Hot Topic: Blackface, Black History, and Brigham Young University

A Black History Month YouTube video featuring students at Brigham Young University in Utah has sparked controversy.  In an attempt to "raise awareness in an interesting way and get a conversation started," David Ackerman, a white comedian  unaffiliated with the university, dons Blackface makeup to interview Brigham Young students about black history. 

Their responses are less than informed and more than stereotypical. 

For example, when Ackerman asks a white male student how he celebrates Black History Month, he replies, "Usually, what we do is love our fried chicken and we go with some grape juice."

Brigham Young University officials dismiss the video, calling it a "misrepresentation" of the sentiments on campus. "We are concerned about the remarks stated in this video and are disappointed by them," said university spokesperson Carri Jenkins, who also alludes to selective and manipulative editing of the footage. 

Brittney Cooper, a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers who studies race and gender politics, discusses some of the video's most dangerous and offensive stereotypes about Black identity. 

This video is certainly loaded with what may be deemed “shallow stereotypes” of African Americans.  Which, if you could narrow it down, do you think are the most damning and damaging?

I think the key word in your question is “shallow.” It is certainly a damnable commentary on our education system that these students cannot identify the actual month in which we celebrate African-American history. Black History Month was founded as Negro History Week by Carter G. Woodson in 1926, over 85 years ago. In 2012, we should take heed when the only notable black history figures students can identify are known primarily for work between 1955 and 1968.  There is also a troubling recourse to thinking of African American identity as merely performative, that being black boils down to a certain kind of walk, a kind of loud, boisterous, slang-ridden kind of speech, and certain kinds of music preferences, namely rap music.

Were you surprised by the responses by the black students featured in the video?  Some have commented that they were simply trying to “be cool” in a predominately white and Mormon environment.

I am at pains to understand how ignorance constitutes a performance of cool. The second young man featured, who was bragging about his “game,” certainly invokes a problematic idea of black male sexual bravado, which is dangerous, but not uncommon, particularly in popular culture.

The interviewer, a white young man in Blackface, considers himself a “comic.” What do you think of his motivations for making such a video? 

For the record, Blackface is never okay. He might have had honorable intentions, but by putting on Blackface in a performance that is designed to critique racism, I think this comic felt like he was inoculating himself against criticisms that he might be racist. Many scholars who write about minstrelsy suggest that the appeal of Blackface for white people historically was that being in a black body allowed them to engage in practices that were considered socially taboo for morally upstanding white people. Perhaps Blackface allowed him to ask questions about race that he felt wouldn’t be taken seriously sans a black skin.  

There are those who will say African Americans are simply being hypersensitive. What do you offer those who believe we live in a “post-racial” and “colorblind” society?

It is clear from this video that students absolutely see color, and that they have very problematic ideas about people of color, or “colored people” as one student said. Frankly, to continue telling ourselves that this society is colorblind, in the face of massive evidence of racial inequality in housing, education, bank loans and wealth creation, treatment of immigrants, and crime and policing, is to engage in a kind of deliberate intellectual myopia. Colorblindness is not a laudable goal unless amelioration of inequality is equally prioritized.

Finally, how can such performances finally lay to rest? 

Education! I’m talking about a particular kind of education—one that is invested in helping people to be critical thinkers and students of our social condition. This kind of education encourages more questions than answers, and it helps students to recognize the power that they have to be a force for good in the world. On a practical level, it means that the accomplishments of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Indigenous people have to become routinely included in our curricula. We also have to continue to strive for diversity in our educational institutions because the microcosmic world of college allows students to build powerful connections across difference.