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"I made a racist joke as a kid, but I didn't mean any disrespect."
No, dude. You were being as INTENTIONALLY Racist as the kid in your earlier story was in singing the Jingle Bells song. You weren't showing ANY respect to ANY Asian peoples by joking about them being slant eyed.
The guy doing blackface Geordie LaForge was not being intentionally racist by trying to replicate skin color as part of his costume.
Try again.
But referencing the character is just as effective, if not more so, by simply copying their dress, hair style, and accoutrements.
People in sci-fi and fantasy (and furry) conventions dress up in scales/fur/feathers as alien races all the time. This isn't offensive or disrespectuful to aliens.
The fantasy worlds in which these characters live are not more important than the realities of our world, in which blackface is and has always been a highly racist thing to fucking do.
Cosplay is short for COSTUME PLAY, and any theatre kid will tell you that costumes and makeup aren't even the same department.
And in cases where the skin color/ethnic background of the character is important (or becomes important) to the story, such as with Michonne as referenced above, it might be a more respectful choice for white folks not to choose that costume. Cultural appropriation, etc.
Blackface was not a white guy dressing as a particular black figure, or a white realistically portraying a black person. "Blackface" is not simply making one's skin dark with makeup.
Blackface was an entire form of theater, with shuffle-walks, eye-rolls, and throwing the hands up while shouting, "lawdy".
The most similar thing might be the members of Monty Python dressing as old women, assuming they were sneaking out at night to beat down old women or making sure old women couldn't live within a mile of their house.
A white guy doing Barak Obama or LaForge is not blackface.
In what episode of Star Trek was it ever relevant that Geordie was a black man born in Africa?
Michonne's being black in the comics comes up, if memory serves, only when a couple of people insult her, as Merle does in the TV show.
99% of the time her being black and 100% of the time his being black is irrelevant, unless my memories across 100+ issues of The Walking Dead and almost 140~ hours of The Next Generation (and it's films) are faulty.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could just cast someone for the role of "Mark Smith" in a film, and have the race be irrelevant, and not even ever come up in the film? Example: cast a black guy in a role played by a white guy. Does his being black have to be relevant to the film? Why can't he just be an actor playing a role?
* Mississippi just ratified the 13th Amendment last month, finally ending slavery in the US.
Cosplay already has enough weirdness without throwing blackface in the mix.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoYOraDt1…
If you want to know what actual real-life black people think about blackface, there's an Internet for that.
http://www.racialicious.com/tag/blackfac…
Anyways, I'm not sure it's worthy of more outrage than any number of racist things in the world that I can think of off the top of my head. But, for sure, I would never, ever use blackface myself in a costume. Yeesh.
can one cosplay that?
Ideally, we will eventually reach a point where we're only talking about complexion, not race, and it's perfectly fine to darken or lighten your complexion to look like an actor. Perhaps these cosplayers are getting there a little ahead of the social realities, but I find it hard to blame them for that.
No doubt the casting director who originally filled the role was aware of what he/she was doing and my wholly ignorant take on matters is the decision was made as a nod to our future ancestors evolving in some sort of a multi-cultural fashion, rather than homogenizing to a uniform tannish-grey color.
There's an obvious distinction to be drawn between character and costume and @26 would seem to be correct that these folks are hard core enough to want to shoot for the former. Still a hyper-stupid move.
Normally I feel all great about judging people but this one time it feels crummy to judge some one for being inspired and loving these characters.
David Brothers says it much more succinctly than can: "People intend a lot of things, but the only thing that matters is what they actually do. If what you intended to do is show your respect for someone, and you do it by replicating an incredibly dehumanizing practice, guess what! You’re a jerk. You can be a jerk through ignorance as well as malice. And blackface? Kind of a jerk move."
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/raci…
Also, "reverse racism" isn't a thing, guys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfiNT6AKG…
Note the recent shitstorm because the star of the Nina Simone biopic isn't black. Ray, starring Bruce Willis would be an impossible suspension of disbelief. Jalil White as John Adams?
In my limited experience with cosplay, it seems getting the look perfect is the key. So regardless of its relevance to the plot, a guy wanting to hear, "Oh My God your Geordie is perfect" the question of looking black isn't necessarily racist. Its a requirement of looking exactly like the character on screen. For the people assembling their costumes, race, blackface or gender probably isn't a consideration.
I know I'm not helping the discussion.
1. A lot is being made of La Forge's race. What about his blindness? Considering our country's track record with the handicapped, why is it okay for a sighted person to pretend to be blind, but not black & blind?
2. Isn't one of the points of diversity and multiculturalism to expand white people's appreciation of black characters? If La Forge is so clearly non-stereotypical in his portrayal of a black character, is it really racist to impersonate him?
3. Does intent really not matter? Are we really saying a frat boy dressing up as a poor black man for Halloween is the same as an individual doing an homage to a character he obviously cares for deeply?
I have no dog in this fight. I think it was probably shortsighted on the part of the cosplayer, and blind to some other people's feelings. I also think there was no harm intended, and if it was done with good intentions, then it should get a pass.
