Now, it's sad, but after the Obama victory I basically expected a few retrograde Americans to do idiotic racist kee-rap like this:
But I just didn't see the global legs on the blackface resurgence.
Behold:
Italy
Slovenia
Japan
More innocuously, the Obama roll:
Paste links to more evidence of the global blackface resurgence in comments, if you got 'em.
5 comments:
Is Greenwich Village global within the meaning of the statute?
http://tinyurl.com/bspklp
Yeah, I'll accept entries from Gotham. Curious that Latin America hasn't popped up with anything, or more from Europe...
There is, alas, a lot more Japan, but I can't pick on just one country.
Curious that Latin America hasn't popped up with anything, or more from Europe...
My hunch about Latin America is that because most people there don't subscribe to the US one-drop binary, Obama isn't seen as "a Black man" but as "un moreno" or "un mulàto" or "um caboclo," who on the basis of skin tone would be categorized as belonging to a middling sort, relatively shielded against the grosser kinds of caricature directed at those on the bottom.
As for Europe, it would be nice to think the banlieue kids had thrown a scare into the continent's white folk; probably not, but one can hope.
I dunno, rootless, my bet is that as soon as Obama makes a foreign policy gaffe that affects Europe or Latin America, we'll see some ugliness come out.
As for Latin America, Chavez was pretty clear on seeing Obama as "el negro":
http://nacla.org/node/5229
But, of course, Chavez was using that for a particular rhetorical purpose and may be an outlier in any case.
There is, alas, a lot more Japan, but I can't pick on just one country.
Maybe some kind of adaptation of Noh theater?
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