EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: ‘Blackface and whiteface are not opposite and equal,’ says professor; the latter ‘draws attention to the privileges and protections that whiteness allows’
An Australian academic wants you to know that the comedian Druski’s recent “whiteface” parody of “right-wing activist” Erika Kirk is perfectly OK — because it “draws attention to the privileges and protections that whiteness allows.”
“Conservatives are up in arms, predictably,” writes Clare Corbould (pronouns she/her) of Deakin University in The Conversation. “Many are calling it racism or reverse racism.”
“Imagine, they declare, how fast a white man would be cancelled if he were to don blackface to send up the activities of an African American widow. But this backlash misses the point. Blackface and whiteface are not opposite and equal.”
The professor of North American history whose “primary preoccupation is with the way people use history for political ends” adds the “joke in whiteface comedy is not ‘this person is white,’ but ‘this person is protected, entitled and used to being in control.’”
“[W]hiteface aims to expose whiteness as a social and historical performance with material consequences,” Corbould says. “In doing so, it calls into question any sense that racial inequality is natural.”
Even working class whites are “privileged,” Corbould claims, as Druski allegedly proved in his “Guy who is just proud to be an American” where he acts as a “stereotypical, ultra-patriotic NASCAR fan, whose racist and misogynistic remarks are egged on by his white peers.”
@druski That Guy who is just Proud to be AMERICAN ??? #druski #country #america #white #skit ♬ original sound – DRUSKI
“Discomfort is the point,” Corbould says, something the late, great comedian Richard Pryor emphasized. Pryor’s (black) collaborator Paul Mooney once said his job was “to make white people mad” and that whites “have to learn how to laugh at themselves.”
But seriously … I don’t know of any white person who didn’t, and doesn’t, laugh at the stuff Pryor did, or Eddie Murphy, or Redd Foxx, or Dave Chappelle. One of the funniest bits of all time is Murphy’s “White Like Me” short from his time at “Saturday Night Live.”
“I watched lots of ‘Dynasty,'” Murphy tells the viewers about how he prepped for being a white guy. “Y’see how they walk? Their butts are real tight when they walk … I gotta remember to keep my butt real tight.” I about coughed up a lung laughing the first time I saw it.
If, like Prof. Corbould, you find you have to continually remind people about alleged societal power imbalances and/or blackface “minstrelsy” in the 19th and early 20th centuries to justify acts like Druski’s — but then lambaste, say, Jimmy Kimmel impersonating NBA player Karl Malone — you’re not going to be taken very seriously by many people outside the faculty lounge.
Of course, in his newfound politically correct, late-night host “wisdom,” Kimmel groveled and apologized for that, and other, bits. So did Jimmy Fallon, Tiny Fey, and Dan Aykroyd among others. (“Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary show even pixeled out scenes of a retrospective that had white actors impersonating blacks.)
Despite Aykroyd’s blackface moment in “Trading Places” totally fitting the scheme that he, Eddie Murphy, and Jamie Lee Curtis cooked up, Black Entertainment Television seemed upset that Aykroyd appeared “disappointed” that blackface is “no longer acceptable.”
“I probably wouldn’t choose to do a blackface part, nor would I be allowed to do it,” Aykroyd said of the scene. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do a Jamaican accent, white face or black. In these days we’re living in, all that’s out the window.”
None of the blackface instances above were actually racially insensitive unless one is offended merely by their makeup; they were actors/comedians doing what they do.
In a pluralistic, multicultural society, you can’t have one set of rules for some groups, and a different set for others.
If Druski can portray Erika Kirk (and for what’s worth I think most people miffed at the bit, unlike the NASCAR fan segment, were so due to the insensitivity of lampooning a still-grieving mother whose husband was assassinated only a few months ago) why can’t Kimmel or whomever impersonate, say, Don Lemon?
Alas, it looks like someone has a backbone; YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul — a Republican who liked Druski’s parody, by the way — said he wants to return the favor.
“[D]o it and just do it back, because why not?” Paul said. “Like, are we on the same playing field? We should fucking make fun of each other. And I don’t see in color, I see in truth and comedy. So like, what are we talking about? What era are we living in?”
Oh, and need I ask: If it’s anathema for a Caucasian to do blackface, why is it permissible for a male to do “dragface“?
The Left, of course, likes different sets of rules based on perceived power and privilege differences. Remember the transgender professor who said some classic rock should be “toppled like Confederate statues”? The professors who said Hawaiian shirts represent “American colonization, imperialism, racism”? The scholar who alleged the “Alien” and “Predator” film franchises support anti-black racism?
If you thought media and social media censorship and political correctness enforcement via “dis/misinformation” boards and “fact checkers” were bad under Joe Biden, you ain’t seen nothing yet if a similar clown gets into office in 2028 or 2032.
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