by cmsellers » Wed Feb 06, 2019 6:51 pm
There's blackface, as in a white person putting on makeup to look black. And then there's blackface, as in the racist caricatures of black people used in minstrel shows. Herring did the first, Northam did the second.
Now, making yourself up to look like a black person is wrong, and it calls to mind the other kind of blackface, which makes it more problematic than other kinds of ethnic makeup, but I'd still argue it's not nearly as bad as the minstrel show blackface.
I also believe that this kind was socially acceptable more recently, in the same way as other kinds of ethnic makeup (hence why Megyn Kelly could be clueless about why it's not acceptable now), whereas minstrel show blackface has been very clearly not OK since the Civil Rights Movement. Between this, and his coming forward, I don't think Herring needs to resign, and it looks like he doesn't think so either, as he apparently admitted it in his call for Northam to resign.
Edit: two typos
Last edited by
cmsellers on Wed Feb 06, 2019 7:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.