"My people and my culture are not costumes for you put on for your or your people's entertainment and amusement. And when we call your azz out about it, you don't get to tell me as the offended POC party what is and isn't offensive or to 'lighten up' about it."
TransGriot, October 28, 2013
What is it that you white peeps fail to understand, when we Black people tell you it is not appropriate at ANY time for you peeps to do blackface? Why don't you burn it in your brains to simply don't do it?
Because let's be real, that whiteness and white privilege you walk around with but vehemently try to deny exists won't let you drop the subject. It also grates at you that those people Roger B Taney said in Dred Scott v Sandford had no rights you were bound to respect, have told y'all repeatedly not to do it because it is offensive to us.
And you wanna do blackface despite what we said.
Why I'm writing another post about this is in response to Mary Cheney asking the question why whites couldn't do blackface if men could still do drag.
The answer is still the same. Because we told you it is offensive to us, and blackface has 185 years of racist history attached to it.
Blackface was specifically designed to demean, denigrate, disrespect and oppress African-Americans for over a century Those acts centered around the caricature of African-American people as lazy, overly-cheerful, uneducated and musical in addition to dehumanizing Black people and spreading stereotypes that still persist today.
Blackface also spawned products like Ni***rhair Cigarettes, and restaurant chains like the Coon Chicken Inn restaurants that used those stereotypes in their advertising in Jim Crow era America.
Drag shows for the most part are entertainment and do not even come close to meeting that dehumanizing standard.
And since you white peeps have had the societal power and were gleefully using it to oppress peeps who didn't look like you (and still are), it will NEVER acceptable for any white person inside or outside the TBLG community to wear blackface. Not that some of you fools in LGBT world haven't tried it.
So Mary Cheney, to answer your question, white people can't do blackface because it is still and will always be offensive. Being part of the LGBT community doesn't give you a pass either on this issue.
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