4bars
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So Basically you are saying that context matters. IMO blackfacing in Spain matters too, and no, blackfacing in Spain has no racist origins because there was no black people once it started and it didn't depict black people in a inferior way it had been simply a religious celebration where an important character and his followers came from a black skinned country and they were equally important to the other wise man of white skin and his white skinned followers. Now there is no excuse, as having black people means that we don't count on them to be in our society, so maintaining it, would be racist.Thats why I said all depictions i've seen are in that way, I wasn't saying those were the only depictions.
Diety worship is different to blackfacing - the offence that comes with blackface isn't that you are covering yourself in black paint - it's that, that black paint is meant to represent how a black person looks which is where the mocking, exaggeration and stereotyping comes into it.
So what you're referring to wouldn't be regarded as blackface.
The KKK isn't offensive because they wear white hoods, they're offensive because they lynched and hunted black people like animals - they just happened to do so while choosing white hoods as their uniform.
It doesn't mean you shouldn't wear that white uniform at all - it just means you're likely to get confused with the KKK, but as long as you're not doing anything harmful it shouldn't be a reason to stop. Similar to how the swastika originated in Indian sanskrit before the Nazis got involved.
This is different to blackface because blackface has only existed with racism at its origin - and like someone said earlier, tension & opposition to blackface has always existed, it just wasn't visible because black people didn't have the power to voice their concerns, whereas now with things like social media these opinions can't be ignored & silenced anymore.
Calling something that's racist, racist is valid - and it doesn't necessarily mean thats it forever. I understand the first reaction to something like that is to be defensive, but really it's an opportunity to learn. Choosing to continue to offend for the sake of ego/pride or being angrier at being called racist, rather than the actual racism that's taken place isn't the right way to go about things (not saying thats what you're doing, i'm just speaking generally because a few in this thread seem to not understand this)
And yes, I agree on that being offended when told that is racist is not ok and is a way to learn from it. And here I am. But not everybody has a positive attitude if the first comment is telling them " you are a fecking racist" coming from a person that doesn't know anything from the spanish tradition pretending of them to know your racist tradition and telling them to change it for that reason and not for our own reasons, that are different. I think things being told constructively and trying to understand why people do that FIRST, would help more. And the clue that dozens of people blackfaced in front thousands of people accepting it on broad day light (Unthinkable in US) should give a hint that something different is going on and not that everybody is a racist in Spain