#StopBlackface

 

We need to talk about race. (Part I)

Before I get started with what will probably be a long entry, here are two petitions that I've signed, and that I'd like to give some publicity to. I don't do social media, but all you faithful readers who are twitterati and facebook people, please feel free to signal boost:

First is Afroféminas campaign #StopBlackfaceinSpain about the Reyes Magos procession of Alcoy (in the Pais Valenciana), which has been declared a UNESCO "Patrimonio immaterial de la humanidad."  That's right, UNESCO says that having white people blacken their faces and dress up as slaves can't possibly be changed because it's of so much cultural value....to Europeans. FFS please help this get to the pathetic 5000 signatures they're asking. They should be asking for (and getting) 50,000.

Second is one of several petitions circulating to stop the "Nuit des Noirs" that forms part of the carnival in Dunkerque. Given the recent brouhaha about the French journalist Rokhaya Diallo being removed from a panel on the digital divide because she dared to use the words "racisme de l'Etat" it does seem worth noting that the city hall of Dunkerque sponsors this monstrosity.
 
If it's not obvious, this entry is going to be about blackface, about why many Europeans seem to think it's A-OK as long as it's not happening in the United States, and (most importantly) about the intelligent, articulate, and brave people who are fighting entrenched racism in Europe and who should be supported. I'm glad the New York Times and The Guardian have both picked up on the work of Rokhaya Diallo, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. If you've already clicked the links above and signed the petitions it's too late, but just a warning that some of the images in the links below the jump may be disturbing.



I've mentioned that my beloved Madrid has (thank goodness) finally dropped having the Rey Balthasar be an actor in blackface, but that doesn't mean that blackface isn't all over Spain. Recently, French football star Antoine Griezmann, who plays for Madrid's beloved underdog Atlético team, thought posting a photo of himself in blackface on twitter was just laugh out loud hysterical. The Washington Post (linked above) wrote about his “apology” as did The Guardian. The Spanish paper El Confidencial, ran the story with the headline “Porqué ésta foto es racista (aunque no te lo parezca).” “Why this photo is racist (even if it doesn't seem that way to you).” Their subheading is “El blackface tiene un origen racista.” (“Blackface has a racist origin.”) In Griezmann's native France, RTL ran the story under the heading "Blackface" : pourquoi le "déguisement" d'Antoine Griezmann fait polémique (“Blackface: why the “costume” of Antoine Griezmann is causing controversy”) and added the subheading: ÉCLAIRAGE - Le footballeur français s'est maquillé pour ressembler à un joueur de basket noir des Harlem Globetrotters, une pratique jugée raciste. (The French footballer made himself up to resemble a Black basketball player of the Harlem Globetrotters, a practice judged racist.) The conservative Voz de Galicia went farther and sympathetically noted that Griezmann was being “labeled a racist” because of “an innocent photo.”

My initial response to the French and Spanish papers was...are they joking? That kind of costume “may not seem racist to you?” Painting your face black is a practice that is only “judged” racist? Then I looked at the comments after El confidencial's article. One of them (#39) seriously says “so by that logic it would be racist to dress up as a Chinese mandarin too” and a response to said comment is an amazed reply that some “politically correct” people actually complained about someone dressing up as an Apache Indian in a cosplay as racist. My jaw was on the floor. I know you should never read the comments section on any internet article, but I am intrigued by a series of tired repetitions that seem to cross borders in Europe (along with “Christmas is universal”) and that are regularly trotted out every time people are called on their racism here.

The first notable thing is that non-English papers refer to “el Blackface” or “le Blackface” with an imported English word, and that both stories carefully explain that the practice originated in the United States in the 19^th Century. Thus both the practice and any racist connotations are established as “foreign” – not our language, not our culture, not our history. Something bad Americans do. The “blackface originated in the United States in the nineteenth century” (followed by a capsule history of the minstrel show) gets repeated in articles about Griezmann, but also about the protests against the procession of “negrets” in Alcoy (País Valenciano), and in the arguments about the “Nuit des Noirs” in Dunkerque in France and “Les Noirauds” in Brussels. Thus ElNostrePeriodic in their article about the angry response of the people of Alcoy when Afroféminas called them on their Three Kings Day procession.

