Blackface: It's never okay

This post originally appeared on our Facebook page on August 16, 2021.

We need to talk about blackface.

It keeps popping up, right here in our community, even here in 2021.

We’d like to give our neighbors the benefit of the doubt and assume that maybe some of you just don’t know its history and impact.

Let us be clear: Painting your face a dark color in order to look like or portray a person, character or public figure of color is a highly offensive, ignorant, racist and harmful thing to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s Halloween, if you are performing for a camera or audience, or if you are hanging out with friends in your backyard.

Don’t do it. Ever. For any reason.

It doesn’t matter if you “meant” to be offensive or not (see our recent post on intent vs impact here).

This 2018 segment does a nice job explaining the history of blackface and why it’s so unacceptable. Please be warned: This video contains many offensive and racist images.