YJ - fuck off. You hardly have a leg to stand on when it comes to rational discussions.

My anlaysis is spot on - I defy you to poke a hole in it.

There are a lot of reasons it's offensive, many of which I would have thought would be obvious.

One of the biggest reasons is that, even if they are trying to be "tasteful"... it begs the question - why the fuck didn't you hire a black actor?

Here's an example:

http://foudre.co/post/43943804094

Yebbelz answer is not spot on. the question was "Why is blackface offensive?"

The *real* answer: It is not. To anyone that has no knowledge of the cultural background of "blackface" - which is all the yebbelz provided - would not be offended by the random appearance of someone in makeup.

It is only offensive when someone is "educated" that it is offensive.

First of all - I've never seen a black person. I've seen various pigments on various people - but I've never seen anyone with black skin. Just as I've never seen green skin or purple skin. Further, I've never seen anyone with black skin and white lips, as it typical to the makeup job. So if I've never been exposed to the cultural reference of "blackface", it simply looks like clown makeup (if I've been exposed to that).

You are all still operating on the premise that there is something inherently racist about makeup, instead of realize that all your talking about what you have been taught.

If the question is, "In the light of cultural history, is blackface racist" then the obvious question is moot; the answer is obviously yes.

hey krellin, yes or no, did you call the president a racial slur?

YJ - yes, I did. I've also heard many famous people in this country refer to him by the same language -- supporters of his, no less. So...you are saying the use of a particular word in offensive always....or sometimes? But obviously I did - it's in the forums somewhere. So YJ -- if you think you have just played a game of "gotcha" with me...you didn't.

I have no idea what that has to do with this discussion, though.

krellin, I like you when you talk about your orphan cats and making them halloween costumes, not when you give tendentious and ill-informed proclamations about what racism is. Turn this into a thread about kitties.

Besides the delicious irony of a man who uses racial slurs in context that is offensive under any circumstance trying to chime in as a neutral person who's opinion should be valued on a conversation about race?

Nothing. Say it again, special k. It's not offensive, and you're clearly proud of it. Lets hear more! It's your right as an American!

ckroberts - you can either address what I posted, find fault with it and argue your response like a man, or you can act like a dumbass like YJ.

Please tell me....if I child put on blackface for his friends, who knew nothing about the cultural background of blackface, how would it be offensive?

Why can't you people just man up and admit that racism is a *learned* behavior, and is not inherent to anything. When my children were very young, they had no understanding of race, and it wasn't until they entered school that the idea of identifying other school children by race even occured to them.

Race is a learned concept.

YJ - so, in other words, you recuse yourself from making any further comments about me, since you time and time again attempts to make offensive comments about me. Ahh...once again, YJ rears his hypocritical moronic head.

The difference between you and me, YJ - I can admit what I did. I can admit my faults, and do so on occasion. I admitted I used a racial slur about our President - I never said I was proud of saying it - that is your demented input. but it's typical for you to not live in reality, to assume things that don't exist.

It would seem to me, since you view me as a bastion of racism, you *really* ought to be listening to what I have to say, because perhaps I have some insight that you do not.

That being said - I have yet to see you actually comment on my input - as you never do, because yo apparently don't have the intellect to respond...therefore I will assume that you agree with what I have posted.

YJ, I've often wondered this myself. I know five girls who lost their sorority membership for dressing up like the Cosby family for Halloween.

@ck, ignorance does not equal insensitivity. If someone has no idea that you're Jewish or of the holocaust and says that most ridiculous example of phrases, "let us concentrate at camp," or whatever, they're just ignorant. They don't know that there's any reason not to phrase their suggestion so awkwardly. I imagine that most people are woefully ignorant of civil war era race relations. Most people outside the south (or in it, I guess) have no idea that Jim Crow comes from minstrel shows featuring black face.

All this cracking down on black face has done is bring awareness to children that they're supposed to hate each other for superficial reasons because the adults do but are too afraid to say it.

Okay, come on now guys... don't let this thread degrade; it's actually a good thread with decent conversation.

