Donor note: Purchased from the NMAH Libary Endowment Fund
Contents:
A pestilence of ignunce: blackface in the twenty-first century -- Queer people of the world: Africans on display -- Black like you: blackface minstrelsy, the rock and roll years -- "You may be a Hawaiian on Broadway ... ": the minstrel show, coon songs and vaudeville -- Black ink: Negro-dialect literature -- Black and white film, reel one: Uncle Tom's cinema -- Black and white film, reel two: from race movies to White Chicks -- Black market: negrobilia and Black Americana -- Yackety yack, don't talk black: ebonics and American English -- Pimp Jim Crow: wiggaz, niggaz and a wonky -- Afterword: trickin' the paddies with Uncle Aglio e Oglio / Darius James
Summary:
An exploration of race relations in American popular culture, focusing particularly on blackface--strange, often scandalous, and now taboo entertainment. Although blackface performance came to be denounced as purely racist mockery, and shamefacedly erased from most modern accounts of American cultural history, Strausbaugh shows that, nevertheless, its impact has been deep and longlasting. Strausbaugh illuminates truths about race rarely discussed in public, including: --American culture conforms neither to knee-jerk racism nor to political correctness. It is neither Black nor White nor Other, but a mix. --No history is best forgotten--however uncomfortable it may be to remember. The power of blackface to enrage and mortify Americans to this day is reason enough to examine what it still tells us about our culture and ourselves. --Blackface is still alive. Its impact and derivations--including Black performers in "whiteface"--Can be seen all around us.--From publisher description
