes of blacks that have existed since the days of minstrel shows. The FOX Television sitcom, South Central (1994) was, in the words of Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Blackwell, “the Amos ‘n’ Andy of 1994.” The Parent ‘Hood (1995-2000), a program aimed at family viewers, relied on working-class coon and mammy caricatures for a good portion of its humor. In Homeboys in Outer Space (1996), Flex Alexander and Darryl M. Bell, “mercenary brothaa-aas, down for one anothaa-aaa” explore black stereotypes and the galaxy in their Space Hoopty; a lowrider-style spacecraft equipped with a computer named Loquatia spouting “ghetto sass.” More recently, Fox Television’s Method & Red (2004) transplanted hip hop recording artists Method Man & Redman to a White upper-class suburb in New Jersey, where they began “Puttin’ the Urban into Suburban“  to the horror of their White neighbors. The Cleveland Show (2009-2013) is basically Family Guy in blackface with a liberal helping of negative Black stereotypes. 180 years after “Daddy” Rice donned blackface makeup and sang Jump Jim Crow for white audiences, Black television comedies today are still relying on the same old coon and mammy stereotypes for cheap laughs.” ref

The Historical Harm of Blackface: How to Talk with Young People

“Blackface has taken center stage in our public discourse. Again. Virginia is embroiled in a controversy based on admissions by Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring to wearing blackface in the past. The list of celebrities and other public figures who publicly condone blackface is growing and there are others entering the spotlight. Just a few months ago, NBC host Megyn Kelly set off her own controversy when she defended blackface as a Halloween costume and questioned why it is considered racist. Blackface always comes up around Halloween, where we not only see ghosts and goblins come out, but stereotypes and racist costumes as well, including blackface. In a recent Pew Research poll, 34% of Americans say blackface in a Halloween costume is acceptable.” ref

“The firestorm around Northam started with his medical school yearbook. We know that wearing blackface is pervasive on college campuses, which typically appears in photos, yearbooks, in Greek life, and unsurprisingly, during Halloween. Walter Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University and an expert on fraternity and sorority life said, “We haven’t been talking about it (blackface), but this hasn’t gone away. This has been happening. And there’s an incident practically every year.” In another recent poll, one in five Americans report that they have seen someone wear blackface in person. It seems that whenever a new blackface “incident” occurs, our public conversation goes through a period of outrage and reckoning where these questions typically emerge: Should he resign? Was it wrong? Is it less wrong if the person wearing blackface dressed up as a black celebrity and is therefore ‘honoring’ them? Should the person be accountable for mistakes they made a long time ago?” ref

“These questions attempt to parse the wrongdoing without seeing the big picture. They try to assess the implications of blackface in the current reality when the damage should be measured through a historical lens. Indeed, the most salient question is: Why does this keep happening? The answer is related to the fact that many people don’t know or understand the history. If people knew the painful and destructive history of blackface, they would realize that it was a way to exert power and control with its roots in slavery, racism, and white supremacy–and they might feel compelled to stop. Blackface isn’t anything new. It’s old. Not just decades old, but centuries old. The topic of blackface is complex and should be taught in depth and with historical background. If it is not discussed in this way, the standard questions and simple analysis of blackface will dominate and not lead towards change. Here are some beginning steps to approach the topic with young people.” ref

