Vogue in Blackface
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Sometimes, people have difficulty with the simplest of concepts. Blackface is well known to be offensive to people of color around the world yet there are those who continue to feign ignorance of that fact. It has been done in theater and opera for hundreds of years. The modern day practice is better known from early silent films and talkies from early in the 20th century.
Black people essentially were seen but not heard in daily life. In the arts and cinema, they were neither seen nor heard if whites could help it. When the context of a role called for a black character, blackface was used to allow a white actor to play the part. It prevented the necessity of the crew having to deal with a person who could not read or was lazy or smelled bad or any one of a thousand other stereotypes. It also allowed the actor to depict the black person as a buffoon without having to suffer any humiliation and without getting himself typecast, which preserved his viability as a ‘serious’ actor. What usually resulted from such performances was a cynical satire of African Americans and their culture as the actor would jerk his eyes as wide open as possible, scratch his head, poke his mouth out, and gesticulate as confusedly as convincingly possible.
In later years, when blacks began trying to pursue careers in entertainment, their initial obstacles were all of the whites who were making a living performing in blackface. Since many whites had no exposure to black people in daily life, their only experience with “colored folks” (a progressive term at the time believe it or not) was as they were depicted in entertainment. Ironically, these people found whites in blackface to be more convincing as blacks—than blacks. Also, many of the actors could play kind and benevolent philanthropists toward their blackface colleagues onstage but heaven forbid that a real black person who saw this, made the mistake of approaching them in real life.
Now fast-forward 100 years give or take a decade. Blacks have fought back all of those disadvantages and have gained equality inch by inch. It only takes one insensitive person to set progress back 100 years. In Australia last week, it was five people to be exact. Five Australians (seen in the video below) who decided to perform a blackface routine imitating the Jackson 5 on a weekly TV talent show. Talent judge Harry Connick Jr.—who is from racially charged New Orleans—found absolutely no humor in the routine and voiced his opinion in no uncertain terms. Alert fashion writers at Vogue likely decided that such controversy would boost magazine sales and followed one bad idea with an even more catastrophic one, as the CNN video captures well.
What do you think? Is this not blatant racism?
See other racially charged issue Enter Racial
It is hard to conceive the negative connotation of blackface if this type of depiction is not directed at your race. Insensitivity to stereotypes allows them to view blacks as less than human and therefore unworthy of human consideration. At this level of perception, blackface is just funny.
Blatant racism cannot exist without ignorance, so it IS blatant racism
You are right about the difficulty of empathizing unless it is directed at your race. What is sad about this is that it brings back all of the campaigns by native Americans to abolish the mascots in baseball and football like the Atlanta Braves with the tomahawk and big, red, smiley indian face.
I was ashamed to hear African Americans equivocating by saying that this was different, or it wasn’t meant to be mean spirited, and “Well, actually it was meant to honor you guys.” This is what many people used to say about blackface. I said, no it IS same. We should honor the requests of any group that feels humiliated or dehumanized by things like this.
There is enough humiliation to go around. Don’t believe me? Watch Def Comedy Jam. Every black comedian has a 2 hour routine on how lame white people are. How long will we have to put up with that?
Set your timer for 100 years.
While you make a huge generalization about black comedy material, you do make a valid point. I am uncomfortable with white stereotypes used as humor as well as Latin, Asian and the other races that I share my world with. If there is any measure of outrage about this, then make it known just like black people do. You know the old saying,”The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
Despite my humorous reply earlier I also think it is time for this to change. Double standards should never be tolerated.
I wonder what they were thinking, by taking a white model and painting her black.
To me it doesn’t make any sense. There are great black models to do a photo shoot, even if it is for Vogue.
About the comedy ,yes i seen this too,but its not only about whites .
And yes sometimes its very annoying.But its comedy and people have a good laugh about it.
But that’s just a minor thing,compared to whats going on in this world.
Its more important that every person will have the same equal rights. And not based on skin colour.
I remember a part when Eddie Murphy put on white makeup in the eighties, for that bit on SNL about the secret lives of white people.
Would this also be considered racist?
Like they portray Vogue to be?
Only you can decide what is racist for you. There are certainly similar elements. White people would certainly be in their rights to protest but I think they were to busy laughing. At the end of the day, I think that is really the dividing line. It is how it is received by the recipient.