Is blackface ever acceptable?

I think that if you have issues with someone laughing at you (whether cruelly, or mockingly or not) that it reveals some sort of insecurity, or psychological weakness. Also, to tease or joke about someone without malice is often a sign of respect or affection.

The fact that we still need to parse these sorts of questions, is sad. True equality would mean (as a given) that we can laugh at one another.

Take George Dubya. He is mocked, mercilessly and with malice, all the time. But it's given that he's a big boy, and ought to be able to take it. Indeed, he usually seems oblivious to the fact half the country is snickering at him. The same goes for whitetrash. It's not just Larry the Cable Guy. It's everyone. The whitetrash mock themselves. That's security.

The fact that we're getting all balled up about this black face issue, when the last main stream white comedian to don it in mockery performed over five decades ago, before the end of vaudeville, is revealing.

Revealing, perhaps that many whites still have a bad conscience.. why? Because their grandparents were racist? No, I rather think it's because they still have "politically incorrect" thoughts that they themselves can rarely publicly fess to, and *that* makes them flagellate themselves, to expiate the retrograde thoughts.

If we really felt that blacks were truly equal, we wouldn't behave this way. We wouldn't care about words, about jokes. But because few people really do (to included very many blacks themselves), causing everyone to worry about public symbols, causing everyone to fudge them in a collective attempt at wish fulfillment and collective self deception.

Because the jokes simply cut too close to the bone. This is why the fact that certain black comedians such as Chris Rock and Bill Cosby (who's speaking up on Oprah, not cracking jokes anymore) are now pointing to many of the pathologies of the Black community, is a hopeful sign.

If we could all just relax, and just make as much fun of Obama (say) as possible, instead of treating him with what I think is false respect (because it simply masks this bad conscience I'm talking about) we would all move to a more healthy and mature public discourse.

And healthy discourse makes for healthy politics, and healthy communities. So let's have more jokes. Even if they involve blackface.

> "If a friend of mine is letting off steam and says something that could be considered critical,insulting, or mocking about her husband, it's different than if I were to say the exact same thing to her."

Ta-Nehisi Coates recently made the same point about the N Word and its various derivations. (Coz, yeah, people never say cruel or abusive things that hurt their spouses, at least not often or badly enough for outsiders to have standing to intervene.)

I see the logic, but in practice there's the question of what lawyers call "administrability". You know your friend and her husband are married to each other. OTOH, if someone starts making jokes or complaints about X group, I really don't want to have to check their identity papers to see whether they are peeing from inside the tent or outside it.

That's why I think skin colour - not race, but skin colour, in the most literal sense - is the best guide for whether "blackface" is offensive. If a white person in dark-skinned makeup looks like a crude caricature of a stereotypical "lawn jockey", then I'd be picketing the cinema too - if that were played for laughs. Otherwise, if it were a docudrama on the racism suffered by Al Jolson. (Or what if it were a Michael Moore stunt pulled at the GOP National Convention? Liberals would protest that too, right? I guess Ted Danson - then dating Whoopi Goldberg - did cop criticism in 1993 when he tried something similar.)

But Downey, as noted, could pass for Don Cheadle's cousin. It's a careful and subtle use of makeup.

Whatever, Scott. You know what I mean.