Megyn
Kelly, a host on an NBC morning programme, said on air, in a panel of
exclusively white people, that she didn’t understand why children couldn’t wear
blackface as part of their Halloween costumes. In other words, it is ok for a
white person to paint their face black to pretend they are a black person. Her
remark was interpreted as racist all over the States and widely criticised. She
is likely to lose her job over this (albeit not without a multimillion-dollar compensation).
If you do
not know the context, you could probably see nothing racist in painting your
face to pretend you’re someone else. But it’s enough to look at the relevant
Wikipedia page to see what connotations ‘blackface’ has in order to understand
the outrage the comment triggered among black Americans. (“Blackface is a form of theatrical make-up used predominantly by
non-black performers to represent a caricature of a black person. The practice
gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of
racial stereotypes”)
On a few
cable channels that covered this story, white hosts consistently turned to
their black colleagues to ask for comment. As if white people don’t know if a
remark is racist? And it turns out they were right. We don’t. As one of them
explained – you don’t ask the attacker if what he did hurts the victim, you ask
the victim. So you should ask a person of colour if a comment was racist, you
should ask a gay person if someone’s words felt homophobic and you should ask a
Jew whether a joke sounds antisemitic. Only the attacked have the right
sensitivity to decide whether some words are harmless or offensive. It is not
for Harvey Weinstein to decide if the women he invited to his hotel rooms under
false pretences felt sexually abused. We have to ask the women!
We live in
a relatively homogenic community of white Poles, just like Megyn Kelly probably
lived in a white middle-class environment where casual racism goes undetected
or seems innocent enough. What if, just like her, we lack the sensitivity
necessary to see when we offend others? Especially others we are not very
familiar with.
I personally also don't get why people find something as this 'blackface' to be offensive. If a black person would paint it's face white and tried to act as a caricature of a white person, I probably wouldn't find that offensive at all. I doubt any person with a bit of self-distance would.
ReplyDeletein my opinion, the same situation as with blackface is with word "nigger". Most of white people find it extremly offensive and rude but from what I know, afroamercans don't even care about it. In fact blackface concern bad stereotypes about black people and it's much more vulgar. For our safety we should avoid using such terms.
ReplyDeleteI think that I don't quite get the idea of wearing a costume of other races or religions. I simply don't see the point. Costumes on Halloween, as far as I know, should be funny or scary. Why would someone chose something that would only cause controversy when he could just wear a classic ghost costume made of sheets and everybody would be happy. Not everyone is that understandable when it comes to this kind topics and I think it's important to think twice before you say something especially when you're a public person.
ReplyDeleteNice. I don't really know what else I can write byt I really appreciated The story
ReplyDeleteIt's sad that people at once indicted this reporter. I think she didn't know that word "blackface" is clasified as racist comment. But as you wrote we have to ask black person if they found something offensive in that comment.
ReplyDelete