Blackface can obviously be racist, but there have been times that that didn't hold up, have there not? The most common example of it that I've seen was in "The Jazz Singer" - the main actor used blackface in context of the film while also playing a huge role in one of the more culturally tolerant films of its time. One could argue that he used blackface because it wasn't acceptable then to use a black person in a starring role in a film, and that argument could hold up, but there are multiple perspectives there and none of which, when looking at the rest of the film (incorporating religion and jazz culture without racial connotation), add up to racism.

Krellin is right though... blackface is racist when you look at the history of it. It just is. Yeah, we've all been taught to think it, but can one genuinely make an argument to say that blackface itself (not certain instances of its usage) isn't racist? I can't find one.

Ck brought up the comparison of laws in Germany surrounding Naziism versus here. In today's United States, Nazi or fascist remarks and symbols aren't outlawed, but it's near impossible to say that people don't perceive them as at least racially sensitive if not racist. One could then point out that Germany outlawed these things just as the United States once did through the Smith Act (see "Dennis v. United States" and "Yates v. United States" among others) by essentially outlawing Communism, though it was eventually relaxed in the Yates ruling.

The point then would be to say that yeah, blackface is racist, but there are times where it wasn't, just as there were times that Communism was in itself illegal, just as there are now laws regarding Naziism. It's not an answer, but worth considering.

So no kitties? :(

Anyway, did you really read the thread, krellin? Almost every single post directly addressing the question, besides yours, touches on questions of how we define racism, cultural context, and so on. Didn't you see me and yellowjacket talking about apes? I don't think you even went to the trouble of reading yebellz's post, since it makes precisely the point which you criticize as absent: "It seems that you meant to ask "Why is it generally so offensive for a white person to portray a black person by wearing dark makeup, and are they situations where this should be acceptable?""

Well said dubmdell - - you pretty much echo my comments.

"One of the biggest reasons is that, even if they are trying to be "tasteful"... it begs the question - why the fuck didn't you hire a black actor?" - Thucy

So you are saying that if you have a white actor audition that is better than all the other actors that have auditioned for a role where the character is black, you should pass on the white actor and hire a lesser actor instead because of the color of their skin?

ckroberts - yes, I read the thread...I *also* read the *question*. You are all answering a question about the cultural history of blackface. I am answering the question about blackface directly -- i.e. a person painting their face black -- and there is more than one conversation inherent to the question - as others have *also* rightly pointed out.

YJ mentions the idea of children and blackface. No kid in grade school has any idea of what blackface means histroically...meaning that to a kid in first grade, blackface is a funny makeup job. You can all bury yourself in psuedo-intellectual conversation about the history of blackface...which make this a *very* short conversation - yes, historically blackface is offensive. Period, End of discussion, and you can all pat yourselves on teh back for coming to such a stunning conclusion.

A more useful conversation is what is *inherently* racist? A make-up job in the absence of historical infromation? Is that racist? is a word racist without historical context? If you want to talk about racism, talk about something *OTHER* than the idiotically obvious (i.e. yes, historically blackface actors are racist...big surprise).

Dub, you're right, ignorance is a better term than insensitive. But I disagree with this part: "All this cracking down on black face has done is bring awareness to children that they're supposed to hate each other for superficial reasons because the adults do but are too afraid to say it."

What is tells children is that people understand the world in ways different than how you do, because of the lives they've lived and how people like them lived in the past, and you should be sensitive to that. Or at least that's the ideal; given the deplorable state of public education, the message is probably closer to what you say.

Bo, you're right that I shouldn't be engaging with the trolls. I am not so sure about your comparison with communism, though, since there's never been a time when communism was anything but a fringe political movement in the USA, and even then it was mostly peaceful (compared with Communist Parties in Europe).

haha whats funny is that I agree with much of what he says on this thread, but he long ago lost the right to be taken seriously. It's more fun to just poke him with a stick. But I'll digress to salvage the interesting conversation.

"Why didn't you hire a black actor"

Because when blackface was used in theater originally, you didn't hire balck actors. You also didn't let them eat at the diner with you. and they had their own bathrooms and drining fountains. Seriously...what sort of a stupid question is that. In other words, yes, they didn't hire a black actor because it was racist because the entire society was racist. The feigned outrage, Thucy, is rather ridiculous...and again, points to the absurd obviousness of the question.

YJ - but you aren't ploking fun at me with a stick - because I'm smacking down your ridiculous comments as YOU sidetrack your OWN post. Seriously...who's the jackass now?

