Minstrel Shows: The Wrong Form of Entertainment

Blackface performers are, "...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens." -- Frederick Douglass

        The belief that Caucasian and African American people did not just have different colours of skin but also different defining traits is not a stereotype that just sprung into being. It is a belief that has been nurtured and fed through the jokes and lies perpetuated in American culture. One of the biggest contributors to racist ideology was the minstrel show which presented itself as a joke but contained many of the lies that white people told themselves to justify the treatment of blacks. The audiences of these shows were not only the ignorant and openly racist as we would like to imagine but all sorts of American citizens. Indeed, in 1844, there was a minstrel show at the White House. This exemplifies the duping of the American people into harbouring certain stereotypes that continue on to this day.

        A minstrel show was originally played by a group of white men who went on to the stage in blackface (white men painting their faces brown and changing their hair to look more like that of African Americans) and entertained the crowd through a presentation of entertaining racist ideas. The act would usually include the men playing instruments such as the tambourine, banjo, or bones. Many other instruments were used but these three were very common. This served to present African Americans as uncivilized, not having either the means or the talent to play the more gentile instruments such as the violin or harp. The act would also typically include an attempt by one of the performers to give a speech or comedy routine. The man would inevitably come off as unintelligent and hopelessly inept. The ending part of the minstrel show would give the audience a perspective of life on the plantation. This presentation tied together many of the stereotypes of blacks and misunderstandings of whites to send the audience off feeling good about being Caucasian because of their obvious superiority. A more modern depiction of this act comes in the form of “Zip A Dee Doo Dah” in which an African American man strolls along and seems at peace with the world in clothes that a plantation worker might have worn. Minstrel shows portrayed the African Americans as uncivilized, unintelligent servants who needed the help of the white man to live and be happy.

We see the influence of minstrel shows all across our society. In the very popular show Scrubs JD appears in blackface which then ques a laugh track.

An interesting use of blackface appears in the movie Tropic Thunder in which Robert Downey Jr. apparently gets a skin change operation and then spends most of the movie trying to act “black”. However there has been debate on whether or not this is racist since the directors include an actual African American actor who spends a lot of the movie calling out Downey Jr.’s character on the obvious racist stereotypes that he portrays in the movie. It seems like a stumble in the right direction. It is by understanding the origins of mistaken stereotypes that we are able to not repeat those same mistakes in the future.