Again we find yet another example of Japanese people dressed in blackface in an attempt to be funny. This time it is a “We are the World” parody.
Let’s try to put this on the other foot. Suppose some non-Asians in another country did a parody of a famous Japanese song. Suppose they taped their face back to make their eyes look thin, and wore body paint to make their skin look more “yellow”. I think many Japanese people would be upset, and rightly so.
Yes, I know, they parodied white people in it too. But there have been so many instances of Japanese actors and comedians wearing blackface and “acting black”, along with the racist Little Black Sambo books, the little black dolls with big white googly eyes and big red lips, the monkeys pretending to be Obama, chimps imitating black actors, and on and on… it’s hard not to put this parody in that whole context of stereotypical and racist portrayals of blacks that seem to come up time and time again in this country. And then every time the same debate comes up and the same arguments are heard — that they didn’t mean any offense, that they were just trying to be funny, that they didn’t know the historical context of blacks being degraded by portraying them apes or dressing up in blackface, that they don’t have many black people in Japan so they don’t know what is offensive and what isn’t, etc. And we usually get the refrain that they’ll try to be more sensitive next time. And then we see the same thing again in yet another commercial or another variety show episode.
Really gettin’ old.
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