@Krellin: anything taken out of its context can lose its meaning.

Being offended by anything requires context. Simply discarding the cultural and human context to claim that something isn't offensive is ridiculous.

Imagine two infants playing together. A man comes by and suffocates one of them. Should the other be shocked and offended? He probably has no idea what's going on. After all, murder is a learned concept, right?

Imagine another example where the superpowers get into a nuclear war and destroy all human life on earth. So what, we're all just a bunch of atoms on a rock, right? The value of human life is a learned concept. Without any humans left, who's there to be offended?

Before you go to a religious argument to counter those, what if I claimed that god did not exist? Would you be offended if I did a whole song and dance show about how god doesn't exist and that all of his followers are just idiots wasting their time? Why should that be offensive? After all, religion is a learned concept...

Suppose I called you a worthless idiot and slew of other verbal insults. Why should you be offended? Even the words of my insults are just language and would have no meaning if they had not been learned.

This may be a good place to share a tradition we have in the Netherlands, celebrating St Nicholas Day when kids get presents by adults in blackface. See this great vid for a run down:
http://youtu.be/UCUHTDrca4s

Yes, you are the winner. Now please, continue. I'll just sit by as you try to argue the point from your contemptuous perspective and call everyone who disagrees with you an idiot. You are aware it's going to come to that, right?

Yellowjacket, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you/where do you live/etc? As an educator I am always interested in what people know and why.

Hey ck, I'm in the midwest, and am 32. I like to think I'm not terribly ignorant on race issues, though obviously I knew coming in that I was on this one.

I am from the South, the Deep South in fact, so the situation is a little different here; these sorts of issues are much more to the fore. Almost every year, for example, someone seems to notice for the first time just how racist so much of southern fraternity life is, with the Old South parties and such.

Also YJ, looking back at it, I hope I did not come across as too obnoxious in my initial response. It's so rare that I find someone genuinely wants to ask questions about these things, so I hope I was not insulting.

Nope, not at all. In fact, you guided us more or less directly to where my disconnect was without being a tool about it.

@yebellz -- "Suppose I called you a worthless idiot and slew of other verbal insults. Why should you be offended? Even the words of my insults are just language and would have no meaning if they had not been learned.

In fact, even knowing what the words mean, you are more than free to call me whatever you wish on these forums, and I will not take insult in reality, because...
1. I have no idea who you are
2. You have no idea who I am
3. I don't really care what you have to say - or most anyone on these threads, in general - insofar as none of you have any real impact on my life, my family, my relationships, etc
4. Even if the insults are intended, it is simple to consider the source and simply ignore them, deeming the source of the insults to not have the power to insult me.

For example, YJ makes a pointless habit of trying to insult me. I play along, I mock him in return, etc....but seriously, it's more for the sport of the verbal back and forth than anything else.

In other words, *NOBODY* can insult you if you choose to not be insulted. You can only be insulted if you give someone the power to insult you.

So...take the case of an African American seeing someone in blackface.
I can think of three options to ract:
1. Take it as an insult, be offended, and let it ruin your day with anger
2. Accept that the person in black face may be ignorant of the fact that it is insulting, realize their mistake, and let it pass. Eventually, if enough people let the "grievance" pass without comment, and without insult, the action/word/etc loses all power to be insulting
3. Accept that the person intended it to be insulting, but understand that the person is not worthy of your consideration, does not have any power over you, and pity them, instead of being insulted by them. Ignore them...and in time, the action/word/etc loses power to insult..

Insults are a two-way street - it requires someone to provoke, and it requires someone *wiling* to be provoked.

Unfortunately, our schools teach children that they *should* be insulted, they empower bullies....whereas in the "old days" children were taught "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me". And that's why when someone called you a name, the normal response was "I'm rubber, your glue, whatever you say to me bounces off me and sticks to you" -- in other words, we had a national culture that *DE-emphasized* the power of words, and granted children the power to ignore insults...and thus, insults had far less power than they do today.

Hey Krellin, remember when Obama won? I mean really, you should spend a few minutes and soak it all in again. Reread the thread if you need to, it's pretty funny. Maybe imagine somebody else was the butt of it though. Better not get offended again - I felt really empowered by your response to that.