• “Provide a comprehensive historical background using scholarly books and articles that trace the roots of blackface from the 1830’s to the present. This can include primary sources such as imagery, video, and memorabilia; however, be mindful that presenting too many of these images can perpetuate stereotypes and become painful for students.  You can also have students conduct research to learn more, following their own questions and queries.  Provide an opportunity for students to reflect deeply on the history, asking: What did you learn about the history of blackface?  What was its intent? How do you think it made black people feel then and now? How does blackface connect with the history of racism and white supremacy in the U.S.? How do current day images relate to the past?  
• Talk about blackface in the context of other public displays of bias, hate and oppression, which can include words/slurs, symbols, costumes, memorabilia, and more. Discuss the power of symbols—which can be used to affirm or harm—in our society and analyze how those symbols have historically been used to stereotype, scapegoat and dehumanize certain groups of people.
• Talk with young people about how intent and impact differ, and why that matters. For example, often when blackface incidents are discovered, the offenders insist that no harm of bias was intended; they were “just having fun” or making a joke, and sometimes they even say they were honoring famous Black people. While we can never know people’s intent, we can assess the impact of harm and damage on those who are targeted by this offensive behavior and it is critical to focus on that impact. Expand this question to address other issues of bias and oppression when they emerge in your classroom conversations.
• Teach lessons and discuss contemporary issues of racism such as they are reflected in Black Lives Matter,  the school-to-prison pipeline, white supremacy, everyday bias, cyberhate, and voting rights. Use the same investigative and historical analysis described above to have students examine how current events issues can be traced to their historical roots, and why that’s so critical in understanding long-term solutions.” ref

“The well-known quote, “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” resonates deeply when it comes to the history of blackface. Let’s turn a corner this time and not just make it a teachable moment, but a history lesson as well.” ref

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Blackface Is Older Than You Might Think

“From medieval European theater troupes to American minstrelsy, the harmful tradition has a surprisingly long history. When New York’s Metropolitan Opera produced Guiseppi Verdi’s Otello in 2015, it marked the first time in the company’s 125-year performance history that the lead actor would not employ blackface makeup. Ever since the opera’s first performance in New York in 1891, all the leading tenors had performed the role in black and brown makeup. So too, had American performances of Shakespeare’s Othello long featured white actors blacking up to play the titular role, even before the 1830 debut of Thomas Dartmouth Rice, the so-called “father of American minstrelsy” who is credited with launching an entire genre of mass entertainment that dominated the national scene for more than a century.” ref

“Indeed, the tradition of white men performing in black makeup has hardly disappeared, occasionally causing scandals in state houses, American colleges, and beyond. But the origins of blackface minstrelsy are much older than most people know, with deep roots in the English medieval and Shakespearean theatrical traditions. Understanding the often-forgotten medieval roots of blackface might help us to end old performance traditions and to create new ones. On the most basic level, blackface is the application of any prosthetic—makeup, soot, burnt cork, minerals, masks, etc.—to imitate the complexion of another race. In performance, the application of black makeup dates at least as far back as the medieval period, when guild records show that some of the devils in English religious dramas were portrayed as being black. As Anthony Barthelemy, an English professor at Louisiana State University, explains: “In many medieval miracle plays, the souls of the damned were represented by actors painted black or in black costumes…. In [many versions], Lucifer and his confederate rebels, after having sinned, turn black.” ref

“Scholars believe that natural oils like bitumen, soot from coal and black clothes were used to convey the blackness of the fallen angels in these medieval guild performances. The association between blackness and spiritual abasement was thus an element of blackface from the very beginning. Following the medieval period, blackface had a heyday in England in William Shakespeare’s lifetime, when white actors in various types of racial makeup and prosthetics played theatrical Moors, Africans, and Turks. In fact, the only contemporary drawing we have from a Shakespeare performance includes Titus Andronicus’ Aaron the Moor, a black villain whose origins are unspecified. The drawing is by the English writer Henry Peacham, who most likely went to see a performance of the tragedy, Shakespeare’s first, in 1595 and then went home and memorialized his experience by drawing some of the characters and writing out bits of dialogue from the play.” ref

“Based on these sketches, Aaron the Moor looks as though he was portrayed by a white actor in black makeup, a black afro wig affixed with a headband, and either black stockings and gloves or else more makeup that covered the actor’s hands and legs. This performance was hardly an outlier: One scholar tabulates that between 1579 and 1642, at least 50 plays were staged with racialized figures, and another scholar counts at least 70 productions with black characters between those years. The Renaissance theaters were flush with blackface backstage. Up until relatively recently, it was common for scholars to argue that Shakespeare would not have known any blacks or Jews, but archival work by scholars like Imtiaz Habib has shown that Shakespeare’s London was much more diverse than scholars had previously understood it to be.” ref

