There’s a crazy phenomena since the invention of social media. People learn about things and pretend they knew about them all along.
Schrodinger’s Cat
Dunning-Kruger effect
Blackface
This is in poor taste, but it is not blackface. Blackface is a specific type of makeup where the lips are made ridiculously red as well.
This happened sometime before 2005.
Blackface was not a part of the “social conversation” or whatever at the time. Basically nobody knew about it. Jimmy learned about it and decided to stop doing so it.
Today he is using his platform to speak out against fascism. Drop it. Screaming to death about imperfect advocates only helps the fascists win.
Blackface and other racial impersonation/minstrelry has been criticised for being more than the - forgive my use of the original term - “darky” iconography since the 1930s - see American Humor: a Study of the National Character. 1931, Constance Rouke
Yes, but was everyone everywhere talking about it prior to around 2010?
No.
This was around the same time as the Chappelle show with Chappelle wearing white make-up and impersonating a generic white person.
Kimmel wasn’t doing a generic black person stereotype, he was imitating a specific person and put on the make-up to look more like that person. Tasteless? Corny? Dumb? definitely. Racist? …. I guess when you’re looking at it through the lens of today’s social discourse, sure.
Anyway, he stopped doing it prior to blackface becoming everyone’s favourite topic, and apologized when the keyboard warriors went after him years later.
Times changed and the masses decided this was unacceptable. The message was received and acted upon. People change. Give it a rest.
My ex in the early 2000s was at the time a member of an Eurasian alliance to campaign for proper representation of Asian people in the entertainment industry as there was a habit of casting white or racially ambiguous but not Asian persons in roles that were specifically written as Asian characters, and if their particular ethnicity (e.g. Malaysian) was specified, to cast someone of that ethnicity and not just generic Asian (e.g. Chinese).
So maybe not everyone - but from personal experience, it was very much a concern to many people before that time, yes.
There’s a crazy phenomena since the invention of social media. People learn about things and pretend they knew about them all along.
Schrodinger’s Cat
Dunning-Kruger effect
Blackface
This is in poor taste, but it is not blackface. Blackface is a specific type of makeup where the lips are made ridiculously red as well.
This happened sometime before 2005.
Blackface was not a part of the “social conversation” or whatever at the time. Basically nobody knew about it. Jimmy learned about it and decided to stop doing so it.
Today he is using his platform to speak out against fascism. Drop it. Screaming to death about imperfect advocates only helps the fascists win.
Blackface and other racial impersonation/minstrelry has been criticised for being more than the - forgive my use of the original term - “darky” iconography since the 1930s - see American Humor: a Study of the National Character. 1931, Constance Rouke
Yes, but was everyone everywhere talking about it prior to around 2010?
No.
This was around the same time as the Chappelle show with Chappelle wearing white make-up and impersonating a generic white person.
Kimmel wasn’t doing a generic black person stereotype, he was imitating a specific person and put on the make-up to look more like that person. Tasteless? Corny? Dumb? definitely. Racist? …. I guess when you’re looking at it through the lens of today’s social discourse, sure.
Anyway, he stopped doing it prior to blackface becoming everyone’s favourite topic, and apologized when the keyboard warriors went after him years later.
Times changed and the masses decided this was unacceptable. The message was received and acted upon. People change. Give it a rest.
My ex in the early 2000s was at the time a member of an Eurasian alliance to campaign for proper representation of Asian people in the entertainment industry as there was a habit of casting white or racially ambiguous but not Asian persons in roles that were specifically written as Asian characters, and if their particular ethnicity (e.g. Malaysian) was specified, to cast someone of that ethnicity and not just generic Asian (e.g. Chinese).
So maybe not everyone - but from personal experience, it was very much a concern to many people before that time, yes.
That’s great, but it doesn’t change that the masses didn’t care at the time.
Personally, I’d call an edge-lord comedian turned social advocate using his massive platform to speak up against fascism a win for progressives.