By the way, has anyone bothered to ask LeVar Burton how he feels about white people dressing up as La Forge? That would matter to me a lot more than a bunch of random people's opinion.
Brothers DID mean to be a dick to Asian peoples. He's wrong. A child's racism is still racism. He may not have meant to be a dick to Asians just because they weren't in the room, but I've gotta say, slanting your eyes in a Ching-Chong fashion of old is WAY more INTENTIONALLY disrespectful than coloring your skin because you're paying respect to a character. And if you don't see that, you're a fucking moron, no disrespect.
That would have been a great talk.
Also, blackface is just plain offensive. And this guy got the skin tone wrong (too orange for Geordi) and splotchy (which is worse). Well done blackface might --might-- overcome the offensiveness.
@42 - Ok, blackness & whiteness in our society are unfortunately intertwined power and the history of bigotry, violence and abuse perpetrated in this country & others by whites against blacks.
Blindness has nothing to do with bigotry and abuse power. These are not related issues.
White people don't get to do blackface at all, why? Because racism is alive and well in America, and being a white person wearing blackface immediately recalls and compounds the existing reality that people are afforded different privileges in this country merely because of skin color. Because of that racist reality which is still here today, white's don't get to do blackface. AND they don't get to say how racist it is or isn't either. Intent doesn't matter. We whites don't get to tell blacks how pissed off they should or should not be at any example of racist behaviour. We don't set the anti-racist agenda, and presuming that you can say so is an exercise in privilege.
For all of you saying "What about dressing up as different alien races or Worf". Good fucking Lord, think about it for a second: Sci-fi "Aliens" are fictitious characters. There is zero history of malformed power relations between Humans and: Tholians or Ferrengi or Klingon. They aren't real.
Black people are real, and still live with the reality of malformed and destructive power relations every single day vis-à-vis a white majority society that still holds the keys to power.
Until that is well and looong past being "no longer true", whites don't get to do blackface. At all.
except for blog posts at every opportunity.
"Hey everybody; look! it's more people in blackface!"
Oversensitive, white-guilt-driven nonsense, people. Caaaaaaaaaaaaalm the fuck down.
Also anyone see Robert Downey Jr in Tropic Thunder?
WHITE PEOPLE: Let us minorities worry about ourselves. We'll tell you what we don't like.
Here's my problem, though: It is well-known to be provocative thing to do. People are guaranteed to freak out regardless of circumstance. So these two either did it to provoke, which makes them assholes, or they are somehow completely unaware of societal taboos.
Borderline autism could explain the latter, which isn't unlikely. Otherwise, they are either assholes or... hell: I'm not sure what word describes that level of cluelessness.
now, on to Die Antwoord's Fatty Boom Boom video...
@50 - Cool story bro.
Come on Stranger, educate your writers!
Wait, what? How?
A lot of radical feminism and a lot of the sexist aspects of drag culture serve the same end: the destruction of the cultural norms of femininity. Radical feminism tries to destroy those walls by intellectually bashing against the patriarchy. A lot of the sexist aspects of Drag culture try to take down the cultural norms by lampooning and/or exaggerating it. I'm obviously not talking about the now expected traditions of celebrity impersonation which comes out of respect for the celebrity. I'm talking the rest of it
The problem is, that drag culture doesn't have positive feminine powers in it. Sure, they're men acting as strongish female characters, but they're mainly men abusing the character of femininity.
So, to answer the question, is drag sexist? I say it frequently is. It certainly isn't about female empowerment. But, it's a teardown of all cultural norms. And you can't have a polite teardown.
Which is allllllll completely different from LaForge, which is drag out of honor, not out of political movements.
"So, to answer the question, is drag sexist? I say it frequently is. It certainly isn't about female empowerment. But, it's a teardown of all cultural norms. And you can't have a polite teardown."
So is a Shirly Q Liquor -style character then healthy? Because that's pretty "impolite".
You can be impolite and "tear down norms", but reinforcing misogynistic and racist stereotypes upholds the dominant cultural norms. It's neither radical nor reforming.
Mad Magazine in its political heyday would be an example of subverting the mainstream through absurdity and social criticism. South Park and Family Guy would not be considered similarly progressive.
This isn't blackface in the Minstrel Show sense. No one's portraying blacks as infantile or foolish. It's pretty clear that these people dressed up as these characters out of the same admiration that inspires any other cosplayer. I guess what it comes down to is not whether these nerds did it to be offensive—it's pretty clear that they didn't—but rather whether black nerds or blacks in general were offended.
Sincerely,
this black girl.
The historic (as 70 mentions, it hasn't gone away, so current) context is what makes it a terrible idea, independent of "intentions". White people haven't somehow redefined and destigmatized minstrelsy.
It's not the offender who gets to decide whether the act was offensive. It's the offended. It does make a difference whether the cosplayers weren't trying to make a statement about race, but if @70 and other black contributors to this thread are representative, then yes, the act was offensive.
I suppose it's kind like cracking jokes about someone's death. One day it will no longer be too soon for white cosplayers to dress up as black characters, makeup and all, but that day has not yet come.
As hard as they might try, I have never gotten a feeling of respect of womanhood from a gay male performing drag.