As an Historian I can overlook many things as being the product of a different era and a different culture. I fail to do that whenever I see a minstrel player in blackface. My friends notice an instant change whenever I see the Jim Crow Darkie.

I tell them, “You have no idea how OFFENSIVE that is.”

It is racism personified, the N-word made flesh. It is a powerful insult, but surprisingly not everyone sees it.

Minstrel shows were responsible for the spread of negative information about Negroes on a wide scale. Many of the stereotypes ingrained in the American psyche have their origins in these shows.

The original “Jim Crow” is supposed to have come from a White minstrel player named Daddy Rice. He lampooned Negroes in a very demeaning way. The character Jim Crow was reputed to have been drawn from his ridiculing a crippled Black old man (some say it was a boy).

Middle Americans laboring to build a life and nation needed some form of entertainment in the days before the Internet and television. Minstrel shows provided a break from the routine. But what did they see?

They saw White actors singing and dancing, doing classical recitals. The more talent on display, the more money they collected. When it came time to do comedy, most of them darkened their faces with charcoal or burnt cork. White or red paint expanded thin white lips into caricatures of fuller Black lips.

They would dress in tight pants, frilly shirts and gaudy tailcoats in a poor imitation of a refined White gentleman. Often sporting jeweled canes they engaged in clownish pursuits, buffoonery, dancing and seemed narrowly focused on seeking “female company.”

The broken English we now called Ebonics was meant to portray how silly a Black person sounded trying to act like a “civilized White man.” He had every negative habit humanly possible: cowardice, laziness, and habitual liars prone to stealing.

Black men weren’t the only ones damaged by these traveling shows. The men portrayed black women in unflattering guise. They also played Greedy, venal Jews, Drunken Irishmen and cheap Scotsmen; whatever played well with the audience of the day.

The minstrel shows experienced a renaissance in the 1870’s as the country recovered from the Civil War. They endured through vaudeville and even made it to the big screen. The first talking film, THE JAZZ SINGER, featured Al Jolson famously singing “Mammy” in blackface.

Few people know that Mickey Mouse got his now trademark white gloves in 1933 when he and other Disney characters were drawn in “Mickey’s Mellerdrammer” a minstrel version of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Minstrel “coonery” even poured out of the radio. Amos and Andy achieved national fame with their portrayal of two clever but demented Negroes. The nation was surprised to discover the two men were actually White. I have no idea why this should come as a surprise given the long history of the minstrel shows.

I can and do laugh at Amos and Andy. But to see them, or any White man, in blackface is the supreme insult. As a picture paints a thousand words, these images declare in a loud voice, “This is what WE think of YOU!”

The laughter and participation of the audience tells me they are answering, “YES! We agree! They’ ARE like that!”

While blackface imagery suddenly disappeared in America in the 1950’s, it still lingers in places touched by American travelers. The character, Mr. Popo appears in Japan’s DRAGONBALL-Z as a turbaned, deep-black man with white eyes, thick orange lips and gray palms (Japan 1989, US 1993).

Just last year I bought a pack of DARKIE gum in the Philippines. It had the wide white eyes, the exaggerated lips and jet black skin common to the genre. And of course, he sported a fancy top hat.