My Old Kentucky Home

Mad Men has not been very successful in dealing with the race issue. It sometimes touches on it with a "magical" negro or two, but always just drops the issue flat. The last episode, however, was completely different. One of the main characters performed in blackface at an all-white country club. Ewwww. Needless to say, there was a parallel story running during that episode regarding one family's maid. During the era that Mad Men takes place Southerners were fighting to keep "negroes" in their places and losing. I am sure because of its significance that it will be revisited as the series progresses.



I think black face is an incredibly racist and classist thing to perform, but it is so inextricably tied in with our cultural history that its roots should not be ignored. I took the History of Dance in America in college and learned it is a very important, but terribly unnerving, part of our country’s entertainment traditions. It began when Black slaves held parties that included dance contests in which the performers battled for a cake. The challengers wore the plantation owners’ thrown-out finery and incorporated the steps of the whites’ cotillion dances with the movements of their native African dances. These celebrations were accompanied by homemade banjos along with other instruments and songs from Africa and Christian gospel. Some academics suggest that the slaves were expressing their anger by caricaturing whites. At their own balls and celebrations, to make fun of their “staff,” the slave owners painted their own faces black and sang, played instruments, and danced in the manner of the slave’s performances. The black face routine was then adopted by traveling white entertainers, who brought it North, where it became wildly popular. (Even though tap dance also became part of black face routines, it evolved out of the rivalry between Northern inner-city Blacks and the immigrant Irish). To safely perform on vaudeville stages for white audiences, Black entertainers could only use the black face paint and routines in the beginning. From there it morphed into better things for American entertainment: tap, jazz, rock, rag time, the blues, etc. But it stays on in American culture, fondly remembered by just about anyone who is old enough to remember the 60s and therefore very dangerous.