I try my best to be open-minded and not grip race into the equation so much since I’m living abroad. But then I hear stories of Korean kids not wanting to play with other Korean kids because their skin is darker. Korean teachers undoing a child’s cornrow hairdo when she is napping because they think it’s dirty. Korean comedians painting themselves brown to portray Michael Jordan in comic skits. And most recently Korean high schoolers blackfacing the Ghana pallbearer meme for their senior yearbook. How can I not total it in?
It was the nonchalant comments and deflections made by Koreans after the issue was raised that stung the most. “It’s not that serious,” “It wasn’t a big deal,” or “there was no ill intent.” Though I believe it to be true, that there was no ill intent, I can’t help but think (clearing my throat) it actually it is a big deal… a very big deal. Most people are aware that blackface stems from inconsiderate mockery towards black people. To say it’s not a big deal is telling me you don’t care. Yet, people protest that Black Lives Matter.
Sigh… This is one of those moments I was reminded of the difference between my skin and white skin. And the gulf of unawareness lacking in knowledge about my culture and its appropriation, except as to what is stigmatized on TV. With that being said, I’m writing this article to express why blackface should not be your muse. To understand the actual weight of blackface you have to look back in history. The America that people see now wasn’t always as many may know.
America was constructed on the brutal labor of trafficked and enslaved people who had hair and skin like me. Their job was to work from before sunup til sundown for no pay to make America the land of equality, opportunity, and the pursuit of happiness for all. During the 1830s a performer from New York was on tour in the South. He came upon many slaves singing spirituals on the plantations. Spirituals were religious musical elements that were passed down from generation to generation all the way from the slave ships. Because black slaves weren’t allowed to learn how to read or write, spirituals stood as oral maps guiding runaway slaves to freedom, comfort in the midst of harsh labor and as prayers.
This performer saw an opportunity to birth a new era in American entertainment using the creativity of black slaves as his foundation. This performer became known as the “Father of American Minstrelsy,” and his name was Thomas Dartmouth Rice (T.D. Rice for short). Rice painted his face black, drew an exaggerated outline around his lips and wore woolly wigs and unkempt clothing to mimic the character of black slaves. This was the birth of Rice’s act Jim Crow, a character based on the white stereotype of black people as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, content working on a plantation and speaking “negro” dialect, as they called it. Jim Crow pacified slave ownership and became the talisman of racism and segregation in the U.S.
After the Civil War, blackface was used as white supremacist propaganda in America’s first motion picture “The Birth of a Nation,” the first motion picture to be screened at the White House. The film, distorted by a pseudo-historical ideology known as the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy,” allowed confederate states to express their grief and belief of what life would be like with free blacks around, portraying the Ku Klux Klan as heroic and black men as dangerous and sexually threatening towards white women.
It’s not only in the U.S. that blackface has produced damage -- Zwarte Piet translated Black Pete is another example. Every year in the Netherlands people dress in blackface to celebrate Christmas with Saint Nicholas and his servant Black Pete, the Moor from Spain. The original biography of Black Pete is that he packs his empty sack with naughty children and takes them back to Spain or spanks them with a rod.
Over the years, his personification has become friendlier as being Saint Nicholas’ little helper who passes out toys to good children. Even though people living in the Netherlands mean no harm, until this day people protest against Black Pete because of what it represents… a rude racist mockery towards black people.
Blackface has been wielded as a weapon to dehumanize black people and aid in the preconceived notions that the world already has toward us. We are constantly working hard to change the projection of our persona that was unwilling placed upon us. Hearing someone say “it’s not that serious,” or watching someone on T.V. dressed in blackface devalues myself and my history, and I must differ. Blackface is a sore reminder to me and others with familial DNA strands linked to Africa of the identity that was lost in the Atlantic waters.
We still deal with unresolved reparations for the defilement and inhumane acts endured, similar to Koreans and their oppression during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation. It’s when situations occur like this that I am once reminded of my black skin and have a clearer vision of the prolonged one-sided U.S. history that is being told.
Moreover, in a country where there is already a lack of anti-discrimination laws, I’m concerned blackface could be utilized to ‘normalize’ other ethnical and cultural insensitive acts to continue.