It is 2009 - stop with the blackface already

It is 2009 - stop with the blackface already

Dear Athens, OH,

First off, gotta say that you're a really cool city most of the time. You have so many neat shops and restaurants; I'm a little jealous that West Virginia doesn't have a Big Mama's Burritos or Goodfella's pizza. And your own indie theater and film program? Kudos!

But going to your Halloween block party this year, I saw a few things that were not cool, not cool at all. I saw way too many white guys dressed like Kanye with blackface and sorority girls dressed like fat black lady caricatures. Very ugly and not the picture of tolerance you try to promote elsewhere. Are you not teaching your fellow Athenians, especially your student body, that blackface isn't acceptable?

Apparently fucking not, from reading your student paper. In the opinion piece, some video production students defend an actress darkening her skin in a sketch about Oprah. I want to strike down a couple of the arguments they used in their defense, both in this article and in the rebuttal from the original article that broke the story.

(a) "It was satire." I hate that I have to spell this out to a program of higher education, but satire and humor can still be racist. If you have a person of color crying foul on what you consider funny, then maybe you should reexamine your point of view instead of being condescending and saying, "You don't get it! We were making a humorous statement! You just don't happen to find it humorous!" That's what "It was satire" as an excuse says to me.

(b) "the actress didn't use traditional blackface, she just used commercial bronzer to make her skin darker." If you are a white actress that is portraying an African-American and use ANY type of makeup to darken your skin to ANY degree, that's fucking blackface. End of story. (and yes, before you ask, that does includes Fred Armisen playing Obama. And what would the alternative be? Oh, I don't know, maybe having one than one fucking minority on the SNL cast?)

(c) "The sketch itself doesn't even concern race." Anything involving any person of color concerns race. This is a hard concept to grasp when you're a member of a group in power. It's kind of hard to see beyond privilege when you've got it, but race is involved in every facet of society. Even what you write off as a harmless sketch.

The article asks, "Where do we draw the line as to what is acceptable?" No problem! I can draw that line for you! You can even print it out and keep it in your wallet as a reminder!

IF YOU ARE WHITE AND THINK ABOUT DARKENING YOUR SKIN TO PORTRAY A PERSON OF COLOR, DON'T! IT'S BLACKFACE, IT'S 2009, AND IT'S FUCKING OFFENSIVE!

Sincerely,
Molly