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.
No it wasn’t. Even in the 90s we knew it was wrong.
Revisionist history tbh, we absolutely did not know better in the 90s or early aughts, certainly not where I lived. The world was different before widespread Internet access and your pocket of culture, if it really was the way you think you know and remember was certainly not universal.
In 1992 Alladin came out - wearing blackface in a costume for that was definitely not the norm. You’ll find tens of thousands of pictures of kids dressed up in poofy hats and sweeping pants whose parents knew not to face paint them to be more accurate (and these are kids who’d get facepaint to dress as the lion king or a ghost).
It may be that it was just Boston Massachusetts being a haven for the political correctness but if you know anything about Boston you’ll probably know we have a long sad history of being racist assholes (especially to PoC, Italians, Irish, Germans, Catholics… even Native Americans! So I guess pretty much everyone).
I’m happy to admit there are areas of the US where blackface is still normal… but I think the adults are still aware of how problematic it is.
I grew up in Kentucky and dressed as Pocahontas when the movie came out, but nobody painted any kids face and blackface was definitely known & not okay.
We even learned some very questionable ‘heritage not hate’ bullshit, but blackface would not fly by the late 90s.
I absolutely believe that in a large city the culture you experienced was drastically different than what I experienced. I didn’t grow up in a city, and yeah things were pretty different for me as a result.
It’s okay, it just means your pocket of experience and mine pool from different demographics and normative values.