"Blackface" in Millburn causes snowflakes to melt
They've been putting that MLK play on in, I think 1st grade, for decades. It's meant to be entirely respectful and given the age of the kids, its pretty lightweight. Not sure what the kid did or what she looked like but this shows how the internet has rendered words like "outrage" meaningless.
Wow DB. Being a voice of reason. And I agree with you. In fact you are spot on.
+10
drummerboy said:
https://villagegreennj.com/sch...
So, some fifth grade girl shows up at school pretending to be MLK as part of a school "Wax Musuem" event, where the kids honor influential historical figures. She apparently had on brown makeup. Which some people are calling "blackface".
The town is in an uproar over this overt act of racism.
Except, it's really not. Blackface is a very particular style of makeup. e.g, large white lips (sometimes red) are an integral of the blackface look.
Now, there are no pictures of this young girl in makeup, but I kind of doubt that's what she looked like.
Which means she simply put on dark makeup so that, you know, she'd look more like MLK. So a young girl trying to honor a great black man is instead excoriated for racist behavior.
Idiocy, if you ask me. And reactions like this set race relations backwards.
And you know me. I see racism sitting behind practically everything. But not here.
High school kids making a joke out of it and making it a little local viral sensation is not good. I haven't seen the picture but I am wondering if the term "blackface" is hyperbole here. That to me conjures up Al Jolson and the minstrel show look. If that's what was done, parents need some upbraiding. If the kid just rouged up her cheeks with dark makeup, I'm not calling that "blackface." Maybe not a good idea but not "blackface." In my direct experience with this little play, the kids are so young that they are not (yet) even aware of or self-conscious about the racial role thing. Mr. and Mrs. King were usually played by white kids with no snickering or puzzlement, though with the rapidly expanding Asian population in Millburn, I'm sure there's been some variation.
surely the child's parents should have known that darkening the face with make up could be mistaken for "blackface". In addition, when child showed up at school like that, surely a teacher should have stopped it there and made the kid wash his/her face. While I agree this was probably innocent and the child shouldn't be punished, I also don't think it's "no big deal". It's a great learning opportunity for why it could be offensive and the history behind blackface make up.
And personally I've had enough of the "snowflake" thing. It's not okay to insult people or do something offensive and then turn around and belittle people by calling them a snowflake because you personally wouldn't be offended.
I suppose that's a question that we could ask everyone who's commenting on this. If you're not African American, would you send a child to school to portray MLK in brown face makeup?
Is the fact that someone did it the worst travesty we've ever seen? No. But I am surprised this is still something that a supposedly educated person would do.
The family has not be identified so this is just speculation, but there is a high percentage of students in Millburn right now whose parents are immigrants who may actually be unaware of minstrel blackface and its negative meaning. In 2014 21% of the population of the town were foreign born. That percentage would be much higher for the population with school age children given the demographic changes underway.
Racist, no. Insensitive, yes. I say not racist because it may very well be that the little girl and her parents thought they were paying tribute to Dr King. And perhaps that's more of a sign of naïveté than anything else. The much larger picture is that when towns and schools and faculties are not very diverse, as I'm sure the case is here, then stuff like this is going to happen. It's insensitive because who here would want a person of their own ethnicity portrayed in a way that made them feel uncomfortable?
Would not. Did not.
ml1 said:
I suppose that's a question that we could ask everyone who's commenting on this. If you're not African American, would you send a child to school to portray MLK in brown face makeup?
Is the fact that someone did it the worst travesty we've ever seen? No. But I am surprised this is still something that a supposedly educated person would do.
annielou, Milburn is only not diverse if you choose a particular diversity as the only valid one. Which is something that always irks me.
Gilgul said:
annielou, Milburn is only not diverse if you choose a particular diversity as the only valid one. Which is something that always irks me.
It may irk you, however it seems as though some suburban towns are ok with "certain" non-white students attending their schools as long as the number of African American students is kept in the single digits. Then they tout diversity. It irks me.
annielou, Why is Maplewood South Orange working so hard to keep Asians out? The percentage there is in the low single digits. So you must be actively excluding them.
This explains how I feel about it:
"To white folks like us, this often doesn't make a lot of sense; we were taught as kids that race doesn't matter. But it's very easy to say that something that rarely seems to affect us doesn't matter; our race as white people is seen by society as default, our experiences as normal. Our stories get to be the ones that get retold and remembered, and we retell and remember them quite frequently. It's like saying it doesn't matter who wins or loses, after collecting the trophy and the prize money.
So something like whiteface doesn't affect us; it's just skin tone, after all. It's also why, as Americans who are very disconnected, often by generations, from our European ancestors, we often don't give a **** about those stereotypes either. I don't give a **** when people make Scottish jokes, and I wouldn't give a **** if people made Czech jokes, if those were jokes people over here made. It's not all that important to me.
If you are a person of colour in America, it is impossible not to notice race. Even if you've never been subject to malicious racism, you know that you are perceived as an outsider to the dominant culture. Even if you didn't want to care about race, race has been made important for you, personally. You've experienced a lot of **** you know is basically invisible to white people because of "just" your skin tone.
So when some white guy rolls along in blackface, or using black slang or trying to use the n-word positively or neutrally, it rings hollow. It's a mockery, somebody who thinks that all you need to emulate this giant, deeply personal and nuanced concept of Blackness is some shoe polish."
That's what's offensive."
https://www.reddit.com/r/expla...
My son played the bus driver in the Rosa Parks segment and was also the organist at the King wedding, so there was no temptation to use makeup on him. I just looked at an old photo album and none of the kids, including the King characters, wore makeup.
He's grown up now and very decent, gentle and tolerant.
