Wholesome childhood memory - Lemmy.World
lemmy.world

People in comments of this post pointed out coloring your face black is racist.

May I ask you Americans why is coloring your face considered racist?

Coming from Europe, I personally do not see anything wrong with trying to color (in any color) your face to match any other race.

I believe is should be normal to color our faces in any color. Is it also racist if black person would color their face in other skin tones? Why? Also interesting thought: What about tanning yourself?

Or is it for some reason not ok to acknowledge people have different skin tones? Of course you do not do it out of disrespect, racism, etc. But out of acknowledging character you are trying to represent looks different than you.

I also noticed people pretend to not see differences in skin tones. What is up with that? I thought racism meant to hate or disrespect people of different races. But why is coloring your face considered disrespectful?

Maybe this image itself has racist background I do not understand, but I would like to know answers to my questions in general, since American culture has quite influence on quite a large chunk of our globe.

  • BrotherL0v3@lemmy.world
    202·
    2 months ago

    In the US, there is a history of white performers using blackface to play caricatures of black people, leaning hard on racist ethnic stereotypes. From Wikipedia:

    The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century.[1] The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.[2][3] Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.

    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      Yup this is the answer. In the past people had put on black makeup and did horribly awful racist caricatures of black people. As a result putting on black makeup itself came to mean you’re doing racist stuff. IMO i think that far in the future if racism is eliminated then people will be able to put on dark makeup and it’ll be seen as fine. But none of us reading this sentence are gonna be alive to see that point