If you dress up as a black person for Halloween and decide to use blackface, I hope someone fades you for it.
I hope you catch hands with a Major League Baseball level of hand-eye coordination and accuracy. You can catch me on these all-hallowed Oxford streets, makeup removal wipes in hand, ready to scrub your mistake — in shades even I can’t find in the makeup aisle — from your skin. You would deserve it. Cultures are not costumes, and exaggerated performances of stereotypical racial aspects of marginalized groups of people perpetuate violence against those groups.
In your sexy kimono, your maracas and sombrero, your unnecessarily sexy or caricatured whatever-the-hell-racialized else, you are being abusive. Blackface is one of the most painfully egregious examples of the ways in which people turn their Halloween garb into the Worst Costumes Ever.
And like everything else you think Chancellor Jones is trying to rip from your clammy fists, blackface finds its origins in the antebellum period.
Based off of the totally stupid conception that enslaved blacks somehow enjoyed being, you know, enslaved, or that black people existed in some forms for their oppressors’ entertainment, white people would use makeup to “blacken” themselves and then act like their perceptions of hilarious, hilarious Negroes for the amusement of other white people. Minstrel shows featuring white actors with dark skin, coarse wigs and gaping red mouths had an immense influence on then and current hateful and woefully distorted attitudes and stereotypes toward black people.
And whether or not you have a black friend or the Migos album or have seen a black person in real life before, blackface is, indeed, racist. There is no argument. There is no debate. There is no need to take it personally — but if your costume involves blackface, then you do need to take it off of your agenda.
When you participate in minstrelsy behavior, you breathe new life into visual racial stereotypes, and when you attempt to remove blackface from its historical context, you are enabling even further violence and racism against black people by trying to de-race something that’s obviously racist. There’s no way you can do it and “not be offensive,” no way that that behavior isn’t a damaging representation of a group that it is mocking 100 percent of the time, no way the onus of responsibility for its hurtfulness rests on those offended by it, no matter what your seemingly innocent idiotic intentions were.
You don’t even need blackface. Granted, if you’re trying to dress like 2010 – 2012 Nicki Minaj there’s a good chance that someone could confuse you for Katy Perry, but otherwise, relying on blackface just betrays your lack of creativity. There’s no need to paint your pale skin in shade NW45 for your Crazy Eyes costume — the hairstyle and the orange jumpsuit make it apparent. Somebody’s sister and brother-in-law are circulating on Twitter as an incredible Jay Z and Beyoncé without blackface. Stevie Wonder Woman was hilariously executed without blackface. Queen Latifah from her U-N-I-T-Y phase was portrayed by a white male on Bob’s Burgers. Tons of white people dress as Jesus every year and don’t use blackface and everyone still gets it.
In short, it’s totally okay to dress up as black people for Halloween, but it’s never okay to be in blackface. So if you bop outside this weekend shucking and jiving and whistling Dixie and some righteous individual lays you out for it, don’t say you didn’t know better.
But if you buy concealer in the proper shade, maybe no one will know.
Sierra Mannie is a senior Classics major from Ridgeland.