“El blackface es una práctica que se realizaba en Estados Unidos en el siglo XIX, cuando en espectáculos teatrales personas blancas promovían estereotipos sobre las personas afroamericanas, y se pintaban con betún y con los labios rojos, y que desapareció tras ser considerada racista”

And 20 Minutes France regarding the Dunkerque carnival

“Le blackface est une tradition américaine issue du théâtre et qui avait pour objectif de tourner en ridicule les gens noirs présentés comme paresseux, indolents ou stupides. En France aussi, le théâtre a utilisé ces codes depuis le XVIIIe siècle, mais la connotation sociale est moins marquée qu’aux Etats-Unis.”

The Dutch language publication for expatriates and tourists on the Costa del Sol, Spanje Vandaag (Spain Today) draws a parallel between the protests about the negrets in Alcoy on Three Kings Day and the ongoing struggle against Zwarte Piet in the Netherlands, and again writes “Het zogenaamde BlackFace werd in de Verenigde Staten veel toegepast maar is sinds 1960 verboden.”(“So called blackface was widely practiced in the US but has been forbidden since 1960.” This is inaccurate on a couple of counts, since it was still practiced into the 1960s, and even now is not “forbidden” by law, since that would touch freedom of speech issues. Rather, it is extremely frowned on.)

The only problem with this universally repeated history is that it's a lie. As the Centro Panafricano of Madrid points out, seventeenth century Spanish theater had a fairly wide repertoire of roles for “African” characters, who were usually foolish comic relief (the equivalent of Shakespeare's “rude mechanicals”) who performance historians think were probably played by white actors in blackface. One hundred years ago Arthur Schomburg was thrilled and grateful to discover that the African American actor Ira Aldridge had been allowed to play Othello in Britain as he was not in the United States, but while that certainly was progressive compared to the US, the fact remains that Othello was traditionally played in blackface in Britain as well, and while any representation is better than none Othello is hardly an unproblematic character, even if he avoids broad comedy. (Shylock has been a bit Othello-ized over the years, in that modern productions have raised him from comic to tragic – but between that and heroic is a good long jump.) 20 Minutes contents itself by saying that blackface had “less of a marked social connotation” in France than in the United States, but offers no particular evidence. So blackface did not originate in the United States (or even particularly in the English speaking world) and is a good deal older than the nineteenth century.

The next (and interlocking) argument trotted out by the defenders of blackface in Europe is that the reason it's different from in the United States is that here it's a “tribute” to the people involved. “Calmos les amis, je suis fan des Harlem Globetrotters et de cette belle époque, c'est un hommage..." Griezmann tweeted, before figuring out that a quick apology was a better bet for his career if he's interested in an English-speaking club ever. Or, as the defenders of the negrets of Alcoy put it “es un auténtico honor representar a unos personajes de estas características, que llevan la ilusión a los niños trepando con sus escaleras por los balcones para entregarles los regalos que tanto esperan.” Or in the words of a Dutch student defending Zwarte Piet, “Kinderen zien Zwarte Piet als voorbeeld. Het is een gezellig volksfeest....” (“Children see Zwarte Piet as an advantage. It's a cozy people's festival.”)

Aside from that this is roughly the equivalent of repeatedly giving someone the middle finger and then saying “but in my country it's a compliment. You're culturally insensitive to be offended!” the “it's an honor” argument is just as false as the “blackface is an invention of the United States” history. Again, Antumi Toasijé's well researched article for the Centro PanAfricano carefully dismantles the “but blackface here has nothing to do with slavery” claim made by the town of Alcoi (but the negrets are little supernatural “duendes”) by citing a series of nineteenth and early twentieth century newspaper articles which clearly refer to the “pages” as “slaves” and explain the origins of the tradition. (Really, you should read the whole article. If there are any readers who have trouble with it in Spanish, ask me in the comments, and I'll try to post a translation.)

