White Race, Blackface, & Bad Taste

Slavery was pure evil. Hundreds of thousands of Americans had slaughtered each other in the Civil War over the issue, yet the racist views of many white Americans did not drown in the rivers of blood flowing across the fields at Gettysburg and Shiloh. The bigotry against the African Americans instead raged into an inferno of hate, fueled by the still-fresh schism in American ideology. As it became more and more apparent that slavery needed to be abolished, the holdouts needed more and more material to justify their reasoning. The sharp instruments of physical and psychological torture were not dulled by the War, only disguised. The pen can be as deadly as the knife, as became the case with the practice of black minstrelsy. In reality, it portrayed the white perspective more accurately than the black culture. The term “black minstrelsy” does not represent the practice as accurately as perhaps, “white minstrelsy” of the black race. Examining the manufactured perspective and the real perspective separately yields the true difference.

The minstrelsy was presented in an arsenal of different mediums, and conveyed its overt and subliminal messages through song, art, literature, and live acting, among others. These could each be thoroughly analyzed, but a playbill is an ideal example since it pulls from several of these channels. One such playbill is that of “Christy’s Minstrels,” for a show in October of 1848 ("Blackface Minstrelsy 1830-1852"). At first glance, one may notice the obvious: the white male performers are displayed in formal dress, with prim posture and sophisticated style. The blackface characters are either dressed less lavishly or positioned in demeaning or ridiculous poses with exaggerated facial expressions. A number of prejudiced terms are used (most or all of which were coined by white people,) including “old zip coon,” “jolly darkies,” “Dinah Crow,” and so on. There are also concealed details that further advance the white viewpoint. For example, on this and other playbills, the white performers are always listed first, before any of the racist content. Terms and phrases such as “description,” “phrenology,” “peculiar characteristics,” “specimens,” and others hint at a certain scientific correctness of the performances.

This particular specimen was produced before the Civil War. However, that event was only the pinnacle of the conflict. The prevalence of this and other forms of minstrelsy were not far from equal immediately before and shortly after the War (Glomska, and Begnoche). During this period in American history, education was becoming more widespread in the black community. With or without slavery, African-Americans were finally beginning to break free from the chokehold of ignorance spoken of by one Dr. Cartwright in DeBow’s Review and other similar articles (Cartwright). This was terrifying to the Southern whites in particular, and they needed to produce a means of strengthening the walls of ignorance they had constructed that were slowly breaking down. Rather than enforcing the faults of the black culture, it revealed the faults in their own.

It is vital to now review the opposite viewpoint, which is that of the African-American. We can today refute the claims of the black minstrel culture, but no research is more powerful than the emotion felt by the direct targets of the practice. One such victim was the familiar and reputable Frederick Douglass, who thoroughly analyzed the topic in The North Star (Douglass). Douglass respectfully reviewed the talent of the performers with quite an objective position before mentioning the malevolence of the gig. He expressed hope that although the performances were malicious by design, it was perhaps a step forward for white folks to even tolerate the appearance of a black character on stage. However, he continued to describe it as something that could only “shock the taste of the one (race,) and provoke the disgust of the other.” Thus, to the whites it was intriguing only due to its mask of exaggeration, while to the African-Americans it was so blatantly false that they turned from it altogether. In fact, they were so disgusted by it that it played essentially no part in their own culture, except in the backlash produced by Douglass and others. But even in the midst of it, they articulated their hope for change.

Practices borne from hatred can never be cleansed of the loathsome amniotic fluid in which it developed—they retain if not just a little of their original meaning. It is because of this that black minstrelsy cannot ever be a gag or a joke, due to its connotations with slavery in the post-Revolutionary, pre-Civil Rights South. After the United States finally dragged itself over the peaks of the mountains of racial inequality in the 1960s, it became widely accepted that blackface and black minstrelsy was wrong on a number of levels. We have reached the point where even mild applications or jesting recreations, such as the recent incidences in “Next Top Model” and Australian TV show “Hey Hey It’s Saturday,” draw explosive condemnation from the general public ("Australian TV Show Apologizes For Blackface Skit"). Perhaps it is not only the attempt to repress malevolent stereotyping, but also the unconscious determination to scrub clean the image of “whiteness” culminated by hundreds of years of racism. It is a selfish motivation, albeit an effective one, and it reveals the important role that black minstrelsy played in white culture, if not more so than in black. Minstrelsy was a jar in the rain for the white society—it encapsulated very little of the African-American culture, only a few droplets of the truth. To those few drops they added chemicals and dyes until they had nothing but a jar of delusion to fixate upon. That, to them, was African-American culture. Ironically it was nothing but a part of their own.



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Heavenly Opening 2009/10

Heavenly Opening Day 2009 from Kevin Krakauer on Vimeo.

