Transcriber:
When I was 10 years old,
we traveled from Colorado
to New Jersey to visit relatives
at Christmas time.
We did a host of a variety of things.
I actually got to see
the original cast in "The Wiz"
and did a lot of sightseeing.
But one of my favorite moments
was to stay up late at night
and wait till everyone else
had gone to bed,
and then I would sneak downstairs
to watch television.
A host of old movies
that I probably had no business watching,
such as "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Oklahoma,"
that was a little OK.
But I remember one evening
coming across a show.
It was an old movie,
and it must have been "White Christmas"
or “Holiday Inn” or that type.
But it was a musical.
And I started watching,
and then they started
to do this musical scene,
and I noticed I saw
Bing Crosby in blackface.
And I was confused.
I couldn't quite understand
what the blackface had to do
with the singing and dancing.
That was my introduction
to blackface minstrelsy.
Blackface minstrelsy originated
in New York, and not the South
as a lot of people would think,
in the 1830s.
It was an incident where white actors
would blacken their faces with burnt cork,
paint on bright red lips,
exaggerate the whites of their eyes
and put on a tightly coiled wig
to create caricatures of African Americans
on the American stage.
The typical minstrel show
was a parody of Black culture,
song and dance and speech,
interspersed with stump speeches, jokes,
musical interludes and theatrical skits.
The cast included a roster
of recurring characters.
The interlocutor acted as the emcee.
You had Mr. Tambo
and Mr. Bones as the end men.
Then you also had characters
like the clownish slave Jim Crow,
which was also the name
of the Jim Crow laws
that we knew in the American South.
Or the maternal mammy,
a hypersexualized wench;
an arrogant dandy, Zip Coon;
and the lazy, childish Sambo.
The caricatures were often brutal,
but not to the white audiences
who laughed at the antics
of the illiterate slaves
as they sat secure
in their own superiority.
The image of the dancing,
simple-minded buffoons
captured the public's imagination
and spread across the country
like wildfire.
Blackface minstrelsy grew
to be the most popular form of American
entertainment in the 19th century.
Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain spoke
highly of the American minstrel show,
applauding the characterizations
and the source of its humor.
But just as it entertained,
it also dehumanized
the subjects of its ridicule,
leaving the abolitionist
Frederick Douglass
to describe blackface minstrels as
“the filthy scum of white society
who have stolen from us a complexion
denied them by nature."
Ironically, after the Civil War,
African Americans forged their own careers
on the professional stage.
The route to success often meant
appropriating the mask
that was used to mock them.
White audiences also embraced
Black performance
in their local communities.
These amateur minstrels
used instructional guides
that provided them with jokes, routines,
songs and costumes they needed
to put on their own shows.
Such was the habit of politicians,
fraternal orders, colleges,
high schools and community performances,
who carried on this tradition
well into the 20th century.
The professional minstrel show
left an indelible imprint
on the American psyche.
The images and racial stereotypes
that continue to circulate
in American society
on sheet music, magazines, books,
vaudeville, theater, film, television,
radio, records
and all kinds of formats.
These stereotypes
were a powerful reinforcement
of the ideas of white supremacy
and Black inferiority.
The news headlines of the last few months
have shown us that the legacy
of blackface minstrelsy
continues to haunt us.
In a survey conducted
by the Pew Research Center,
they found that one in three Americans
say that blackface is always
or sometimes OK
if it's used in a Halloween costume.
So let me ask this question.
What is the appeal of darkening one's skin
in order to impersonate someone
of a different race?
Blackface minstrelsy was born
out of the realities of slavery
and racial segregation,
and its continual reappearance
echoes the pain and suffering
felt by Black people
whose bodies and cultures
were presented as strange and grotesque.
It is a persistent reminder of the racism
and prejudices that bred
its very existence.
The way it infiltrated society
is a clear example
of how deeply ingrained
racism is in this country.
And the racial subjugation embodied
by blackface minstrelsy --
and perpetuated through a continuum
of its history -- is a form of aggression,
a psychic wound that refuses to heal.
Racial impersonation of any form
cannot escape this legacy.
So it's time to shift
the power of representation,
to develop more expansive narratives
about the rich complexity
of who we are as human beings.
Acknowledging and recognizing
blackface for what it is
and what it symbolizes
is a step in the right direction.
Educating ourselves on how stereotypes
reinforce racist ideologies is another.
Success in either case depends
on an honest self assessment
of our social and cultural biases
and how they came to be.
The legacy of blackface minstrelsy
is our shared history
and requires all of us
to take collective responsibility
in dismantling its power
to oppress and humiliate.
The next time you're confronted
with someone in blackface
or see a racist stereotype,
tell me: What will you do?
Thank you.
(Applause)