A city councillor in British Columbia says an online mob of “extremists” and “politically motivated hackers” is responsible for uncovering and publicizing a photo of him wearing a blackface costume to a Halloween party in 2007.
Colwood Coun. Ian Ward on Monday addressed the photo in a statement on his X account after the picture, which was originally published on a personal family blog, surfaced on social media in recent days.
Ward acknowledged he posed for the photo wearing a Washington Bullets basketball jersey, a gold chain and a wig, with his teeth coloured gold and his hands and face painted black.
Seriously, was blackface such a rampant thing in the aughts? It seems like everyone was doing it, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time.
No it wasn’t. Even in the 90s we knew it was wrong.
Revisionist history tbh, we absolutely did not know better in the 90s or early aughts, certainly not where I lived. The world was different before widespread Internet access and your pocket of culture, if it really was the way you think you know and remember was certainly not universal.
In 1992 Alladin came out - wearing blackface in a costume for that was definitely not the norm. You’ll find tens of thousands of pictures of kids dressed up in poofy hats and sweeping pants whose parents knew not to face paint them to be more accurate (and these are kids who’d get facepaint to dress as the lion king or a ghost).
It may be that it was just Boston Massachusetts being a haven for the political correctness but if you know anything about Boston you’ll probably know we have a long sad history of being racist assholes (especially to PoC, Italians, Irish, Germans, Catholics… even Native Americans! So I guess pretty much everyone).
I’m happy to admit there are areas of the US where blackface is still normal… but I think the adults are still aware of how problematic it is.
I grew up in Kentucky and dressed as Pocahontas when the movie came out, but nobody painted any kids face and blackface was definitely known & not okay.
We even learned some very questionable ‘heritage not hate’ bullshit, but blackface would not fly by the late 90s.
I absolutely believe that in a large city the culture you experienced was drastically different than what I experienced. I didn’t grow up in a city, and yeah things were pretty different for me as a result.
It’s okay, it just means your pocket of experience and mine pool from different demographics and normative values.
Well, just a few years earlier than this guy’s black face, a movie called White Chicks came out… two black dudes playing white face in an entire Hollywood movie (coincidently, filmed in B.C).
I don’t ever recall outrage over it, though.
That said, I guess we’re lucky that our politicians are only playing black face during costume parties, rather than wearing white hoods during regular business hours! LOL
That’s called punching up vs. punching down.
That’s a terrible concept masquerading as equity. In the future I suspect we’ll know better, but the double standard crap in this era is awful. There is no correct way to have racism, you either fight all of it, or not.
This mentality of punching up / down simply leads to outcomes of acceptable / unacceptable racism and that’s not the way to combat racism and inequality.
I mean, if you want to take the cosmic perspective, blackface is fine too. It’s only forbidden because it was used for really racist purposes in recent history.
Something something coconut tree.
To be fair, the entire issue of blackface and its sordid history is much more nasty and nuanced than this thread would suggest.
If you want to find out more, look into the racist nature of minstrel shows, and their role in maintaining hierarchy.
Really…
How do you enjoy those “white lives matter” protests?
My dude, I hate racists.
I also have a sense of humour, so stuff like comedy and costumes aren’t places where I tend to judge people. If I did, I’d think that most black and brown comedians were racist, and that most white ones were pedophiles or rapists. But I don’t.
My comment was in response to the question about people using <insert colour> face during that time, and it seemed to be more common than some of us can remember.
I don’t know anything about the guy in question, and it seems silly to judge him based on a basketball player costume he wore on Halloween almost 20 years go. We should use some common sense here.
It was about blackface, which you know very well. No-one has ever been offended by “whiteface”, because of what fucking happened in history.
You’re trying to equate these things. Like a person who would go to “white lives matters” protests and still convince yourself you’re not racist. That it’s “the same thing, we’re just making sure white people don’t get discriminated against”.
Hating yourself is pretty common, btw.
Not all white people share the same history, man. If you think that any white person is the same as every white person, then you’re being a real racist.
Nazis brutalized my family, so fuck you for thinking I would ever be ok with som “white lives matter” cunts. You are an asshole.
And more bullshit “but no white people have been oppressed as well”.
And when did this happen to be black people oppressing white people, hmm?
I’m Finnish. We were under Swedish rule, then Russian rule. That wannabe gotcha there doesn’t make “whiteface” any more of a thing. You can’t come up with an example of anyone getting offended by it, yet thought to equate it to blackface.
Just like the idiotic “white lives matter” people.