Op-Ed: Don’t Dress Up in Blackface this Purim
‘Tis the season when some are forced to explain the historically-uninformed why dressing up in blackface is something that just plain shouldn’t be done.
Every year a few dozen purim celebrants miss the memo and join the fraternity of Halloween revelers ignorant of this sensitive issue. Of course the only difference being in the month of Adar is the added bonus of making Jews look like fools. This is especially so when the Yid in question is the most prominent Frum elected official in the city.
Normally, I would say that this is what happens when you have a population that largely went to private schools and had no black peers to tell them to knock it off, but of course ignorance knows no boundaries.
Now, I know some of you are looking for an explanation as to why you shouldn’t do this. Bottom line, It’s offensive.
Even as your stomach is grumbling in the waning minutes of the fast and it dawns upon you in a hunger crazed stupor that all you have is a Brooklyn Dodgers’ cap and a black marker, it would still be a poor time to honor Jackie Robinson. Go as Sandy Koufax instead.
Or perhaps you’re planning on going as Lebron and you’re wondering if people will figure it out. Well, if you’re wearing a number ‘6’ Heat jersey with his name on it, people will get the picture. What you should be asking yourself is will the the whole look be incomplete when your standing at 5’8–a full foot shorter than King James. Wear stilts. Drinking will have an added challenge this year.
Don’t wear blackface. It’s just not cool. It’s super controversial; and don’t do it just to be controversial. Controversy without a message is just offensiveness without merit. And if you think you’re being edgy, you’re not. Blackface, for those of you too lazy to read the wikipedia article, is nearly 500 years old and reached its height of popularity in the ’30s. The thirties!! If I can’t appeal to your sense of decency then for sure your sense of timeliness. The day after whatever shallow, sleazy, gin, forty-dollars-a-head, bacchanal, the guy wearing his Austin Powers costume ten years running will be telling stories about how dated you were.
The most baffling aspect of this unfortunate tradition is that when one does dress up in blackface (and they will) and gets called out on it (and they will), they will immediately get defensive and invoke oppression at the hands of the ever-present political correctness police, as if when a black kid knocked on their door at Halloween dressed in long-nose and a yarmulke they wouldn’t be anticipating the next pogrom.
If still you plan on darkening your face as the coup de grace to the persona negra, consider your personal safety: any passing African-American might be compelled to literally slap the black off of you.
Just don’t do it. It’s just not cool.
Misplaced Rage
Ben, why must you keep projecting your own identity issues onto others? If you had half as much passion for legitimate Jewish causes as you have anger toward a few punks who dress up in blackface on Purim then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The fact that you somehow feel threatened by this type of thing says something about your priorities as a Jew.
Just to be clear, you are threatening a violent attack against fellow Jews dressed in blackface this Purim? If this isn’t what you meant, please clarify before this Jew alerts his OPP acquaintances.
Shimon Shak
You have serious issues my frined if that is what u took from the above op-ed.
Chaim
Ben Faulding is one of the nicest, most real people that I know. And recently I’ve seen him exhibit a type of courage that is rare and worthy of praise.
“Legitimate Jewish causes”.
“Do not do unto other what is hateful to yourself – that is the entire Torah”. Sounds like a pretty legitimate Jewish cause to me.
Milhouse
Wearing face makeup is not hateful to myself, or to any reasonable person. Fighting it is not a legitimate Jewish cause.
For that matter, racism is not an aveira, and fighting it is also not a legitimate Jewish cause. The whole idea that we know better than our grandparents is contrary to Judaism. Yeridas hadoros is a fundamental principle of Jewish hashkofoh. The closer a generation is to Har Sinai the more valid its moral perspective. We have no right to make up new moral principles that our ancestors had never heard of; we certainly have no right to adopt new moral principles from the goyim.
BG
why is it offensive? how can you compare it to some one “dressed in long-nose and a yarmulke”
My principle used to say
When in doubt do without, there is a doubt, it may be offensive to so why risk hurting someone’s feelings is your costume worth it?
Not an ignoramus
Hear! Hear!
