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Highly relevant, I'd say. White folks adopting outward signifiers of another culture forcultural cachet, and all that.
And, you know, minstrel shows were very much engaged with African-American culture: the two men most responsible for the creation of minstrel culture, the songwriter Stephen Foster and the folklorist Joel Chandler Harris (who wrote the Uncle Remus stories--Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, etc.), were intimately involved with black culture, having been essentially raised from infancy by black "mammies." Their songs and tales were extrapolations and interpretations of black music and folktales with which they were exceedingly well-versed.
And the white audiences for minstrel shows were mostly made up of people who lived and worked among blacks.
Blackface minstrel shows traded in stereotypes both positive (carefree, children-of-God, light-footed) and negative (lazy, ignorant). Some whites who performed in blackface could profess--perhaps even legitimately--that they were motivated by a sincere love for African-American culture.
I'm half-joking. Which means I'm half-serious. In any case, blackface minstrelry makes getting a tatt in Asian characters because "they look cool" seem like small potatoes.
Or, perhaps, like the thin end of the wedge. |
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