I'm deliberately mentioning blackface outbreaks across Spain, France, and the Benelux countries because I think it's worth talking about this as a Europe-wide phenomenon. Sure, it's true that these countries all have important differences in history and legislation, but I think it's useful to take a larger view. At various points in history the laws and customs regarding race and racial discrimination have varied far more widely in the United States than anywhere in the EU now, but it's not a stretch to say that people of color have always suffered some form of discrimination everywhere in the United States, though the type and degree may have been different. As Malcolm X famously said, "Don't talk about the South. If you south of Canada, you South." (Incidentally, when I mentioned Malcolm X's name to university educated, left-wing friends in Madrid, who are somewhat conscious of history, they said "who's Malcolm X?") In any case, to paraphrase Malcolm X, "if you east of Nova Scotia and west of the Caucasus, you in Europe." All of Western Europe shares the same imperial history, and much of Europe shares variants of the Napoleonic Code as the basis for their legal systems, as well as the more recent legal framework of the EU. As the pervasiveness of some of the attitudes I've detailed make clear, European culture is actually pretty homogeneous on this issue.

I feel like it's not really my place to write yet another explanation of why blackface is offensive and racist and not an “homage” when it happens in Europe. If it's not obvious to you already, look at some of the articles on AfroFeminas.com by the excellent Antoinette Torres Soler, and others, or at the Centro PanAfricano, or at the Zwarte Piet is Racisme facebook page in Dutch, or at the frequently instructive and interesting twitter feed of Rokhaya Diallo who pretty much stays linked in to many social issues in France. My point is – you don't need a white American to explain this. There are plenty of Europeans of color who are happy to break it down for you if you're willing to listen. If you're not willing to listen to them I highly doubt you'd listen to me, but in the unlikely event that you actually think a white American is more worth listening to than a Black European about racism in Europe....stop and ask yourself why that is?

The only personal note I can give you is my experience last month during my long weekend in Belgium, when I saw a group of Zwarte Pieten accompanying a slightly pre-mature Sinterklaas in the center of Ghent. They were screaming loudly and incomprehensibly (my Dutch isn't that good, but I couldn't even make out words, it just sounded like yelling). It did not sound cheerful and “gezellig” and like something that would make little children smile. It sounded angry and bitter and frightening. I particularly remember one girl – I don't think she could have been more than sixteen – with a grotesquely painted face, and floppy sandy blonde hair that fell over her shoulders and flew out in strings when she tossed her head. (At least she wasn't wearing the wig.) Underneath the makeup her face was twisted with what looked like absolute hatred. It was the expression you see in photos of the faces in the crowd hurling abuse at the Little Rock Nine. Rationally, I knew that the procession wasn't threatening me. They weren't threatening anyone. But it was a scary and upsetting experience. I asked the friend who was with me what they were shouting about and she shrugged in a way that was half bemused and half disgusted and said that maybe they were happy and excited to be accompanying the Sint. I later asked another friend if there were traditional shouts, and mentioned that they had sounded angry, and he said that maybe it was an anti-Zwarte Piet protest. I couldn't understand why more people in the street didn't turn away in disgust or fear. I found it really nauseous making, and it took me a while to understand why nobody else seemed to notice.

