Blackface: Racist or Funny?

[twoblacknines]

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who the [censored] cares?
Blatant racism is funny because our generation finds the ideas of racism so absurd. Dave Chapelle as a white man is funny. A white man as a black man CAN be funny. The people who care are the ones who are sensitive to race and thus either racist or reverse-racist.

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This is true..NO ONE ever whines when Dave makes fun of white people or paints his face white or talks with a "white" accent. Black comedians make fun of whitey all the time. And I laugh. (I am white). But god forbid that someone dresses black. IF you are dressing up as a black guy you should be able to make your skin black without anyone taking offense. Would a black guy dressing as George Bush without his face painted white make any sense?

[Shenlong]

Then again twoblacknines, white people weren't oppressed or treated as inferior people for a nice long time because of the color of their skin. There's a long history there you can't just ignore, because it will get your ass handed to you.

[skunkworks]

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Either something is racist all the time, or it's not racist at all.

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This is a very misleading and wrong thing to say.

Racism isn't based on intent -- people say/do racist things all the time without knowing it. Whether something is racist or not isn't necessarily based on context alone either, but it really can make a huge difference. I can say something like "chinky" to describe a racist costume, and yes, the word is racist. Is it being used in an appropriate context? Yes, I think it's okay to condemn someone in some racist Charlie Chan Halloween costume and describe that their eyes were deliberately made "chinky". I made a judgment call.

Is a black person using the n-word being racist? Depends on the context, brother. That sure sounds like a shade of gray to me. Whether I agree with blacks calling each other the n-word is a different matter.

Also, you don't have to go label me a hypocrite just because your feelings got hurt when I disagreed with you.

[skunkworks]

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This is true..NO ONE ever whines when Dave makes fun of white people or paints his face white or talks with a "white" accent. Black comedians make fun of whitey all the time.

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This is a really common argument -- "How come they can do X to us, but we can't do X back because it's racist?" It's because the meaning of X changes in different contexts. People used to paint their faces black and act like [censored] idiotic ignorant black people -- and this was considered entertaining. How do you people not see how this can be offensive to a black person today? How can you not understand that this is so very different than a black person dressing up as a white guy?

[Shenlong]

My feelings aren't hurt, I just thought it was funny that you use a racial slur to describe someone while condemning racism in the same post. Would it have been harder to think about what you were saying and say asian or something of the like?

This might be something we have to agree to disagree upon, but I think your judgement call there was wrong. Or at least not very well thought out given the context of the rest of your post.

[rothko]

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blackface is not just painting your face "brownish" to appear black, blackface is like, BLACK, w/ exaggerated pink lips

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op, do you even know what "blackface" is. below is a pic of ted danson being a racist. i'm fairly certain your friends weren't doing "blackface".

[twoblacknines]

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This is true..NO ONE ever whines when Dave makes fun of white people or paints his face white or talks with a "white" accent. Black comedians make fun of whitey all the time.

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This is a really common argument -- "How come they can do X to us, but we can't do X back because it's racist?" It's because the meaning of X changes in different contexts. People used to paint their faces black and act like [censored] idiotic ignorant black people -- and this was considered entertaining. How do you people not see how this can be offensive to a black person today? How can you not understand that this is so very different than a black person dressing up as a white guy?

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Because people in Halloween costumes are not practicing true blackface (in the historic sense). They are dressing up to play a part, and as long as the intent isn't to insult a particular race, I see nothing wrong with it.

[LionelHutz00]

Dressing up as a black celebrity isn't racist per se. The problem is that Flava Flav is amusing to white people because he acts like a clown, which is way to similar to blackface.

[CaucasianAsian29]

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blackface is not just painting your face "brownish" to appear black, blackface is like, BLACK, w/ exaggerated pink lips

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op, do you even know what "blackface" is. below is a pic of ted danson being a racist. i'm fairly certain your friends weren't doing "blackface".



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Yes, they were not trying to "do blackface." I realize this, I"m asking oot if they still consider this racist and comparing it to "black face." I don't think their intentions were to be "racist." But, I find it offensive because of the history of painting your face black. Esp after watching the movie "Birth of a Nation." I believe in fighting racism

[rothko]

it doesn't compare to the history of blackface, that's the whole point. what they did was not racist.