Facing up to history

Dude, where’s my white privilege? Take 2: “Blackface Jesus”

Mixed Media Watch: Oh hell no. The trend of white boys in literal or figurative blackface continues. First we told you about the Kill Whitey parties. Then we told about the rash of “thug” or “gangsta” parties spreading across predominantly white high schools and colleges. Now comes perhaps the worst case of this flaunting-of-white-privilege-disguised-as-hipster-irony bull.

It's an interesting post; the upshot of the self-admitted rant about this guy who puts on blackface before going out to parties in NYC is:

So in other words, just because this guy considers himself a part of the downtown hipster set, just because he thinks he’s sooooo ironic and clever, just because he’d classify his costume as “un-PC” rather than “offensive,” doesn’t make this any less racist! There is absolutely no difference between Blackface Jesus and the blackface minstrel performers so popular at the turn of the century. It’s just as offensive as Mickey Rooney’s yellowface getup as Mr. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

I agree with a lot of what the MMW poster says, but I happen to find Mickey Rooney's portrayal so stupid that it makes me laugh.

That's not to say I support producing more racist humor, just for laughs--but given that Breakfast at Tiffany's has already been made, and is what it is, I for one think of Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River, or that wild party scene, or George Peppard picking up Cat in the rain, when someone mentions the film. To allow Rooney's buffoonery to ruin a delightful film and dominate one's recollection of it is understandable, but it just doesn't happen to be the way I remember it.

If anything, I feel bad for a post-WWII America that still had such a two-dimensional, inaccurate view of its recently-vanquished foe. Every time I watch that movie it's a reminder to me that when cultural conservatives wax rhapsodic about the good old days, they forget to add assuming you were a well-off white male.

For everyone else, the 50s and 60s were a time of lynchings, beatings and other forms of oppression stemming from the naked open racism and hatred of well-off white males; a time when non-whites and women still weren't in control of how they were portrayed culturally. And even those well-off white males suffered; America was poorer then than it is today because for the most part it didn't value the contributions of most of the world. For the average American there was no sushi, no ukiyo-e, no Zen buddhism, no karate... just Mickey Rooney. How rich can anyone's life be when you've closed your eyes to most of the world?

The great thing about life in multicultural America today is (for the most part) everyone can think and say what they want, regardless of background, and we're all free to shape the debate and resulting imagery.

So if some Asian Americans loathe Rooney as Yunioshi, while it makes others laugh, it's fine--we don't all think alike, anymore than we all look alike.

As for blackface Jesus, I personally think whoever he is, he's probably an idiot who gets a kick out of being noticed and a rise out of being able to draw responses, even if he has no clue why it's such a visceral reaction by many.

As another (slightly misguided) poster on MMW says, part of the intensity of the reaction stems from the historical context party boy is ignorant of:

Actually, I find the commonly-depicted “Whiteface” Jesus more offensive than this sole example of a “Blackface” Jesus (which actually looks closer to the historical truth).

Jesus was an ancient Jew who likely resembled modern-day Arabs like Saddam Hussein, NOT Paul Walker-esque Aryan hippies. http://www.religioustolerance.org/jesusface.jpg

But since White folks would never “stoop” to worshipping a brownfaced god, they gave him a Michael Jackson Whiteface treatment. The fact that no one is up in arms about this racist revisionism and its MASS ACCEPTANCE amongst 1/3 of the earth’s religious people (Christians) - is what’s TRULY outrageous.

And then they have the nerve to call Michael Jackson wacko? When they did the EXACT SAME THING to their GOD???

Hmm, a whitewashed Jesus; some would say that's redundant.

Photo of 'Blackface Jesus' by Nikola Tamindzic on Gawker.