What he did was black up.
Blacking up has a history steeped in racism.
What’s the difference here?
Because he was unaware?
That only means that he himself was ignorant and not racist - but the act itself is just that.
Blacking up is steeped in racism because of the fact that it was intended to mock black people, present them as amusing, and to generally portray stereotypes that weren't true - not because they simply painted their face black. An act is not inherently anything until its motivations are judged. I absolutely will not try to argue with you about the history of blackface, because it's self evident. But that's not what happened here.
If we step away from race, and we shelve that for the moment and apply the same principle to something else, i.e sexism. Suppose I said to you:
'is passing over a female in a job interview, in favour of a male, sexist?'
If you replied yes to me, I would ask why your first instinct wasn't to question why the person did that and to instead rush to labelling it, perhaps the person was more qualified, perhaps they passed over them soley because they were a woman. One of those is sexist, and one is not. If you replied to me 'no, because it would depend on why he did that' I would then ask you why you applied that logic to this example but not to the one of race. Unless you can educate me on the difference between those examples that then means you no longer have to properly analyse a situation before deciding it meets the definition of something, I don't see how that is any different in that before you can term something racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic etc etc, you need to take apart the situation and judge the situation. 'Blacking up' to mock black people or present bullshit stereotypes, make them out to be amusing etc is of course immediately racist and there's a long history of that. Doing so because you truly believe that it enhances your costume
whether you agree that it actually does or not is not racist. It's misguided, it's inappropriate, it's offensive to some people, it's ignorant and it reflects poor decision making. It's the wrong thing to do, and he should apologise for the offense he caused. It is all of those things but it is not racist. You cannot just term something as something because it bears semblence to something else. It isn't rational.
Somebody asked me earlier why I was seemingly arguing this over nothing, but I don't have the time to go back over the pages to quote it, but if it appears I'm doing that then I apologise. I think racism is a very, very serious thing. It needs to be stamped out, and it needs to be tackled head on. My ex girlfriend is black and on many, many occasions I had to console her after she suffered racism in her professional career and her personal life and though I have never experienced it, and cannot truly understand what it actually feels like I do know how it made her feel, and how bad it made me feel that she had to go through this and that there wasn't more I could do to change what she experienced. Equality is the key issue of this generation whether it's gender equality, racial equality, LGBT rights etc and I take it very seriously and I genuinely believe, and see anecdotally on this forum that every time somebody rushes to term something as something whether it's race simply because it involves skin colour, homophobic because it simply involves LGBT, or sexist because it simply involves something to do with gender that the discussion immediately shifts from the issue at hand, to one side vs the other clashing and throwing insults at each other, telling each other they're awful people, defending their choice of words, and generally they become more concerned with simply winning an argument than actually dealing with the issue at hand. If you throw such a charged word at someone they will of course defend it, because it's not something that should be thrown around lightly. It also devalues the impact of the word, and desensitises people to it. It's possible to simply be an asshole and not racist when it comes to something like this. This is not going to change anything for the future, it's just going to breed contempt between groups of people who end up in a situation where they can't be bothered to speak to each other because it just makes them all angry. I would much prefer sides to give and take, one side to say 'this is why this offends me' and the other side to say 'I understand that and I'm sorry, I can understand why your mind jumped to shit that's happened before and I should have known better and considered that, it was never my intention' and for both sides to find common ground rather than what we have now which is two opposing sides more interested in showing the other person why they're a piece of shit than actually improving anythng for anybody.
On a side note, I would also much prefer (and I obviously can't speak for black people regarding this but anecdotally my ex echoed this opinion so I'm not alone) that my children grow up in a world where they can present themself as whatever they want and not even give it a second thought. We had this recently with a white kid dressing up as Pocahontas for some party she went to and people blew up about it. Kids at that age can barely understand the concept of racism, they just want to emulate their heroes and you could make an argument about it being a compliment that they actively wish to portray themselves as something that previously nobody would want to, completely free from malice because to them it simply isn't an issue or worth thinking about, than continue living in a world where we help continue to keep the issue alive by identifying it and making out that it's bad. That world is the one where colour won't matter.
Really? Who does that? Abhorrent practice. I'd rather not sing at all if the content is risqué and I'm in a public space.
