I found this discussion to be quite uncomfortable. But I think that was the point.
It was said that apparently blackface was a thing and has been a common thing for years, but honestly I never knew how big it was until this class. Maybe it’s because of the generation I grew up in where we take every little thing, think about it, and decide if it’s something we should be offended by or not but I felt like the blackface movement or whatever you want to call it is completely racist. I was also shocked to learn the African-Americans such as Booker T. Washington even found it humorous and said a phrase where it was doing more than he could. I just did not understand why he had thought that. Yes, it was for entertainment but at what cost?
Looking at the advertisements for minstrel shows were probably the most unpleasing part. The faces the models made as if being black was a gross, unappealing thing. They just stare into your eyes and….maybe the fact that it was blown up on a projector too didn’t help.
Either way I am glad we are progressing. Do not get me wrong, there is still race issues all the time in the entertainment business. Something I can think of that happened recently was when the next installment of Star Wars came out, the creators of the movie poster made the white female character as the main object and the black male character smaller. Not sure if I would personally accuse them of being racist since the movie wanted to emphasize the strong female lead, but man did people lose their minds on social media.