This explains how I feel about it:
"To white folks like us, this often doesn't make a lot of sense; we were taught as kids that race doesn't matter. But it's very easy to say that something that rarely seems to affect us doesn't matter; our race as white people is seen by society as default, our experiences as normal. Our stories get to be the ones that get retold and remembered, and we retell and remember them quite frequently. It's like saying it doesn't matter who wins or loses, after collecting the trophy and the prize money.
So something like whiteface (as in a black person coloring his face white) doesn't affect us; it's just skin tone, after all. It's also why, as Americans who are very disconnected, often by generations, from our European ancestors, we often don't give a **** about those stereotypes either. I don't give a **** when people make Scottish jokes, and I wouldn't give a **** if people made Czech jokes, if those were jokes people over here made. It's not all that important to me.
If you are a person of colour in America, it is impossible not to notice race. Even if you've never been subject to malicious racism, you know that you are perceived as an outsider to the dominant culture. Even if you didn't want to care about race, race has been made important for you, personally. You've experienced a lot of **** you know is basically invisible to white people because of "just" your skin tone.
So when some white guy rolls along in blackface, or using black slang or trying to use the n-word positively or neutrally, it rings hollow. It's a mockery, somebody who thinks that all you need to emulate this giant, deeply personal and nuanced concept of Blackness is some shoe polish."
That's what's offensive."
https://www.reddit.com/r/expla...
Active exclusion in housing markets is the result of a history that, for some reason, you seem to be unaware. Or are you aware and just trying to make a dumb point?
annielou said:
Active exclusion in housing markets is the result of a history that, for some reason, you seem to be unaware. Or are you aware and just trying to make a dumb point?
Not at all. You are the ones equating numbers with exclusion. And limiting diverse to your self-approved definition. So why is Maplewood South Orange excluding Asians? It must be since so few live there. And most of the towns around them have much higher percentages.
I think Gilgul is trying to make a disparate impact argument.
Gilgul said:
annielou said:
Active exclusion in housing markets is the result of a history that, for some reason, you seem to be unaware. Or are you aware and just trying to make a dumb point?
Not at all. You are the ones equating numbers with exclusion. And limiting diverse to your self-approved definition. So why is Maplewood South Orange excluding Asians? It must be since so few live there. And most of the towns around them have much higher percentages.
It's interesting that you keep talking about Asians. I'm sure that Asians, due to more dumb stereotypes, are more than welcome in places like Millburn. African American children, on the other hand, have been stereotyped as well and not in a good way. Please tell me you are at least aware of this.
Steering blacks away was certainly a common practice in white communities throughout this country. I doubt Maplewood, which was once as blue blood and exclusive as a suburb gets, was immune from this. A lot harder to get away with now.
The AA population of MSH is small - around 3% per a 2015 report I saw - but I'd guess that's three times the number it was when I moved here. 3% is more than 600 people. Not a lot but not exotic.
The biggest barrier to moving here is money. It's very expensive. And any talk of white-black tension that might arise from a growing black population is academic. If the current trends continue, Millburn is going to be a majority Asian community in the not too distant future.
annielou, never said they were not. Of course they have been and are.
But that does not change the fact that diversity can take many forms and is not constrained by anyone concept of it.
annielou said:
Racist, no. Insensitive, yes. I say not racist because it may very well be that the little girl and her parents thought they were paying tribute to Dr King. And perhaps that's more of a sign of naïveté than anything else. The much larger picture is that when towns and schools and faculties are not very diverse, as I'm sure the case is here, then stuff like this is going to happen. It's insensitive because who here would want a person of their own ethnicity portrayed in a way that made them feel uncomfortable?
+1. As an African American I found this offensive and insensitive. Hopefully, this will be a "teaching moment" for this child and the parents.
Story sounds familiar? It happened five years ago. And the folks in this story could use a a teachable moment.
http://gawker.com/5911495/seco...
"kids today "need to know their history a little better," notably with respect to black face and minstrelsy."
The parents are blatantly ignorant. I'm not sure how you can call it naivete.
annielou said:
Racist, no. Insensitive, yes. I say not racist because it may very well be that the little girl and her parents thought they were paying tribute to Dr King. And perhaps that's more of a sign of naïveté than anything else. The much larger picture is that when towns and schools and faculties are not very diverse, as I'm sure the case is here, then stuff like this is going to happen. It's insensitive because who here would want a person of their own ethnicity portrayed in a way that made them feel uncomfortable?
Calling it naïveté because I do not know all the details. Again, I think it's a distraction to attack individuals and not the systematic bigotry that produces incidents such as these.
bub said:
My son played the bus driver in the Rosa Parks segment and was also the organist at the King wedding, so there was no temptation to use makeup on him. I just looked at an old photo album and none of the kids, including the King characters, wore makeup.
He's grown up now and very decent, gentle and tolerant.
@bub You repeatedly reference some kind of play in 1st grade. This incident occurred in the 5th grade wax museum in Millburn. Did you read the article?
LOST said:
How can a girl play M.L. King? He was male.
It is interesting. I strongly doubt any school would have a boy portray a woman.
https://villagegreennj.com/sch...
So, some fifth grade girl shows up at school pretending to be MLK as part of a school "Wax Musuem" event, where the kids honor influential historical figures. She apparently had on brown makeup. Which some people are calling "blackface".
The town is in an uproar over this overt act of racism.
Except, it's really not. Blackface is a very particular style of makeup. e.g, large white lips (sometimes red) are an integral of the blackface look.
Now, there are no pictures of this young girl in makeup, but I kind of doubt that's what she looked like.
Which means she simply put on dark makeup so that, you know, she'd look more like MLK. So a young girl trying to honor a great black man is instead excoriated for racist behavior.
Idiocy, if you ask me. And reactions like this set race relations backwards.
And you know me. I see racism sitting behind practically everything. But not here.