I Am Not a Costume!

[psusue]

Because this thread has gone horribly off track, I'd like to get back to the main point of this-- people need to stop bastardizing others cultures and subcultures, period. If you choose to do this, you are choosing to be viewed as a huge jerk. Cultures and subcultures that are mocked by those of that (sub)culture are viewed less harshly in general and are to be left to the other members of that (sub)culture to be judged as okay/not okay.

White people, in general, need to realize that mocking another culture and expecting to get away with it is abhorrent and a shining display of white privilege. The idea that we (I am a white woman) even has the ability to do so in some circles is even more disgusting, because it's the idea that we can use a culture to get some laughs without anyone else objecting. Silently witnessing something and not doing anything about it is just as bad as doing it yourself. Intraracially we need to check each other and make sure that we are not perpetrating acts of white superiority, even if we think that it is just a joke.

Blackface, used in any context for any reason, is completely unacceptable and shows the ignorance of whites to the history of it. There is no historical use of 'whiteface' to demean and humiliate by any other race; therefore if someone were to do that it would be just them doing so. A white person using blackface taps into a time of injustice and prejudice and unleashes a world of connotations-- namely that African American and black people are dumb, incompetent, and less-than. This ignorance about the history and roots of these issues needs to stop. As trite as it is to say it, we are forgetting our (recent) history, and those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.