re: #84 calochortus

It strikes me that there is great distance between doing the classic minstrel show blackface and darkening your face to dress up as a rapper. The first is pretty clearly racist. The second could be racist or not. As has been mentioned: Context. Nuance.

Is it wrong to put on a big blonde wig to be Dolly Parton for Halloween if you are Asian? Or a Caucasian brunette? What about cross dressing? Should Leontyne Price have sung the Madame Butterfly role?

I think darkening the face for rapper would be though I understand he and his friends were dressing up as a rap group they liked. If they were dressing up as generic rappers, I think it would be more a prolbem IMO. As for the other examples, I don’t see that as a problem no. I think the Herring incident is far more innocent than the Northam one and I think Herring has handled it better so far.