I can agree with the sentiment, but fuck Jimmy Kimmel.
Why?
He went on national television in black face multiple times.
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.
Nobody had a problem with that skit or this Tropic Thunder role:
In fact, people had more of a problem with Ben Stiller’s role playing the “never go full retard” part. Look up actual black face and you see the clear difference.
You base your understanding of racism on this? It’s like trying to say that being a sexual predator is fine because people like Dennis Reynolds.
Go out in black face if you’re that confident, see how long it takes for you to get called out for it (im sure you can explain to them that it’s ok because Robert Downey did it). Black face didn’t stop being a hate crime because of tropic thunder lol.
Well I tried. Someone getting all uppity because they can’t tell the difference what blackface was in the 1900’s to a 2008 comedy that was received pretty well by everyone.
Lol you brought up tropic thunder as a justification, while I was talking about Jimmy Kimmels use of black face which was not received well. One doesn’t cancel out the other.
Nobody was seriously offended by RDJ’s role, because it’s making fun of white washing during casting rather than a direct depiction of black face. This kind of context is important and clearly missed by most people who use this movie as a justification for racism… Why do you think Brandon Jackson’s character was upset about it the whole movie?
You do you.
I gotta say if thats him. He looks like a black dude. Props for good makeup.
LOL my god, you have no idea what black face is.
When was this?
Im not Google, look it up yourself.
I just did and all I gotta say is… meh.
Says a lot about a person when insulting an entire race for laughs is just meh.
Glad you googled it yourself tho.
What I saw is a person that made shitty jokes twenty years ago and apologized for it 5 years ago.
He hasn’t done it in literal decades and while his statement here is admirable, it isn’t going to make me start watching his show, I don’t see a reason to waste energy hating him.
I saw the bit when he did it twenty years ago. I’ll agree that it was in poor taste, but he was specifically mocking a single person, karl malone, who is a terrible person.
He wasn’t mocking an entire race of people. Black face is a different concept where it uses white actors to poorly portray generic black americans, not specific people. It’s a different thing than what kimmel did in these sketches, though again, it was in poor taste.
your whataboutism is very unwarranted and very unwanted.