Engineering

The structure of science and mathematics has no beauty without the facades of engineering. The cold steel facts of natural law are indissoluble but unsightly; the humanity of creative application turns gravity into grandeur, astronomy into amazement, metaphysics into magnificence. It does not hide its ugliness, but derives its beauty.

Current Mood: Irritated

Listening To: "Brothers In Arms" by Dire Straits

Government Is Relative

It has been said by many that they are grateful for what their country has given them. Their country has given them nothing. Government provides no more than order. Frivolous things are not given: money, notoriety, hope. They are earned, achieved, through our own industry and belief. Government may provide an empty box in which to place these things, but no more.

Good governments do not give. They take less than oppressive ones. Relativity strikes again.



Current Mood: Headachy
Listening To: "The Dangling Conversation" by Simon & Garfunkel

Religion: A Necessary Evil

Ideas can arise from the most unexpected places and the most peculiar times. As I sit under the warmth of my halogen desk lamp, reading endlessly to study for an AMS midterm, I was hit by the revelation whose description will follow. This quote from "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Toqueville is the ignition of this sudden explosion of thought:

“The chief object and one of the principal advantages of religion is to provide answers to each of these primordial questions; these answers must be clear, precise, intelligible to the crowd, and very durable.”

Ironically, it immediately follows a dismissal of philosophy as being "contradictory...without ever firmly grasping the truth or even finding mistakes that are new." I conversely have found his argument to be rather stimulating philosophically, and will now elaborate.

Now, as I and masses of others before me have established, religions are largely, as de Tocqueville states, "...very false and very ridiculous." We see them as placebos for nonexistent drugs. They explain everything, which we know to be impossible. As I have continually attacked the institution of religion, however, I have been selfish. I did not commit to bizarre, contradictory, nonsensical voodoo for my own means. I thought they should be abolished. But what if, perhaps, society needed such things to survive?

Continue. The French Statesman refers to the decidedly undecided as "penetrating, subtle, and trained to think," and "far above the average capacities of men." He acknowledges their higher capability of thought, their ability to exceed the limits of understanding, or want of understanding, that has been imposed on humanity. He then accuses them of spending too much time with these abilities. He suggests that "Only minds singularly free from the ordinary preoccupations of life," can explore these deep thoughts, and "even if most men were capable to such inquiries, they clearly would not have time for them." I do beg to differ to these points--I seem to have found time to analyze his analysis in the midst of studying for an exam as I strive to get a degree in an entirely unrelated subject. Any rational man can question, albeit not to this level.

In order to buffer this concussion of arrogance, I will remind the religious that we who analyze from this perspective are not atheist, nor do we lean so far as Thomas Paine. No; we may not be categorized as biased because our ideas are derived not from anti-belief, but rather lack of belief entirely. Belief is inevitably inclined to a position or another--an metaphorical switch, as opposed to the neutrality of agnosticism. I can contest to the agnostic experience as being a pleasantly cool and fresh water stuffed between the sharp acidity of religions and baseness of atheism, both of which burn with equal strength.

But onward. The fact of the matter is, religion is a product of the common man (by which I mean the incalculable majority of mankind.) The common man must have morals, he must have structure to live by. This structure is not the truth. Truth is an invisible wall, an analogy described in detail elsewhere in my writing. But this is not that structure--this is social structure. Man must have social structure. Anarchy will fail in the world of man. Because he must have structure, there must be some material to build the structure from; be it straw or sticks, mud or bricks, religion. Religion defines society. It instates morals, and patterns, and commonality, and truths. False truths, really, and false morals, since even the most amateur of philosophers knows that morals are simply ghosts floating in bottomless pits. But religion inevitably contributes to the creation and sustenance of society. As de Tocqueville pointed out, church and state were formally separated by the Constitution, but the indirect influence is absolutely inevitable.

My revelation is this: religion is necessary. It is necessary for that majority of mankind to exist. Without it, society would collapse and men would fall to "anarchy and impotence." Says de Tocqueville, "One must recognize, whether or not (religions) save men's souls in the next world, that they greatly contribute to their happiness and dignity in this." They must have something to lead them. They are terrified of "limitless independence."

What is good for a man is not necessarily good for society as a whole. There are the few that strive to understand more, who salivate for knowledge and enjoy pondering "contradictory ideas on which the mind of man has been ceaselessly tossed for thousands of years..." They may not find it, but they are closer to the truth. However, the majority of man does not yearn for such a truth; he yearns for comfort in this world and security of the next. This is the basis of social structure. It maintains order, and, in rare instances, establishes peace. The philosophers are the tormented yet privileged few.

This is the sole instance in any analysis I have yet produced for which I cannot conjure an analogical situation. It must simply be understood, and perhaps may only be understood by one who can propose it. This is the eternal dilemma of the philosopher.



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