The thing is, the Zwarte Pieten looked and sounded to me like a really vicious and angry mockery of people I know. I don't mean “people I know” as in the classic white liberal “I have a black friend.” I mean that almost as long as I can remember I've had teachers, supervisors at work, and professors who were Black (and for that matter Asian, and Latino also). These weren't just people I “liked” although I did and do like many of them. They are people I respect, who were both officially and actually (in terms of age, experience, and knowledge) my superiors. I also have friends and colleagues who are people of color, of course, and it's offensive on their behalf too. But I think you are perhaps more sensitive to disrespect toward authority figures than toward people whom you simply like. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't make fun of authority (I'm thoroughly in favor of that, if authority deserves it), but it means that it catches your attention when someone does.
I know that I've grown up in a somewhat more diverse environment than most people, including many Americans. But I didn't realize just how freakish my experience was in Europe until I saw the way people around me reacted (or rather didn't react) to Zwarte Piet. I also have had a few conversations here that set me thinking about race and invisibility. One was after a holiday party at the Complutense a couple of weeks ago, when I talked with two lecturers there, one from Spain and one from Hungary, about learning and teaching foreign languages (something we all do professionally) and the difficulties of speaking to small children in a language which is theirs and not yours. After an anecdote told by the Spaniard I voiced the opinion that an eight year old who made comments about someone's foreign accent was bratty and rude, because eight year olds are old enough to know better. The Spaniard seriously replied that perhaps in a “barrio multicultural” or a diverse city like New York that was the case, but that lots of children grew up in places where they never heard anyone with a foreign accent. I can't remember a time when I didn't know a lot of people with a variety of foreign accents (a lot of new immigrants and old refugees), but I suppose in theory she's right....except that she was talking about an eight year old who had grown up in Paris. Where if nothing else there are occasionally one or two foreign tourists who sometimes speak French. The Hungarian added (a little bit shamefacedly, though I thought he personally had no need for embarrassment) that while an eight year old might not know about accents, he had been startled and had his worldview split open when he first studied in Salamanca at the age of twenty, and saw a Black student sit down opposite him in the library, because he had never before seen a Black person who was also studying humanities. As he said in response to the Spaniard's question: “there aren't many Black people in Budapest, and those that are there are mostly not at the university, and the ones at the university aren't studying arts and letters.” Having spent some time in “Edificio A” of the Complutense, where the literature and philosophy classes meet, I really wonder whether the lone Black student in the library in Salamanca was an American who had come there with a study abroad program. I love the class I'm taking at the Complutense. But it's the first time in my life that I've been in an undergraduate classroom with no non-white students. (The graduate program at Columbia is far from diverse, but even in the graduate classes 100% white is not completely the norm the way it is here.)

Once I started thinking about it, I realized that it's not just that there are very very few non-white students at the university here. All the TV presenters (and faithful blog readers will know that I watch a lot of TV) are white. 

The (brilliant) regular cast of El Intemedio

The cast of The Daily Show (El Intermedio's equivalent)

The news presenters for TVE (national news)

The presenters for ABC (national news)

Most of the people in the advertisements are white too. I haven't made an exhaustive study, but my unscientific impression is that when people of color do appear, the advertisement is more likely to either be in English and subtitled (I know, it's weird to subtitle ads and dub tv shows, but that's what they do here), or to be a foreign multinational (e.g. Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein) with a wider audience. Judging from their profile photos (and also from having met some of them in person over the years at the Semana Negra), pretty much all of the high profile print journalists in Spain are white. So are all the novelists and poets I can think of offhand. In 2015, when it was young and innocent, the political party Podemos made headlines by electing Rita Bosaho the first and only Black member of the Spanish Parliament. She is still Spain's only Black deputy. (As far as I know there are no deputies of Asian descent either.) In all the newscasts about the plentiful Spanish corruption cases that I've seen over the years all the judges and all the lawyers were white. The only diversity on television comes from American series, and from the occasional movie.

So it's not just that white people here don't necessarily know Black people personally. It's possible to live here and literally see no one – in school, in courts, in the police, in the congress, and in the local government who is not white. In fact, about the only time white people are obliged to see people who don't look like them is on the street or in the metro. This I think explains why people of good will here so often say apologetically “but we're not a diverse country like the United States” or “we don't have a history of immigration like the US” or similar.

Of course, if it were true that Spain had no history of being a diverse country I wouldn't be here researching. In fact, Arthur Schomburg, one of the subjects of my research, wrote one hundred years ago about the centuries of African presence in Spain, including as slaves (and yes, from sub-Saharan Africa, and yes, from before the time of Columbus and the establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. If you want references, ask me in the comments, and I'll cut and paste the bibliography of an article about medieval Castilian slavery that I've been working on.) In terms of recent immigration, it's true that there's been an increase in immigration since the Franco years, but I've been coming to Spain for more than twenty years now, and I have photographic evidence of the diversity of certain Madrid neighborhoods stretching back close to a generation. My teacher friends in Madrid started talking about their immigrant students fifteen years ago.  My neighborhood in Madrid has people who are almost as varied as the people in my neighborhood at home, and who clearly hail from at least four different continents.

But in spite of all that, non-white Spaniards of all types remain strangely invisible in Spain. They don't appear as pundits on TV shows, or writing columns in newspapers, or running for office. I've linked to a lot of articles here that are either from the English language press (The Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc.), or from specific organizations like the Centro PanAfricano and Afroféminas because there isn't much polemic about blackface in Spain in the mainstream media here. And by “not much” I mean practically none, except for some articles in the sports sections about Antoine Griezmann. (Because football is important.)

