Okay, so one of my first posts on this blog was a story pretty much shunning French Vogue for deciding to publish a photo shoot of a white model painted black, ala blackface.

Well, since then, a lot of new developments have been happening in the area of covert racism, one of which is me analyzing my views on the matter.

Tyra Banks, super model and all around estrogenized drama queen, recently aired an episode of ANTM in which all of the remaining models on the show were featured in photo shoot in which they were made up to look like another race. While Tyra intelligently didn’t do any white to black transformations, a few of the models did have their skin darkened to appear to be a certain nationality; the transformations were more country based than on actual races denoted by skin tones. Let’s also not forget that she took great pains to explain the shoot. Giving us both context and content (Ahem, ahem… French Vogue).

Another more recent occurance is “black people” inspired costumes being worn to a Halloween party by white students at Northwestern University in Chicago. One student painted his skin black, donned dreadlocks, and a shirt with “Jamaica” scribed on it and became Bob Marley. The other student appeared as a black woman with a tennis racket, presumably as one of the Williams sisters.

This is the story that got me thinking.

I will admit one thing, some of French Vogue’s photos were nice, and it wasn’t just the idea of the model being in blackface that upset many people. It was that there seemed to be no apparent reason for it expressed in the issue, giving people room to make their own conjectures. Also, given the fact that the modeling industry has a long history of racial discrimination, it doesn’t help their cause in seeming very PC.

I did say that it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. With that, I will say that I’m not totally against people of other races dressing up as black people, especially on Halloween. FAMOUS BLACK PEOPLE. I will say that people of other races coming to parties dressed up as black Gangstas, Pimps, and Ho’s are not as easily acceptable especially since the people portrayed could be of any color (including your own), not just black. This is what makes some blackface escapades stereotypical and seemingly racist, it’s not the act itself, it’s the context.

Since there is only one Bob Marley of reggae fame, and two Williams sisters of tennis fame, (not to mention the proverbial army of Michael Jacksons there were this year; black, white and of course, the “Puerto Rican phase” ) who all happen to be black, the costumes must be much more specific, and a white person dressing as these people would probably not get the point across any other way.

So, I alter my feelings a little. It’s not what you do people, it’s how you do it and the context in which it is done. I know that no matter what you do, somebody will be offended. Hopefully however, when something is done, it’s done with decent intentions. Without knowing the conduct of those two students, I will say no harm, no foul; especially if they weren’t defaming  or stereotyping the people they were portraying along racial lines. For all we know they could have posters of these people on their walls and love them more than we do.

Read more on the Northwestern incident here.

“That’s all I have to say about that…” -Forrest Gump