Ignorance is bliss...

Look familiar? Are you suddenly reminded of black face and minstrel shows? By this 2007 i-D magazine ad?!?!?! Okay, it seems that there have been a barrage of individuals who do not find this ad racially insensitive, so here is the spiel on why you are indeed wrong:

Blackface is a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to affect the countenance of an iconic, racist American archetype—that of the darky or coon. Blackface also refers to a genre of musical and comedic theatrical presentation in which blackface makeup is worn. White blackface performers in the past used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Later, black artists also performed in blackface.
Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for over 100 years and was also popular overseas. Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrelsy played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. In some quarters, the caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist to the present day and are a cause of ongoing controversy.
By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface performance in the U.S. and elsewhere. However, it remains in relatively limited use as a theatrical device, mostly outside the U.S.[1], and is more commonly used today as edgy social commentary or satire. Perhaps the most enduring effect of blackface is the precedent it established in the introduction of African American culture to an international audience, albeit through a distorted lens. Blackface minstrelsy’s groundbreaking appropriation, exploitation, and assimilation of African-American culture—as well as the inter-ethnic artistic collaborations that stemmed from it—were but a prologue to the lucrative packaging, marketing, and dissemination of African-American cultural expression and its myriad derivative forms in today’s world popular culture.

Source: Kerckhove, C. V. (2007, August 23). "American Apparel trumpets blackface fashion spread in i-D magazine". Message posted to http://alamode83.wordpress.com/2007/08/23/racism-or-art/.


Some examples:

It is clear that the people responsible for the ad are familiar with black face, minstrels, and/or at least the stereotypical image of a slave woman because this idea had to come from some place. So the real questions that arise from the publication of this ad are:

1. Were they just unaware of the controversy behind these images?

2. Did they believe, as so many ignorant individuals do, that racism is so little of an issue anymore that this would not be offensive?

3. Are they just outright racist, so much so that they had the audacity to knowingly produce such an emotionally arousing ad?

***On another, more brief note: There are also some sexist implications in this ad, which I will touch upon later. This has been a long post, and I feel the need to maintain the focus on race for the sake of keeping in line with the spotlight. However, I should add this:

It is also a fact that while the white woman has historically been portrayed as the pure virgin that all men of color wish to rape, the black woman has historically been portrayed as fair game when it came to receiving/taking/paying for sexual pleasures, as she is a sexually promiscuous animal. It is true that this has changed as much as the potency of racial insensitivity has changed in the media. However, as we have seen above-- and will see in my subsequent posts--, after all these years, race is still an issue in society and this is occasionally-- accidently or not-- evident in the imagery that society produces.