I’m dreaming of a racist Christmas
Dr Mumbo is not one of those PC-gone-mad types who can’t take a joke. But he does wonder if Australia could, what with its somewhat dubious history, let the dust settle for, oh, five minutes or so before venturing once more into territory that seems to him to be clearly, unanimously unacceptable.
Territory like the use of blackface.
He wonders if make up brand Illamasqua Australia, who uploaded the below image to its Facebook and promptly deleted it in the wake of public outrage, needs to remind itself of the dressing down Harry Connick Junior gave Hey Hey It’s Saturday not so long ago…
You wouldn’t like The Netherlands at this time of year then
Skin tone as a subject is not inherently racist.
Ostracising due to skin tone is racist – this is just a bit knee-jerky i reckons.
@Aunty viewer: Are you familiar with the history of blackface and the racist stigma that attaches to it? For a primer, see: http://black-face.com/
Good lord, folk getting uptight over a bloody advert. Don’t we all know that the so called ‘Christian’ religion is nothing but a an un-proven legend where the characters might just be black, brown or brindled.
Any way Xmas is nothing more than a marketeers ploy to extract more money from we the minority, check the factual numbers of non-christians in the world. We are outvoted!
We are not the USA. We don’t need lectures from Harry Connick Jr about US attitudes to blackface.
Nothing wrong with it at all
Blackface in the USA comes with a long legacy of racism, violence and death that Americans are well aware of. This history has nothing to do with Australia and many Australians probably don’t know much about it. We didn’t enslave our indigenous population in the way Americans kidnapped and enslaved Africans et al. No – the British leaders of our former colony just exterminated the Australian Aborigines. Instead of wondering if we’re offending Americans with blackface, maybe we should focus on our own appalling history and do something constructive about that.