In light of an extraordinary weekend, which brought the abhorrent act of blackface to the fore, we asked Jude Wanga, a senior editor at New Socialist, to explain how and why ‘blackface’ is so offensive and unacceptable.
They say you wait ages for one bus and then three come along all at once – but you don’t expect each driver to be wearing blackface.
Three is the magic number, but it feels like a curse. This is how events transpired over the weekend in the world of sport. Two cases came in football, but it was all kicked off by darts. It’s perhaps not where you expect to find a teachable moment for society, yet that’s were we find ourselves today.
Star Sports Bookmakers tweeted their first offending post on Friday evening. They tweeted a photo of a man in blackface, in costume as Diane Abbott, holding a sign saying, ‘190’.
The tweet read: “An early contender for best fancy dress costume at the #PDC #WorldDartsChampionships tonight at #AllyPally”
Understandably the tweet was met with outrage, yet rather than apologise and delete, Star Sports decided to double down and defend it, telling us it was, ‘a very impressive attempt at fancy dress,’ and to, ‘please stop taking things so seriously’.
This, somehow, did not quell the criticism, and on Sunday they duly issued an attempt at an apology, stating:
‘On Friday evening we tweeted a photo taken at the darts featuring a member of the audience dressed in a Diane Abbott costume. It was not meant to cause offense [sic] with the humorous element in our eyes being the ‘190’ scribbled on the sign. We have since removed the photo and would like to apologise to all those who were offended by it.’
So far, so hideous.
Whilst they were penning this, veteran sports journalist Paddy Barclay, he of Sunday Supplement and LBC 97.3’s Score, and previously of The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and The Guardian, decided to ride to the defence of the offending tweet.
Responding to noted and respected black politician David Lammy’s tweet in support of Diane Abbott, he proclaimed, supposedly mystified, ‘Racism and misogyny? How do you explain either of those? Having someone dress up as you is hardly abuse of any description’
Racism and misogyny? How do you explain either of those? Having someone dress up as you is hardly abuse of any description. https://t.co/rRFGq5PpNm
— Inspect (@lnspectxyz) December 17, 2017
This began an entire day of defending blackface with increasingly bizarre results, including retweeting a Twitter account which dabbles in far right ideology, and admitting to once having blacked up as Errol Brown.
If it needs to be said – and it clearly does – blackface is not your standard ‘fancy dress’. “But why?” I hear you ask, if you have an irresistible urge to cover your skin in a darker hue, “It’s just dressing up as someone, isn’t it?”
No, it isn’t. Blackface is specific practice of utilising makeup so that non-black performers can portray black people. So far so uncontroversial, you might believe…except you would be wrong. That’s an already deeply controversial belief, but let’s keep going for a second.
Blackface gained traction in the 19th century in the minstrel shows of America.
It specifically helped to spread racial stereotypes of black people during the period where the enslavement of black people was not only legal, but considered perfectly logical. Almost its entire popularity was based on its portrayal of black people as either: intellectually inferior happy slaves, hyper-sexual “negro bed wenches”, or the most enduring blackface template of all, the mammy stereotype.
The genre is credited with playing a prominent role in shaping views of black people, and it wasn’t limited to the US. In fact, minstrel shows carried on in the UK long after they ceased to be popular in the US, with Are You Being Served? featuring blackface in the early 1980s, nearly 200 years after it first became popular. It is still seen in at fancy dress events across the country, despite the problem being explained every time a celebrity gets caught doing it.
Often at this point, the Wayans film White Chicks, where two black policeman impersonate two wealthy white women as part of an undercover sting, is brought up as a defence of blackface. “Well, why was there no uproar about this film?”
Putting aside the fact that it’s a terrible film, the most negative stereotype depicted in White Chicks is that these two rich white women are essentially airheads who are also racially insensitive and sing the N-word.
There is no 200-year history of black performers putting mayonnaise on their faces to portray white people as rich airheads who wear Gucci. There is no history of black people mainstreaming the perception of white people as lazy, ugly, hyper-sexual, stupid subspecies worthy only of ridicule and enslavement.
This is the defining difference of why these two instances of putting makeup on one’s face to denote another race are not remotely comparable. Similarly, Mickey Rooney’s turn as an Asian man in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is offensive also, indulging in stereotypes to play Mr. Yunioshi.
The idea that phenomenons born of racism cease to be racist in present time, relies on the absolute denial of the current racism that is prevalent in society and popular culture. It also fails to consider or accept that racism in the past can be linked step-by-step to racism in present day. Things might have improved, but that doesn’t mean that racism has been abolished because people know they shouldn’t say the N-word anymore.
Paddy Barclay infers that the minstrel shows were of a different time but offers no explanation of what has changed in societal attitudes towards black people right now that makes blackface in 2017 markedly different.
And so we turn to Antoine Griezmann who, for a reason unknown to anyone other than Antoine, thought it would be good to idea to go to an 80s themed fancy dress party in head-to-toe blackface to portray a Harlem Globetrotter.
His immediate response, again, was to brush off criticism. ‘Calm down’, he said, ‘It’s just paying homage!’ No big deal in other words.
Do you see a pattern developing? As with Star Sports, Griezmann followed up his casual dismissal with a more considered apology. ‘If I have offended anyone’ he began, stating that he recognised it was ‘maladroit’, a french term loosely meaning ‘awkward’ that applies more, here, to being ‘clumsy’.
There’s no clumsy way to black up your entire body, I’m afraid Antoine.
Both Star Sports and Griezmann’s initial reactions reveal just how uneducated and increasingly wilfully ignorant – and it really is that – society remains on how racism persists today. It might shock some to know that it’s perfectly possible to dress up as a black person, and people have been turning up to fancy dress parties as people of a different race for time immemorial, without needing to whip out the boot polish in the name of ‘authenticity’.
Skin colour is not a costume, especially when it has been used to not only categorise humans, but for that categorisation to form the basis of the global oppression of minorities as distinctly inferior based solely on their skin colour.
Human zoo. African girl in a Congolese village display at the Brussels 1958 World's Fair. pic.twitter.com/cICZXud4J2
— History Photographed (@HistoryInPics) March 8, 2016
Imagine the colour of your skin being the reason your history has been erased, your ancestry untraceable and enslaved, your siblings and children discriminated against by the police; at school, at work, in football, at darts. And then seeing the people who subsequently benefitted from this oppression – who claim to be against racism – redeploying the very same tools that helped cement the negative stereotypes you still face today.
And then consider this. This situation has arisen because of a lack of respect given to black people, and often a fair lack of representation. There are a lack of black managers, black journalists, and black darts players.
Until there is proportional representation, black people in these professions won’t feel secure to express their opinions. And when they are a minority in precarious positions, primarily wanting to just earn a living rather than being responsible for ending racism, it makes it doubly hard to challenge blackface, and to be listened to when they do.
Because of all this, it is never just a joke, and it is never just blackface.
