Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Dear white people, this Halloween, for once, do not do blackface. For the love of Black baby Jesus, please. Pretty please with reparations on top. I’m talking to all of you. This includes you Juliana Hough and Claudia Schiffer and definitely you Justin Trudeau. I feel like we touch base on this every year, and yet, every single year, some of you do it and get canceled and start crying about how you didn’t get the memo that darkening your skin in order to evoke a Black person was a bad, offensive thing. I can’t truly believe that anyone in America didn’t get that memo, but a lot of you are actively resistant to the truth —see the all-out war against critical race theory — so maybe this will feel like your first warning. Don’t do blackface. Not even a little bit.
One of the many problems with blackface is that it signals that you think Blackness is a costume. It’s something one can dip in and out of. That’s dehumanizing. If your goal is to portray a non-specific Black person, as in, “I’m a Black guy that’s why I have dark skin, an afro and a basketball,” or “I’m a prisoner, that’s why I have an orange jumpsuit and dark skin,” yeah, that’s always going to offend. Even if it’s “I’m a famous singer and…” Whenever I see those sorts of costumes, I feel deeply unseen. Like, you glanced at Black culture and spat back a bunch of stereotypes. White people’s Blackness Halloween costumes generally reveal that you see us as a joke.
If, for Halloween, you want to be a specific Black person, say, Beyoncé or Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant, that’s OK, but you need to communicate that without changing your skin. That’s non-negotiable. See, when you darken your skin, you take us back to white performers in the 1800s and…
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