Removing blackface episodes doesn't confront racism, says a scholar on racial caricature

CNN

"Every year, when I teach undergraduates about minstrelsy and blackface, I look around for a recent example -- and I have never failed to find one," says Rebecca Wanzo, a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. "Fashion companies place grotesque images on clothes or bags. A white Australian performer like Iggy Azalea skips the black makeup but makes money by taking on an African American persona in her music. Anime clearly has a blackface problem. But I have never used any examples from 30 Rock, Community, The Office, Scrubs or The Golden Girls, which had episodes pulled or scenes edited out from various streaming platforms because they were deemed 'blackface episodes.' A number of these episodes, albeit to varied effects, comment on racism. Protests that have sprung from George Floyd's killing and other recent cases of police brutality have had widespread effects, including new examinations of the politics of racial representation. Given the ways in which caricatures of Black people are often used to justify such violence, interrogating Black representation in popular culture is a natural outgrowth of the movement. But as a scholar who works on racial caricature, I can't help but feel that pulling these episodes demonstrates a mere surface engagement with this history, and an inability to recognize precisely what makes racist representations injurious. t is easier to pull these episodes than to do the hard work of thinking through the embedded nature of black caricature and racism in popular culture, not just in the United States but around the world." Wanzo adds: "One thing is clear: If we removed every trace of racism from the pop culture canon, we would be left with quite the fragmented legacy of works. When I teach about the history of popular culture in the United States, I emphasize that African Americans -- and racist caricature -- are not peripheral to its development. They are at the very center of it."

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• Hulu widely panned over removal of Golden Girls "blackface" episode featuring mud masks: "That Golden Girls episode isn’t blackface. What the hell ?," tweeted author Roxanne Gay. "Removing this episode is weird, counterproductive and stupid. It diminishes the effort to actually end racism. It’s just so dumb." Podcast host Erica Williams Simon added: "First of all, they were in mud masks not blackface. And second of all, in what world does 'Stop killing us.' sound like 'Please remove episodes of Golden Girls'? I didn't see that ask on anyone's protest sign... " Writer Ira Madison III suggested that whoever removed the episode "either didn’t even watch it or is just not a smart person."
• Taking down blackface episodes and recasting Black cartoon roles voiced by white actors seem like empty gestures: "Unless these steps are followed by other, longer-term actions that address the systemic racism in Hollywood, they’re purely cosmetic changes that let these shows’ creators and stars off the hook," says Marina Fang. "They get to evade a real conversation about racism, and therefore, any real accountability. For instance, 30 Rock creator Tina Fey’s 'apology' last week wasn’t much of a mea culpa — among other things, it refers euphemistically to blackface as 'race-changing makeup.' And while 30 Rock is rightly held up and celebrated as a pioneering, trailblazing sitcom, Fey has never been great at acknowledging the show’s many shortcomings — such as its instances of racism, transphobia and ableism — when they’ve come up over the years. This lack of accountability extends to Fey’s other work. More recently, her Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt featured an episode responding to criticism of its litany of racist stereotypes — especially in its portrayal of Asian and Native American characters — by doubling down on its racism."
• Here's a list of every blackface episode that has been pulled so far