I just read this article: Virginia’s attorney general admits wearing blackface in college
Frankly this surprised me (both him and the Governor) as I have never worn blackface and never seen anyone around me wear it. So I decided to do a poll among Dopers.
Nope. I’ve done zombie makeup as well as sugar skull makeup. I’ve insulted christianity with my rendition of jesus and my perverted priest costumes.
Never blackface though.
No, clown hobo makeup when I was about 12 for Halloween is the only time I remember doing something like that. It wasn’t black/brown.
No. I did wear blue face for Halloween when I was Ice King from Adventure Time.
I need a ‘sort of’ option. I colored my face black once, but it was more to make it invisible-ish inside a large hood (going for a sort of demon affect).
So if there are pictures of me with the hood down, I might be in trouble.
I did silver face for a robot costume in the 3rd grade. But no, of course I’ve never done black face, nor has any self respecting person since the Civil Rights era. I live in West Virginia which is hardly considered a paragon of progressivism (Although race history here is complicated and doesn’t really fit the prevailing narratives, but I digress.) and I have never seen anyone ever wear blackface.
I’ve done all sorts of exotic monster makeups*, but never Blackface. The only times I’ve used exclusively black makeup are the times I made myself up as a gorilla. And that was strictly an ape, with no social commentary.
*I was brung up on Dick Smith’s Monster Makeup Handbook.
I think I may had my face colored red for some school play thing when I was about eight, but that’s it.
I voted no but I must admit, 30+ years ago, if there was a costume that I felt “called for it”, I probably would have, with absolutely no thought about it being offensive. I’m thinking something like Dan Akroyd’s Rastafarian in Trading Places..
I also don’t recall seeing anyone else do it, but again, it wouldn’t have stuck out enough at the time to me to remember it.
I haven’t and I hated makeup when I used to participate in theatre.
I wore whiter face once when going as a vampire.
I dressed as The Joker as a kid once. I don’t remember much, but I remember despising the feeling of the makeup on my face.
I church, we had a clown ministry outreach program. I wasn’t very involved, but i went on an outing with them once.
someone wanted to put a dab of black on their nose, as they were going for like a cat-clown or something, and they received quite the lecture on why there were no black face paints in the kit.
If you wear blacknose are you 5% racist?
No, but I did once wear what in hindsight was a very ill-conceived ghost costume, made from a white sheet.
I’m just glad that I’m not running for office, and that no pictures of that costume have survived to the present day.
'bout 30ish years ago, so I don’t remember particulars, but, IIRC, it pretty much boiled down to not trusting kids to make the judgment as to how much black is too much.
I mentioned elsewhere, I used to use charcoal to make goth/punk designs on my face when I was a teenager, and I once, to my eternal cringing, covered my entire face in charcoal dust to play the Devil from a Hawthorne story (“The Black Man of the Woods”) for an English class assignment. I was a teenager, and utterly clueless that charcoal on face would have racist overtones, and if I ever invent a time machine, going back to slap 16-year-old-me silly would be a high priority.
It’s a little shocking that no adult at the time thought to say, “DUDE! WASH YOUR FACE NOW!” It took my high school girlfriend to call me on my idiocy.
Was that the one advertised in the back pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland?. Then I got brung up on it, too!
Zombies were the easiest. Lots of clown white, plus black lips and circles under the eyes.
I can say that I have never worn blackface. I cannot say for sure that I would have known better, had the idea ever arisen.
I never saw blackface in person in my entire life and had anyone asked me I would have said it went out with Al Jolson. Foolish me. I’m guessing it is a thriving institution in the still-wishing-they-were slave states though. My well-educated wealthy Virginia-born mother in law used to tell darkie jokes with absolutely no thought that they might be out of style.