Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009
COMMENTARY Race and entertainment present sensitivity issues
By MIKE HENDRICKS
The Kansas City Star
By MIKE HENDRICKS
The Kansas City Star
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ReprintAt the grade school musical, one kid appeared on stage a few shades darker than normal, which raises a question:
Is blackface ever acceptable in a society as racially charged as ours?
Ponder that as I report that the presentation bore no resemblance whatsoever to a minstrel show.
In fact, last week’s performance of “We Haz Jazz” was a salute to African-American culture by the mostly white third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Timber Creek Elementary School in south Overland Park.
(If the title makes you cringe a little, me, too. But it’s been widely performed across the country with few complaints.)
But one kid did get a little carried away. It wasn’t that he was in shoe-polish blackface while pretending to be Louis Armstrong …
“But one student had darker makeup on than his normal skin tone,” principal Pam Bakke told me.
The boy’s teacher didn’t know about it in advance, nor did Bakke.
“I was in the gym,” she said, “and wasn’t aware of it until he was on stage.”
The show went on without interruption, and Bakke said she’d heard no complaints until I told her of an e-mail we’d received at the newspaper.
The sender wasn’t at the performance. But she and a friend, who was there, said they were mortified.
“I think that it is even more of a statement,” the e-mailer wrote in a follow-up, “that there weren’t any ‘complaints’…
“What does that say about the racial climate or the attitudes that are fostered in that environment?”
What’s it say? It says that race remains a very misunderstood subject in 2009. And it’s more evidence that this notion of an Obama-era, post-racial society is a crock.
Anyone who’d dismiss the e-mailer’s complaint as political correctness run amok is kidding himself. Perception is reality when it comes to race and ethnicity.
“Here’s the thing I’ve learned,” says Gwen Grant at the Urban League of Greater Kansas City. “We have to be mindful always of the impact that we have by our actions, not our intent.”
That Dallas Cowboys cheerleader didn’t mean to offend when she put on dark makeup for Halloween and went partying as Lil Wayne. But lots of people were offended.
Same goes for any number of other acts of ignorant behavior. I happen to think Fred Armisen’s lame blackface impression of Barack Obama on “Saturday Night Live” is creepy.
Naturally, a fourth-grader might not know he’s offending anyone by slapping on dark makeup.
But that’s where an adult might have pulled him aside — and handed him a washrag.