“Shakespeare’s theatrical creations were probably a mixture of firsthand experiences with the diverse peoples passing through city and re-imaginings of these people. This mixture is reflected in the plays he wrote for his theatre, the aptly named Globe, a space that announced itself as being interested in the wider world. The tradition of white men applying and employing racial prosthetics to perform as black characters migrated to the American colonies in the late 18th century. Othello was one of the most popular plays on the colonial American stage, but various other plays included black characters who were portrayed by white male actors. These plays ranged from tragedies like Thomas Morton’s The Slave (1816), to comedies like Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Padlock (1768), to pantomimes like John Fawcett’s Obi; or, Three Finger’d Jack (1800), to equestrian dramas like John Fawcett’s The Secret Mine (1812), to comic operas like George Colman’s Inkle and Yarico (1787). The performance of blackness in the Western world, then, was a white endeavor from the start. To be a black character onstage was to be performed by a white actor in racial prosthetics.” ref

“What we call blackface minstrelsy is a specific performance genre that developed in early 19th-century America, with the earliest performance documented in 1830. Featuring characters with names like Jim Crow, Zip Coon, and Mammy, these performances comprised skits, monologues, songs, and dances that supposedly imitated those of enslaved people or of the recently freed. The genre was meant as comedy and performed by white men; when there were female characters, the male performers cross-dressed while wearing blackface. And while the earliest minstrel performances were done as one-man shows, after the Civil War, performers came together in minstrel troupes, transforming the mode into a larger performance extravaganza. The mode and genre grew so popular that there were active minstrel troupes well into the mid- to late-20th century. “The Black​ and White Minstrel Show,” for instance, ran on BBC1 television in the United Kingdom until its cancelation in 1978.” ref

“Thus, while “Daddy” Rice is often credited as the progenitor of American minstrelsy, the performance mode, techniques, and genre that cohered into blackface minstrelsy grew out of a much longer European tradition of blackface performances. European blackface and American minstrelsy alike assume that performing blackness is a white birthright—that the stage is a white domain in which blacks are not allowed to tell their own stories, or even enjoy basic dignities. And these performance traditions have deep implications for acting today. All applications of blackface, whether on opera stages or television screens, objectify blackness, denigrate black identities—and render the making of black-created stories that much more difficult.” ref

Whiteface (performance)

“Whiteface is a type of performance in which a person of color uses makeup in order to appear fair-skinned. The term is a reversal of the form of performance known as blackface, in which makeup was used by a performer to make themselves look like a black person, usually to portray a stereotype. Whiteface performances originated in the 19th century, and today still occasionally appear in films. Modern usages of whiteface can be contrasted with blackface in contemporary art. The earliest use of the term, noted by the Oxford English Dictionary, is from the New York Clipper in 1870, informing readers that William “Joe” Murphy has given up minstrelsy to “appear on the legitimate boards in white face.” By 1908, actor Dooley Wilson had earned his nickname for his whiteface impersonation of an Irishman singing a song called “Mr. Dooley”. The OED also lists a 1947 reference to the black actor Canada Lee performing the role of Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi in whiteface.” ref

Examples

• “The 1970 film Watermelon Man begins with Godfrey Cambridge playing a whiteface character, who then wakes up one morning to find himself to be black.
• Eddie Murphy performed in whiteface on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, and appeared in whiteface for minor characters in the films Coming to America, Vampire in Brooklyn, and The Nutty Professor.
• The 2006 FX reality television show Black. White. had two families realistically portrayed via makeup as another race: One as blackface, the other whiteface.
• To promote his new album “White People Party Music”, Nick Cannon portrayed a character of European descent named Connor Smallnut.
• In the 2004 film White Chicks, Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans play two FBI agents who go undercover as young white women by using whiteface.” ref

Whiteface Comparison to Blackface

“Blackface is widely considered racist due to its traceable racial links to slavery and racial segregation. For this reason, blackface is heavily condemned in modern art forms, while whiteface is occasionally employed in modern times, usually in a comedic context. Those who defend it as art differentiate it from blackface, often arguing that whiteface does not draw on a legacy of racism in the way that blackface does, hence arguing that the intended satire of white lifestyles is not racist.” ref

Racism?

“Racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems (e.g. apartheid) that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. The ideology underlying racist practices often assumes that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena.” ref

“While the concepts of race and ethnicity are considered to be separate in contemporary social science, the two terms have a long history of equivalence in popular usage and older social science literature. “Ethnicity” is often used in a sense close to one traditionally attributed to “race”, the division of human groups based on qualities assumed to be essential or innate to the group (e.g. shared ancestry or shared behavior). Racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According to the United Nations‘s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, there is no distinction between the terms “racial” and “ethnic” discrimination. It further concludes that superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust, and dangerous. The convention also declared that there is no justification for racial discrimination, anywhere, in theory or in practice.” ref

“Racism is a relatively modern concept, arising in the European age of imperialism, the subsequent growth of capitalism, and especially the Atlantic slave trade, of which it was a major driving force. It was also a major force behind racial segregation in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and of apartheid in South Africa; 19th and 20th-century racism in Western culture is particularly well documented and constitutes a reference point in studies and discourses about racism. Racism has played a role in genocides such as the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, as well as colonial projects including the European colonization of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the population transfer in the Soviet Union including deportations of indigenous minorities. Indigenous peoples have been—and are—often subject to racist attitudes.” ref

“In the 19th century, many scientists subscribed to the belief that the human population can be divided into races. The term racism is a noun describing the state of being racist, i.e., subscribing to the belief that the human population can or should be classified into races with differential abilities and dispositions, which in turn may motivate a political ideology in which rights and privileges are differentially distributed based on racial categories. The term “racist” may be an adjective or a noun, the latter describing a person who holds those beliefs. The origin of the root word “race” is not clear. Linguists generally agree that it came to the English language from Middle French, but there is no such agreement on how it generally came into Latin-based languages. A recent proposal is that it derives from the Arabic ra’s, which means “head, beginning, origin” or the Hebrew rosh, which has a similar meaning.” ref 

“Early race theorists generally held the view that some races were inferior to others and they consequently believed that the differential treatment of races was fully justified. These early theories guided pseudo-scientific research assumptions; the collective endeavors to adequately define and form hypotheses about racial differences are generally termed scientific racism, though this term is a misnomer, due to the lack of any actual science backing the claims. Most biologists, anthropologists, and sociologists reject a taxonomy of races in favor of more specific and/or empirically verifiable criteria, such as geography, ethnicity, or a history of endogamy. Human genome research indicates that race is not a meaningful genetic classification of humans.” ref

“An entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (2008) defines racialism as “[a]n earlier term than racism, but now largely superseded by it”, and cites the term “racialism” in a 1902 quote. The revised Oxford English Dictionary cites the shorter term “racism” in a quote from the year 1903. It was defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition 1989) as “[t]he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race”; the same dictionary termed racism a synonym of racialism: “belief in the superiority of a particular race”. By the end of World War II, racism had acquired the same supremacist connotations formerly associated with racialism: racism by then implied racial discrimination, racial supremacism, and a harmful intent. The term “race hatred” had also been used by sociologist Frederick Hertz in the late 1920s.” ref

