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1/ I want to dig a little deeper into the meaning of things like white folks in blackface (not so much the Northam yearbook photo type but more the “imitating Michael Jackson” or in the case of AG Herring, Kurtis Blow type)...
2/ all such types are messed up and unacceptable. All are at least implicitly racist. AND I think the imitation-intended-as-admiration types are also something else. Something very telling about the emptiness of whiteness and how some respond to that...
3/ It’s the same thing that leads many whites, including Elizabeth Warren to falsely claim to be indigenous, or talk about their Cherokee princess great grandmother or put dream catchers in their rear view mirrors, or dabble in “Eastern mysticism,” or whatever...
4/ In all these cases I feel like white folks are sensing the vacuity of whiteness (which after all is NOT a cultural heritage and which identity actually supplanted our actual European heritages and created this bland amalgam of whiteness)...
5/ And so they go searching for something more “real,” more meaningful or authentic... for some this means appropriation. Appropriating style, perhaps, or even a look (think Rachel Dolezal), or in the case of Warren a history not your own...
6/ in the case of ‘blacking-up’ like MJ or Kurtis Blow, it’s this weird fascination w/black superstars or celebrity: a mix of envy/awe. And in recent years w/college kids who do blackface to look like their “favorite rapper” it’s fascination w/a life more “real” than their own...
7/ of course they don’t really want to carry the weight of blackness except as costume, which is why it’s so racist and an act of privilege... but it speaks to the cultural emptiness of whiteness...
8/ Sadly, rather than critically assess whiteness & create an authentic identity as antiracist white folk they cleave 2 other peoples stuff as a substitute 4 their own cultural nothingness...the irony being that their acts not only hurt POC but are acts of self negation too...