About time, too!
silly billy
I guess that is same for chinese or indian person…or mexican or native american….or hasidic jew with peyos
this is a silly point….maybe there would be less racism if people could just get over themeselves
Anonymous
Agree! Sad that something so common sense has to be spelled out. Its a chillul Hashem. If you want to dress up as a black man buy a rubber Barack Osama I mean Obama mask.
point well taken
People, it’s inappropriate. Let it go at that. Thanks for the timely reminder.
Milhouse
I am heartily sick of the racial victim industry, the offense industry, that every year invents new offenses out of whole cloth, and expects the rest of us to accept its dictates and stop doing whatever it is that they’ve decreed is the new “bigotry”, and apologise for having done it in the past. No. It doesn’t work that way, and it can’t work that way. If this is what you call “racism”, then there is nothing wrong with racism. If this is what you call “bigotry” then there is nothing wrong with bigotry. All you are doing is robbing those words of all meaning and all power. And guess what? When “racism” is no longer a bad word, when it’s no longer something to be ashamed of because everyone has now been classified as “racist”, then actual racists, the kind who beat and kill those who are not like them, will come out from under their stones and rejoin society. Who can condemn then for “racism” when we are all now “racists”? So they will once again become respectable, and will not be ashamed to flaunt their real, toxic racism, and you will have nobody to blame but yourself.
oy vey
For heaven’s sake. There is no agenda dedicated to making up new ways to make you feel bad. Take a minute to listen to how you sound, and if you would feel uncomfortable it if it were about the group you belong to.
Do you really want your Purim costume to be a joke at the expense of someone’s identity? and in crown heights of all places! Who are you sharing the streets with? Did the Rebbe really make it seem like the neighbors across EP don’t matter?
Chaim
How would you feel if someone dressed up as a member of the Hitler Youth?
mo
Ben, save your megilla for another project to promote yourself.
chevramaidel
To the inevitable whiners about the “PC conspiracy”: When (and where, maybe that counts, as well) I was growing up, it was just known as common decency, manners, and behaving like a human being. And yes, redface and yellowface are just as offensive. If you see a person of color in a whiteface getup (and you can tell it wasn’t intended as a clown costume – sometimes it is hard to tell the difference), feel free to call them out on that, too. Basic guidelines are, think twice about appropriating someone else’s culture as a costume. Except, perhaps, for masquerading as a Chossid. I’m sure Chassidim don’t object to your dressing yourself up as one of them once a year. They might even encourage you to make a steady practice of it.
Citizen Berel
All you need to say is that is offensive and that to cause offense to another human being for no purpose at all is forbidden –maybe it’s kal vachomer from tzaar balei chaim don’t know.
For sure to offend another yid for no reason at all is an issue. And there are a number of black-skinned yidden in CH.
That would have been a decent op-ed.
I don’t think it unreasonable for a black skinned person to take offense at a Jew wearing black face make up, considering that generally Jewish people don’t hold the black people (of which black skinned Jews have no part) as a collective entity (read the foregoing again, it’s an important qualifier for those who are subtle enough to make distinctions when thinking about these things…).
But to suggest that violence is warranted or even understood is lawless and evil and is a disservice to black people.
The black people (as collective entity — I won’t say this again) are so steeped in grievance and relative morality that they have lost sense of absolute right and wrong and it is destroying them. So rather than taking black cultural sensitivity (assuming that they have more of it than other cultures) and preaching it to the Jewish people, take Jewish absolute morality and preach it to the black people.
Your being a black skinned Jew affords you a unique voice — I believe you are using it on the wrong people.
You have potential
Great Opinion!
I think we should be considerate of Ben’s opinion. If he finds it hurtful to dress up as Blackface he’s entitled to that!
He’s simply trying to make people aware that this is a sensitive issue that shouldn’t be dealt with as lightly, and does so in a playful manner to not come off as preachy.
Way to go Ben!
Milhouse
No, he is not entitled. He is not entitled to choose to find innocent behavior hurtful, and then demand that other people cease that behaviour. If he wants to live as a Jew then he must reject his foreign outlook and standards and adopt Jewish ones. If he wants to import the sickness of PC into our community then he’s not welcome.