Minstrelsy
22:07
- Blackface minstrelsy was an entertainment tradition that stretched from the 1820’s
through the early 20
th
century
- Black face performers who were
almost always white before the civil war used
Champaign corks mixed with water to blacken there faces
- they would then perform imitations of black songs, dances and speech
- they performed parodies of opera’s plays, and ethnic caricatures
- minstrelsy was Americas first popular entertainment genre
- blackface minstrelsy has been extremely important in American culture since its
inception
- it could be argued that minstrelsy helped to create American popular culture before the
Civil War
- Minstrelsy also spawned entertainment formats and stereotypes of African-Americans
and immigrants
- Despite these facts, most Americans don’t even know very much about blackface
minstrelsy, and many aren’t aware that it even existed
- It is the best kept secret in American history
- Race Politics and Motivations for Minstrelsy
•
From its founding, the United States recognized only white citizens as fully human
and entitled to basic rights
•
Black Americans could legally be owned, traded, and treated as human chattle
•
This situation was problematic because, of course, black Americans were people too,
and fully human
•
From the very beginning, we see the paradox of nation founded on liberty driving its
economy, at lead in part, using slave labor
•
People made sense of this paradox in a number of ways, but one of the main was to
use stereotypes
•
Black people were portrayed in writings as not only lacking the full humanity of
white people for cultural reasons, but as animals incapable of higher faculties
•
Blacks, were portrayed as Hypersexual, Impulsive, Stupid Lazy, Athletic, and
Instinctively musical
•
These stereotypes were supported by studies in medicine and anthropology
•
Race laws and court rulings were issued based on these studies
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•
And science remained complicit in reinforcing racial stereotypes through at least the
mis-20
th
century
•
Nazi Germany was an extreme example of this
•
All this work linking physical characteristics to intelligence and moral character has
since been debunked
•
Black Americans were well aware of these stereotypes
•
They led to what W.E.B Dubois called “double consciousness,: which means that
black Americans constantly carried two self-images or awareness
•
How saw themselves individually and how white society saw them
•
While those in power often used stereotypes to justify abuse, black Americans could
also use them as a way to grab what opportunity they had
•
Black entertainers and musicians would perform stereotypes of themselves
for white
audiences in America
•
“Dancing for Eels”
•
It was there way of making an income no matter how miniscule the money was
- Origins and Early Development
•
We can’t be sure exactly when white entertainers began to imitate these performances
using face paint
•
Some trace the practice back to Shakespeare’s Othello. The practice became

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- Spring '09
- Mook
- Music, Othello, Black Americans, Minstrel show, Blackface Minstrelsy, minstrelsy, minstrel troupes
-
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