Alexis Battle's Digital Past Blog

Just another college student trying to get by, one procrastinated assignment at a time.

White Guys in Black Face

Today I learned something about minstrel shows that I never knew before. Minstrel shows were put on by white men in order to make a mockery of African American people during the 19th century. What I learned that was new today was that a popular minstrel song the “Yellow Rose of Texas” was an anthem in Texas. Texas is considered a southern state which has a history of racism which made me take further interest in this song. In the song, a white man in black face is professing his desire to want to sleep with a black women. This made me question whether or not if the man performing this song while not in black face would openly make the same profession of his desire for black women, and if he did would it be an act of admiration or supremacy. The reason why I question whether or not it would be supremacy is because if these White men wanted to act upon those desires to sleep with Black woman they could do that with or with black face because they were the supreme race and could do what they want to, but a Black man couldn’t do that with White women. This demonstrates the double standards that were maintained between White and Black people during this time. It was okay for White people to publicly mock Black people on stages and in everyday life without consequences, and those same rules didn’t apply for Black people. I think that in general this can be related to the evolution of music because as Black people began to be to take on stages and create music for public consumption, there were constantly limits being set on the content that they were able to create. An example of this is N.W.A “F**k the Police”. This song represents the epitome of censorship because the government restricted N.W.A’s ability to make money off the song, and they were even arrested for performing it.

 

 

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