“As its history indicates, the popular use of the word racism is relatively recent. The word came into widespread usage in the Western world in the 1930s, when it was used to describe the social and political ideology of Nazism, which treated “race” as a naturally given political unit. It is commonly agreed that racism existed before the coinage of the word, but there is not a wide agreement on a single definition of what racism is and what it is not. Today, some scholars of racism prefer to use the concept in the plural racisms, in order to emphasize its many different forms that do not easily fall under a single definition. They also argue that different forms of racism have characterized different historical periods and geographical areas. Garner (2009: p. 11) summarizes different existing definitions of racism and identifies three common elements contained in those definitions of racism. First, a historical, hierarchical power relationship between groups; second, a set of ideas (an ideology) about racial differences; and, third, discriminatory actions (practices).” ref

“Though many countries around the globe have passed laws related to race and discrimination, the first significant international human rights instrument developed by the United Nations (UN) was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The UDHR recognizes that if people are to be treated with dignity, they require economic rights, social rights including education, and the rights to cultural and political participation and civil liberty. It further states that everyone is entitled to these rights “without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” ref

“The UN does not define “racism”; however, it does define “racial discrimination”. According to the 1965 UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,

The term “racial discrimination” shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” ref

“In their 1978 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice (Article 1), the UN states, “All human beings belong to a single species and are descended from a common stock. They are born equal in dignity and rights and all form an integral part of humanity.” The UN definition of racial discrimination does not make any distinction between discrimination based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two has been a matter of debate among academics, including anthropologists. Similarly, in British law, the phrase racial group means “any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, color, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin.” ref

“In Norway, the word “race” has been removed from national laws concerning discrimination because the use of the phrase is considered problematic and unethical. The Norwegian Anti-Discrimination Act bans discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, descent, and skin color. Sociologists, in general, recognize “race” as a social construct. This means that, although the concepts of race and racism are based on observable biological characteristics, any conclusions drawn about race on the basis of those observations are heavily influenced by cultural ideologies. Racism, as an ideology, exists in a society at both the individual and institutional levels.” ref

“While much of the research and work on racism during the last half-century or so has concentrated on “white racism” in the Western world, historical accounts of race-based social practices can be found across the globe. Thus, racism can be broadly defined to encompass individual and group prejudices and acts of discrimination that result in material and cultural advantages conferred on a majority or a dominant social group. So-called “white racism” focuses on societies in which white populations are the majority or the dominant social group. In studies of these majority white societies, the aggregate of material and cultural advantages is usually termed “white privilege.” ref

“Race and race relations are prominent areas of study in sociology and economics. Much of the sociological literature focuses on white racism. Some of the earliest sociological works on racism were written by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, the first African American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard University. Du Bois wrote, “[t]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Wellman (1993) defines racism as “culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities”. In both sociology and economics, the outcomes of racist actions are often measured by the inequality in income, wealth, net worth, and access to other cultural resources (such as education), between racial groups.” ref

“In sociology and social psychology, racial identity and the acquisition of that identity, is often used as a variable in racism studies. Racial ideologies and racial identity affect individuals’ perceptions of race and discrimination. Cazenave and Maddern (1999) define racism as “a highly organized system of ‘race’-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/’race’ supremacy. Racial centrality (the extent to which a culture recognizes individuals’ racial identity) appears to affect the degree of discrimination African-American young adults perceive whereas racial ideology may buffer the detrimental emotional effects of that discrimination.” Sellers and Shelton (2003) found that a relationship between racial discrimination and emotional distress was moderated by racial ideology and social beliefs.” ref

“Some sociologists also argue that, particularly in the West, where racism is often negatively sanctioned in society, racism has changed from being a blatant to a more covert expression of racial prejudice. The “newer” (more hidden and less easily detectable) forms of racism—which can be considered embedded in social processes and structures—are more difficult to explore and challenge. It has been suggested that, while in many countries overt or explicit racism has become increasingly taboo, even among those who display egalitarian explicit attitudes, an implicit or aversive racism is still maintained subconsciously.” ref

