2.12.19: Nation – (Culture): Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has stated he refuses to resign amid a blackface scandal.
The governor first said he was one of two men in a racist photo that was published in his 1984 medical school yearbook. Mr. Northam later disowned the photo, which pictured a man in full Ku Klux Klan regalia and another man in blackface.
But Gov. Northam did confess to once darkening his face to perform as Michael Jackson.
In light of the governor’s woes, Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring disclosed that as a 19-year-old college student, he once wore blackface as part of a Halloween costume.
“The shame of that moment has haunted me for decades,” Mr. Herring said last week in a statement.
Also last week, Italian luxury fashion brand Gucci deeply apologized for its $890 wool balaclava jumper which resembles blackface. The item has been pulled from online and retail stores, Gucci confirmed.
Nonetheless, a number of celebrities, including filmmaker Mr. Spike Lee and rappers Soulja Boy and T.I, have denounced the clothier and have called for a boycott.
On Monday, department store chain Dillard’s made Katy Perry’s brand of shoes unavailable for online purchase due to the footwear’s resemblance to blackface. Singer Katy Perry and Global Brands Group offered a statement of remorse to The Hollywood Reporter and confirmed that the shoes, which came in a variety of colors, have been removed from Katy Perry Collections.
All of these scandals have matured in February, the month annually dedicated to remembering Black History.
I’ve heard people bemoan this fact and suggest it’s a terrible start to a 28-day period wherein we reflect on African-American’s contribution to American life.
But what if it isn’t a horrid beginning to Black History Month?
What if these scandals and controversies are provoking the types of conversations and learning opportunities that the month of February often lack, due to its reliance on the more well-known events of black culture, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1968 March on Washington.
For Black History Month shouldn’t just be about what African-Americans have done, but also what was done to them.
Blackface was a 19th Century national art-form that offered a cartoonish depiction of African-Americans as lazy and buffoonish. The actors in blackface who performed minstrel shows were almost always Caucasian.
And it’s hard to overstate just how popular this form of entertainment was. Indeed, at a point in history, blackface wasn’t largely controversial but rather commonplace. That isn’t to say that the minstrel shows went on without critique.
Fredrick Douglas, for example, in 1848 called blackface performers “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.”
And yet, despite its pervasiveness in American life, minstrel shows and their reliance on blackface rarely have a place in mainstream Black History Month teachings. But it should.
For all the talk of mass incarceration as the New Jim Crow, do we actually know what and who the Old Jim Crow was?
Jim Crow laws were local and state laws that enforced racial segregation in the 19th and 20th Centuries, a fact that’s relatively widely known.
Lesser known, however, is that Jim Crow, or Jump Jim Crow, is an 1828 song and dance that was performed by white minstrel Thomas Dartmouth Rice, whose presentation included him wearing blackface.
For all the hype surrounding the retiring of Mr. Tyler Perry’s Madea character, do we truly understand why scholars for years have argued that Mr. Perry’s creation was a 21st Century representation of the Mammy caricature, which was a sub-archetype featured in 19th Century minstrels shows?
Minstrels shows are a critical part of American history that’s particularly germane to Black History Month.
And the blackface scandals that are currently populating news headlines provide an opportunity to talk about yesteryear’s infatuation with the art-form, how it socialized generations of whites to think about African-Americans, and how the centuries-old caricatures remain both visible and hidden in today’s mainstream media offerings.
These blackface scandals aren’t good for morale. But they are good for Black History Month.
We should embrace these teaching moments so that Jim Crow, Mammy, the Coon and other awfully offensive sub-archetypes of the 19th Century are never forgotten and never duplicated.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® and I’m Drumming for Justice!™
Author’s bio: Christopher “Flood the Drummer®” Norris is an award-winning journalist, online content producer and professional drummer currently serving as the CEO of Techbook Online, a Philadelphia-based news and event company, and the host of the Drumming for Justice podcast. Subscribe here.
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