Quote:
Originally Posted by DTD Alum
Allegedly. There are no photos of this act yet. The ones being claimed as blackface are either facial hair drawings, "gold diggers" with dirt on their faces (a Kanye West song, and they dressed up as 49ers instead of the stereotype), and in one bizarre case, a woman that in my eyes appears to be actually black.
Most headlines are reading "UCLA fraternity and sorority members dress up in blackface" (read: not just, "dressing up for an insensitive party" even though I think the costumes thus far shown were not culturally insensitive) when there isn't a shred of concrete proof this happened. Does this not seem grossly unfair to these men and women, at least until the alleged photographic proof does emerge?
ETA: And like I said in the post above, 95% of the time when articles emerge about GLOs being sexist, culturally insensitive, etc I find the fault entirely with the member/organization. This is a rare case where I feel we have jumped the gun without any proof whatsoever.
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I think this is a case where maybe it wasn't technically blackface, but the historical context should have been enough to dissuade them from doing it. Maybe they were dressed like 49ers - but, you are still talking about a song by a Black man and rubbing charcoal on your face and calling it a literal gold digger costume is still a bit iffy in terms of sensitivity. Because blackface IS a thing, and has a history of being used to exploit, appropriate, and harm the black community, I think extra care and caution should be taken to make sure you don't do anything that could be
perceived as blackface. And, unfortunately, that didn't happen here. So while I agree with you that it probably wasn't intentional, I don't think anyone can really say that it wasn't insensitive or that others don't have the right to be offended.
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