“America is a land of masking jokers,” the novelist Ralph Ellison wrote in 1958 in an essay on American identity. “We wear the mask for
purposes of aggression as well as for defense, when we are projecting
the future and preserving the past … the joke is at the center of the
American identity.” When white Americans dumped tea into the Boston Harbor, Ellison argues, they were wearing the costumes
– the masks – of Native Americans; when white Americans wished to ease
their discomfort with black Americans, they simply adopted blackness
itself as a costume, a clown suit, attempting to at once crudely mimic
African Americans through stereotypes and to create a caricature that
could be easily laughed at and spoken down to. It was an act of both
offense and defense: an attack through derision, and a kind of
psychological defense against a deeply feared group. The entertainer in
blackface – even when it was a black American forced to put on blackface
makeup – “is [always] white”, Ellison noted.
At
the height of its popularity in the late 19th century, seeing white
performers adorned in coal-black makeup, woolly wigs and outlandishly
red lips was one of the most beloved pastimes for white American
families.
My now-dead friend William B. McKechnie III once told me that when his mother was little, the kids might go down to the local insane asylum and peek in at the crazy people and their crazy stuff. As ever, the habits of the past may seem antiquated and even cruel and yet there they are looking out of our very own mirrors. Blackface may make today's white man cringe, yet imagine how much worse than cringing the black man's burden was to bear.
In my youth and ignorance I found Blackface performances as funny as any other caricature.
Now I wonder if some Blacks saw it that way too and made it their business not to repeat the traits Blackface performers exploited.
Regarding the picture on Gov. Northam yearbook page, I wonder if there was a performance involving the Blackface man and the KKK man. That thought is more horrifying than simple racist stereotype dress up.
When white Americans dumped tea into the Boston Harbor, Ellison argues, they were wearing the costumes – the masks – of Native Americans; when white Americans wished to ease their discomfort with black Americans, they simply adopted blackness itself as a costume, a clown suit, attempting to at once crudely mimic African Americans through stereotypes and to create a caricature that could be easily laughed at and spoken down to. It was an act of both offense and defense: an attack through derision, and a kind of psychological defense against a deeply feared group. The entertainer in blackface – even when it was a black American forced to put on blackface makeup – “is [always] white”, Ellison noted.
In my youth and ignorance I found Blackface performances as funny as any other caricature.
ReplyDeleteNow I wonder if some Blacks saw it that way too and made it their business not to repeat the traits Blackface performers exploited.
Regarding the picture on Gov. Northam yearbook page, I wonder if there was a performance involving the Blackface man and the KKK man. That thought is more horrifying than simple racist stereotype dress up.