A city councillor in British Columbia says an online mob of “extremists” and “politically motivated hackers” is responsible for uncovering and publicizing a photo of him wearing a blackface costume to a Halloween party in 2007.
Colwood Coun. Ian Ward on Monday addressed the photo in a statement on his X account after the picture, which was originally published on a personal family blog, surfaced on social media in recent days.
Ward acknowledged he posed for the photo wearing a Washington Bullets basketball jersey, a gold chain and a wig, with his teeth coloured gold and his hands and face painted black.
That’s called punching up vs. punching down.
That’s a terrible concept masquerading as equity. In the future I suspect we’ll know better, but the double standard crap in this era is awful. There is no correct way to have racism, you either fight all of it, or not.
This mentality of punching up / down simply leads to outcomes of acceptable / unacceptable racism and that’s not the way to combat racism and inequality.
To be fair, the entire issue of blackface and its sordid history is much more nasty and nuanced than this thread would suggest.
If you want to find out more, look into the racist nature of minstrel shows, and their role in maintaining hierarchy.
I mean, if you want to take the cosmic perspective, blackface is fine too. It’s only forbidden because it was used for really racist purposes in recent history.
Something something coconut tree.