White trick-or-treaters in blackface: C/D?

xpost wearing a freaking miniskirt was a controversial act at one time. Also there are plenty of white people and jewish people with "nappy hair," labelling them as assholes for choosing a hairstyle is a little odd. Please explain to me how someone can go in costume as Ben Wallace without sporting a wig.

xpost Ethan no one is condoning all people ever doing things for imitative purposes, is the thing here. I mean you just said you would maybe even laugh at a kid dressed up like that and I'd bet you wouldn't assume it was racism rearing its ugly head.

WHERE IS DAVID STERN TO MAKE SURE THE BAD BLACK BALLPLAYERS WEAR SUITS?!????!?

I find the rasta cap wig thing really offensive. Especially since it's usually paired with the "irie, mon. watch me smoke my big spliff" mock patois. I gave a lot of evil looks over that at the Halloween party at was at over the weekend. Kids, adults, whoever need to be confronted and set straight on that shit a lot more often.

xpost And the "jewfro" = an afro wig is totally ridiculous.

were you dressed up as .. evil?

ts: comically overstated misanthropy vs. noblesse oblige

No, I was Sarah Dash from Labelle. I'm naturally evil.

well I mean that's true.

cf. the miasppropriation of Joel Chandler Harris, etc.

YOU GET WHAT YOU GIVE

AHHHHHHHH

also we just split the bill and didn't argue.

And no, the "jewfro" thing isn't "totally ridiculous" because ethan just said nonblacks with fros are "assholes"! I mean I think jess and I have a right to point out two prominent froed out Jews who probably weren't trying to ironically co-opt black culture if y'all have the right to call them "assholes."

So, again, ethan, are you saying that people just shouldn't go as Ben Wallace to Halloween (without the blackface)? This is patently offensive no matter what? I mean I agree people shouldn't go to Halloween as Ben Wallace cos quite frankly, as I keep saying, that's a pretty crap costume. But I'm asking, should the kid just not have gone as Ben Wallace (again, assuming no blackface), or is there some alternative, Ben Wallace with shaved head, that you are thinking of?

Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class is a really wonderful book.

I am 8. There is some stupid school lipsync contest. My then best-friend and I want to do "Old Man River." His parents tell him it would be racially offensive to do so! I am 12. A good friend who is an actor is cast as MLK in this stupid school play/pagent (yeah, the jr high is nearly all white and latino, so virtually no black kids to be found anyway) and he's told that he can't do his spot-on MLK voice imitation because to talk too much like MLK, being white and all, becuz that would be "racially offensive." So he has to end up giving the speech in this stupid nasal dorky voice.

These things both pissed me off to no end.

In unrelated news, I went as Arnold Schwarzenegger (omg! fake-austrian accent! offensive!) to a halloween party on saturday and threatened to kick out all the hispanic folx. I think this was taken in good fun.

That bit you got right, certainly.

I wouldn't let my child wear blackface, or anything like that. I don't understand why anyone would let their kid go out like that. Maybe in some world of complete equality of oppurtunity, equal rights, equal status, it would be ok, but we very much don't live in that world.

I can remember the black & white minstrel show being on bbc1 every week, sat night iirc. It was very popular, though we didn't used to watch it.

When we were kids in junior school (this would have been in the early 1970s, I think 1972.) one year the school nativity play was done in blackface, ie as if the play was done by the black & white minstrels. This was the teachers idea. I remember my parents and others not being very keen on the idea. Nevertheless it went ahead.

If I think about it now, I feel kind of dizzy, what the fuck, you know? Why the fuck did they do that? It would be nice to think that people in 2005 had more sense than people in 1972, anyway. Obviously some people don't.

well i think a white kid in a ben wallace jersey with an afro wig should be welcomed, and i can think of plenty examples where that type of stuff is interesting and funny and ok (one of the funny things about this whole argument was that i actually stuck up for ted danson's whoopi-written celebrity roast, or the concept at least - not actually funny but i dont think it crossed any lines that good comedy shouldnt, different of course if its johnny carson or colin quinn in blackface)

ok. That's all I'm saying though seriously Ted Danson sucks.

Also if you're allowed to play Ann Coulter I am too, dude. Don't get too crazy on the idea that you gotta explain power distribution problems! :P

When I was a kid (7-8), my favorite movie was "The Wiz." My school friend Kianga and I, along with a few other kids, put on an playacting production of the show in school at one point. I played the wis, and tried my best to dress up like Richard Pryor, including an afro wig and blackface. My motivations were totally positive--I loved the movie and was trying to emulate something I loved. Kianga played Dorothy--she was black, and didn't use blackface. Neither one of us had any idea what the context of blackface was.

The more interesting questions to me revolve around whether *the parents* recognized the faux pas here, and what that means. I wouldn't let my kid do it either, but the problem comes when I try to explain to him or her why doing it is wrong--in a better world, where the historical context of blackface was less clearly terribly, it seems that my child could take exactly the *wrong* message away from being forbidden to dress up as Ben Wallace of whoever, and that message could perpetuate for yet another generation the fallacy that there is something a priori wrong/different/lesser/frightening/whatever about people of different races.

I mean obviously, we're not in that world, but what's the right solution here?

xpost thank you ally thank you stelfox!!

You know as well as everyone else that he meant wigs and has even since backed off that, so what are you even getting at?

Why's Ben Wallace with a wig and no blackface such a crap costume? I mean, it's Halloween. No one is especially authentic. I had foam abs on my old Batman costume, but it was recognizable enough that I was Batman though the whole thing was made of spandex and foam. A white kid with a Ben Wallace type afro wig, the Ben Wallace jersey, and saying "I'm Ben Wallace" is really authentic/recognizable enough.