You can read the story in the link, but I’ll briefly recap it. At a high school pep rally, some students were spoofing the opposing team, known as the “Purple Knights”. So they put on a skit where they called themselves the Black Knights, involving black hoods pulled over their faces. Unfortunately the video doesn’t have a meter, but about halfway through you can see the participants close up. The hoods are tight, like on a Spiderman costume, and are partially covered by ordinary hoodies. They were attempting–rather clumsily–to suggest Batman, the Dark Knight in opposition to the Purple Knights.
First off, I can see that, if you can’t successfully design a costume to unambiguously portray what you intend, you have to accept the consequences of people misinterpreting that. If I wear a long coat, stovepipe hat, and a short beard sans moustache, I’m Abraham Lincoln. Less a few inches of course. If I wear the same costume, no goatee, and a spiky mustache, then I would be Simon Le Gree, no matter how much I say I meant to portray Abraham Lincoln.
It’s also understandable that tight black facemasks which show the shape and contour of the person’s features are vaguely reminiscent of blackface, but I consider this connection tenuous at best. As far as I can see the face is completely obscured, whereas in old time blackface makeup, the eyes and mouth are sharply highlighted to mock African American facial features.
I don’t really see blackface happening here. If the black hoods had been looser, I would see more reason to take offense, but then the problem would be a resemblence to Klan outfits, rather than black face per se. White hoods even more so.
What I’m seeing is students so racially blind they didn’t realize a skit that had nothing to do with race in any way could be viewed by others as racially insensitive.
I can’t see what they’re wearing under the hoods. Is there a facemask underneath or black makeup? Because if it’s just hoods…then how is that blackface?
Have we really reached the point where everyone, everywhere, needs to constantly be worried that anything they fucking do is going to viewed by others as racially insensitive? This is absolutely ridiculous. It’s like the Salem Witch Trials. You make one wrong move and all of a sudden - RACISM! RACISM! People are making full time careers out of finding things to call racist. Monkeys? Racist. They should get rid of all of the monkey exhibits at the zoo, because someone might be offended that the monkeys are racist. Black knights? Racist. Monty Python should be censored; the Army’s mascot should be changed to something more racially sensitive. Black coffee? Not allowed. It could be construed as racist.
Reading the story, I believe that the content of the sketches must have had a lot to do with the interpretation.
But as I look at the photos, my first thought are of the ring wraiths from the LOTR. Scary, unfaced, hooded villains. I don’t think I would have thought of a racial component to the pictures at all… which is why I wonder about the content of the sketch.
I agree. There’s nothing racist at all about wearing that shroud. I’d say at most it meets half the criteria for blackface: it’s black, but there’s no face. Despite what the St. Augustine guy says, there is not an easy connection from black shroud => blackface. Maybe there was in the skit that set people off, but I don’t see any problem with the costumes.
In answer to that, I can only agree with Marley. What puzzles me, though, is you saying that those making the complaint are “idiots”. It seems perfectly obvious to me that those who made this complaint, and similar complaints in similar circumstances around the country, are extremely intelligent. The logic is straightforward. First we suppose that groups like the NAACP and other civil rights activists desire power, or in other words they desire that everyone in the country do what they say. In order to accomplish this, they throw a huge fit about trivial things. Why? Because if they do so consistently, then nobody will ever dare to contradict them on serious issues. It’s the same logic that lead kings in the old days (or dictators in some places right now) to hand out sentences of torture and death for extremely minor crimes.
(Not that there’s any reason to single about civil rights groups in this regard. Similar reasoning could probably explain the behavior of gun nuts, PETA, and numerous others. Whether it’s morally right do behave in such a way is debatable, but the people who do this are certainly not stupid.)
As much as I despise pointless whingers, if you read the story its clear that it was a mostly white school playing a mostly black school, and they portrayed them as the dark knights, and had the last one standing arrested.
You might believe this is universally true, but I don’t. Some people are seeking to manipulate public opinion, but others are just oversensitive. I see no reason to assume anybody with St. Augustine is being manipulative.
I don’t know if there was a reason. I understand why that’s suspicious (for lack of a better word), but we don’t know if anything else made that character unique and lead to his arrest.
Anybody else notice that the black student was also the only one without shoes - what’s up with that?
What about the “officer” who arrests him - anybody else find that huge fake mustache to be offensive?
How about the white kid dressed as Michael Jackson - offensive?
What about the picture where everyone is bowing down in mock worship of the football team - does the school have any morals at all?
Lots of ways to be offended.
Bottom line, someone suggested that the skit may have been offensive to some people, and that is true, so the school apologized. Never hurts to apologize. These sorts of things are amateurish affairs done by amateurs. Even when I was in high school (a long time ago) pep rally skits were painful to watch at best and I think schools should apologize every time they do one of them.
