2/4/19
Eric Lott on Ralph Northam and the History of Blackface
Rounduptags: racism, political history, Ku Klux Klan, Blackface, Ralph Northam
Eric Lott is a professor of American Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and is the author of “Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy & the American Working Class.”
...
To discuss the subject of blackface and its historical role in American politics, culture, and racism, I spoke by phone with Eric Lott, who teaches American studies at the cuny Graduate Center and is the author of “Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy & the American Working Class.” An edited and condensed version of our conversation is below.
What did you think when you saw the photograph?
Here we go again. [Blackface] never seems to die as a collegiate, fraternity activity, which follows on decades of local performances of various kinds, Kiwanis Clubs and Rotary Clubs, which follows on the very long history of both Hollywood and vaudeville stage performance going back into the early nineteenth century.
The photo was obviously offensive and awful, but it was also weird if you don’t know this culture. There is a guy in blackface and a guy in a Klan hood. What’s the joke they are going for?
I know. I was trying to puzzle that out because that really is—to situate it in full context, with the paired costumes—an interesting thing to try and figure out, over and above the embrace of the blackface guise. And there is more than one of those, too.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Biden Administration Pauses Transfer of Holy Native American Land to Mining Firm
- The Capitol Riot is an Eerie Repeat of this Tense Era in American History
- Tulsa Public Schools To Launch New Curriculum For Teaching The 1921 Race Massacre
- Commentary: A Farewell to Ithaca College after 18 Years
- Passed Over 3 Times, a Black Marine Colonel Is Being Promoted to General
- ‘We Had a Little Real Estate Problem’: Native American Comedians Get Their Due | Book review
- John Muir in Native America
- The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti
- He Risked His Life Filming A Mississippi Senator's Plantation In 1964
- Trinity College Reckons with Slavery Links as Ireland Confronts Collusion with Empire