“This process has been studied extensively in social psychology as implicit associations and implicit attitudes, a component of implicit cognition. Implicit attitudes are evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable. They come about from various influences in the individual experience. Implicit attitudes are not consciously identified (or they are inaccurately identified) traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feelings, thoughts, or actions towards social objects. These feelings, thoughts, or actions have an influence on the behavior of which the individual may not be aware.” ref

“Therefore, subconscious racism can influence our visual processing and how our minds work when we are subliminally exposed to faces of different colors. In thinking about crime, for example, social psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt (2004) of Stanford University holds that, “blackness is so associated with crime you’re ready to pick out these crime objects.” Such exposures influence our minds and they can cause subconscious racism in our behavior towards other people or even towards objects. Thus, racist thoughts and actions can arise from stereotypes and fears of which we are not aware. For example, scientists and activists have warned that the use of the stereotype “Nigerian Prince” for referring to advance-fee scammers is racist, i.e. “reducing Nigeria to a nation of scammers and fraudulent princes, as some people still do online, is a stereotype that needs to be called out.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“When researchers completed the final analysis of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, they confirmed that the 3 billion base pairs of genetic letters in humans were 99.9 percent identical in every person. It also meant that individuals are, on average, 0.1 percent different genetically from every other person on the planet. And in that 0.1 percent lies the mystery of why some people are more susceptible to a particular illness or more likely to be healthy than their neighbor – or even another family member.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: a belief among some indigenous people, young children, or all religious people!

Over 100,000 years ago or so, Southern Africa, in the Land before and the beginning Time of Animism: LINK

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“The earliest ancestors of anatomically modern Homo sapiens emerged in a region south of the Zambezi River in Botswana, Africa, according to a new analysis of modern human’s mitochondrial genomes (mtDNA or mitogenome) from the L0 lineage, the oldest known mtDNA lineage on Earth.” ref

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Explaining the Earliest Religious Expression, that of Animism (beginning 100,000 to 70,000 years ago?) to Totemism (beginning 30,000 to 3,000 years ago?) in Southern Africa: LINK

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“There were at least several “out-of-Africa” dispersals of modern humans, possibly beginning as early as 270,000 years ago, including 215,000 years ago to at least Greece, and certainly via northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula about 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. These early waves appear to have mostly died out or retreated by 80,000 years ago.” ref

“The most significant “recent” wave out of Africa took place about 70,000–50,000 years ago, via the so-called “Southern Route“, spreading rapidly along the coast of Asia and reaching Australia by around 65,000–50,000 years ago, (though some researchers question the earlier Australian dates and place the arrival of humans there at 50,000 years ago at earliest, while others have suggested that these first settlers of Australia may represent an older wave before the more significant out of Africa migration and thus not necessarily be ancestral to the region’s later inhabitants) while Europe was populated by an early offshoot which settled the Near East and Europe less than 55,000 years ago.” ref

• “An Eastward Dispersal from Northeast Africa to Arabia 150,000–130,000  years ago based on the finds at Jebel Faya dated to 127,000 years ago (discovered in 2011). Possibly related to this wave are the finds from Zhirendong cave, Southern China, dated to more than 100,000 years ago. Other evidence of modern human presence in China has been dated to 80,000 years ago.” ref
• “The most significant out of Africa dispersal took place around 50–70,000 years ago via the so-called Southern Route, either before or after the Toba event, which happened between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago. This dispersal followed the southern coastline of Asia, and reached Australia around 65,000-50,000 years ago, or according to some research, by 50,000 years ago at earliest. Western Asia was “re-occupied” by a different derivation from this wave around 50,000 years ago, and Europe was populated from Western Asia beginning around 43,000 years ago.” ref
• “Wells (2003) describes an additional wave of migration after the southern coastal route, namely a northern migration into Europe at circa 45,000 years ago. However, this possibility is ruled out by Macaulay et al. (2005) and Posth et al. (2016), who argue for a single coastal dispersal, with an early offshoot into Europe.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com