It’s been a busy week for discussions of racism. Delta Goodrem re-tweeted a photo of a fan in blackface and was criticised for being racist, Mia Freedman defendedher and asked us all to save the word racist for something really important, and we had the blackface discussion all over again. Delta apologised for any offense she may have caused, and somehow we ended up in a quagmire of good manners. How did racism become an issue of politeness? What grabbed us all so hard about another blackface scandal?
If you were looking at the recent blackface incidents in this country from your home planet in another galaxy, you’d be forgiven for thinking that racism was an issue that falls somewhere between the annoying and the unfair. Something in the realm of not inviting your whole class to your birthday party and stealing a tram seat from a pregnant woman. Not so much an act of discrimination as a failure of etiquette.
When it comes to racism, we seem to be suffering from an overwhelming obsession with politeness. So when Delta Goodrem does a proper racist thing, sending out a picture of a fan dressed in blackface in some kind of tragically ignorant racist parody of singer and Voice judge Seal, her response is not an apology or a defense, or god forbid a trip to the library, but a plea that she didn’t mean to offend. Translation: I’m sorry if I was rude. I don’t want to be rude and hurt people, that’s not what nice people do and I’m a nice person. So I’m apologising for my rudeness. Sorry if I offended you.
It’s like she’s entered another country — which in a way she has — and not knowing the rules, has accidentally stepped on a few toes. In response to being told she was being racist — in other words for being a part of the machine of daily and pervasive discrimination and exclusion of people of colour — she apologises to any individuals who may have misunderstood her intentions. Like a lot of us, she wanted to skip the shame involved in facing her own racism, and instead retreated to the safer territory of good intentions.
But blackface isn’t impolite, it’s plain and simple racist. It calls up a whole history of exploitation, stereotyping and marginalisation of black people. There’s no hyperlink here because there’s an entire library of work on the subject. There is very little in this library about how to act like a non-racist in polite society, but there is a lot about the history of oppression.
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