The political parties here don't talk about manifestations of racism beyond very general statements about justice for all. Podemos, which has lost a lot of its lustre over the past couple of years, went out of its way to distance itself from its own deputy when when Rita Bosaho publicly condemned the blackface Three Kings Day parade of Alcoi. The central committee wrote a letter saying that they (along with all the other political parties in Spain) supported enshrining els negrets as part of the world heritage as per UNESCO, because they are in favor of maintaining Spanish heritage. Of course, this isn't that surprising when you consider that Podemos' leader Pablo Iglesias came to prominence via a TV talk show (on which I have never seen a non-white guest, although perhaps there have been a few – the episodes are all on youtube if you want to look) which he tactfully called “Fort Apache.” The set of the show features a round table of participants, moderated by Iglesias, sitting with cigar store Indian statues behind them. (I am not kidding.) And this is the supposedly new and radical left wing.

Pablo Iglesias (center) discussing social justice and mass movements of the people with an all white panel...and a statue of a cigar store Indian in the background.

 I don't mean to single Spain out, because the same thing is pretty much true from what I've seen in Belgium, where there is certainly a lot of debate about Zwarte Piet, and about various other less ridiculous and more deadly forms of racism, but where there seem to be very few elected officials and pundits and journalists who are not white. (I've never actually run across a journalist or politician of African background in Belgium, although there are plenty of people of African descent in the francophone areas who are from former Belgian colonies.) In France, where there is at least debate, the treatment of Rokhaya Diallo shows pretty clearly the limits of that debate. And according to the most recent reliable information I could find, in 2013 there were five Black deputies out of 577 in the French parliament. Given that people of African descent (including North Africa, francophone sub-Saharan Africa, and the overseas departements) make up between 5 and 10% of the French population, that's some serious under representation. Again, different regions have different histories and slight variations, but in general, the problem of invisibility in the public sphere (media, politics, culture) seems widespread in Europe.

I think this invisibility is what makes such widespread blackface possible here. As that little kid in the metro said the other day “Balthasar es el negrito.” At least, in context that was how I heard it, as meaning “Balthasar is the black one (of the three kings).” But for too many Spaniards it could just as well be “Balthasar es El Negrito,” that is “Balthasar is THE Black” --- the only representation of blackness they know. So it's possible to define blackness by a nuit de noirs in grass skirts or scampering negrets wearing slave collars and painted grotesquely because there is no counter weight of reality. (Not even that the reality has to be positive. But I wonder if the people responsible for some of those blackface “costumes” have ever looked at a real person...as a person. I don't see how they could have.)

This is already an overlong entry, so I think I should probably stop here, but I should end by saying that obviously the widespread blackface is a symptom of something seriously wrong here, not a cause. I may write more in a bit about the way institutional racism seems to play out here as opposed to in the US (the first rule being, you're not allowed to call it institutional racism), when I have more figured out. But again, I can't really do better than to recommend the work of Antumi Toasijé and Antoinette Torres Soler in Spain, or the anti-Zwarte Piet campaigner Quinsy Gario in Holland, or the Mwasi collective in France. People of color are talking here. They just need bigger megaphones, and I'd rather give them a chance to talk than sound off myself about a situation which is foreign to me in more ways than one. 

Finally, because humility is a good thing, obviously, I'm an American. I can already hear the indignant protests of my European friends reading this, "but you should talk. The United States is an incredibly racist country! Segregation was legal there within living memory! The Black Lives Matter movement is necessary because of the entrenched racism of your police, and your prison system has been convincingly called "The New Jim Crow." Europe is much better than that!"

To which my answer is: Yes. I know. As do, in fact, most people in the US who are intellectually honest. (There are a lot of people who are not intellectually honest, but let's assume that we're speaking among people of good faith here.) But my question for European friends is: As a European is your only goal for a just society to be "not as bad as the US"? Don't you want to be better than that pathetically low standard?

I offer the critique of an outsider because I love this place, even though I'm not a native, and I want it to be better than this.