Indigenous rapper expertly shuts down people defending blackface
It's simple: Blackface is very, very bad.
Yet it's (once again) become the source of outrage Thursday, following the case of an Australian mother dressing her kid up as a famous football player, complete with blackface makeup. Luckily, Yorta Yorta rapper/actor Adam Briggs has broken down just how invalid all defences of the practice are.
The child was dressed to look like Australian rules player Nic Naitanui, who is of Fijian descent, for a school event called Book Week. You're meant to dress as your favourite book character, but that's a different story.
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"He wanted to go as his idol Nic Naitanui from the west coast Eagles. I was a little worried about painting him. (So many politically correct extremists these days) ... So I grew a set of balls and painted my boy brown and he looked fanf*ckingtastic," the mother wrote on the Facebook page of blogger Constance Hall, which has since been deleted.
That post attracted the attention of many people, but particularly Briggs, who took to his Facebook and Twitter pages to shut down all those arguments defending blackface.
Briggs took aim at those who criticised him for making it an issue, mainstream Australia's attitudes, and the now ubiquitous White Chicks defence used for blackface.
Yes, the crappy early-00s movie featuring the Wayans brothers dressing up as white women has somehow become an argument for why blackface is okay. Sigh.
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Nic Naitanui himself took a more diplomatic approach on Twitter and didn't place any blame on the mother or the child, but hope they would learn from it.
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And here's the picture in question. Sorry in advance. Sigh.
Topics Racial Justice
