genderbitch:

theleftnippleofrichardramirez:

brazenbitch:

Whiteness is nothing to be proud of. When you say you’re proud to be white this is what we PoC think of:

Things to be proud of:

• Your heritage
• but never whiteness
• because…

Whoa, need to stop you there for a moment.

Al Jolson (the “racist” guy in the black makeup), - let me wikipedia this:

———————————————————————————————————————-

“He enjoyed performing in blackface makeup – a theatrical convention since the mid-19th century. With his unique and dynamic style of singing black music, like jazz and blues, he was later credited with single-handedly introducing African-American music to white audiences. As early as 1911 he became known for fighting against anti-black discrimination on Broadway. Jolson’s well-known theatrics and his promotion of equality on Broadway helped pave the way for many black performers, playwrights, and songwriters, including Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Ethel Waters.”

Performing in blackface makeup was a theatrical convention used by many entertainers at the beginning of the 20th century, having its origin in the minstrel show.Al Jolson was the most famous performer to wear blackface makeup when singing.Working behind a blackface mask “gave him a sense of freedom and spontaneity he had never known” According to film historian Eric Lott, for the white minstrel man “to put on the cultural forms of ‘blackness’ was to engage in a complex affair of manly mimicry…To wear or even enjoy blackface was literally, for a time, to become black, to inherit the cool, virility, humility, abandon, or gaité de coeur that were the prime components of white ideologies of black manhood.”

A metaphor of mutual suffering

Jazz historians have described Jolson’s blackface and singing style as metaphors for Jewish and black suffering throughout history. Jolson’s first film, The Jazz Singer, for instance, is described by historian Michael Alexander as an expression of the liturgical music of Jews with the “imagined music of African Americans,” noting that “prayer and jazz become metaphors for Jews and blacks.” Playwright Samson Raphaelson, after seeing Jolson perform his stage show, “Robinson Crusoe,” stated that “he had an epiphany: ‘My God, this isn’t a jazz singer,’ he said. ‘This is a cantor!’” The image of the blackfaced cantor remained in Raphaelson’s mind when he conceived of the story which led to The Jazz Singer.

Upon release of the film, the first full-length sound picture, film reviewers saw the symbolism and metaphors portrayed by Jolson in his role as the son of a cantor wanting to become a “jazz singer”:

“Is there any incongruity in this Jewish boy with his face painted like a Southern Negro singing in the Negro dialect? No, there is not. Indeed, I detected again and again the minor key of Jewish music, the wail of the Chazan, the cry of anguish of a people who had suffered. The son of a line of rabbis well knows how to sing the songs of the most cruelly wronged people in the world’s history.”

According to Alexander, East European Jews were uniquely qualified to understand the music, noting how Jolson himself made the comparison of Jewish and African American suffering in a new land in his film “Big Boy”: In a blackface portrayal of a former slave, he leads a group of recently freed slaves, played by black actors, in verses of the classic slave spiritual “Go Down Moses.” One reviewer of the film expressed how Jolson’s blackface added significance to his role:

“When one hears Jolson’s jazz songs, one realizes that jazz is the new prayer of the American masses, and Al Jolson is their cantor. The Negro makeup in which he expresses his misery is the appropriate talis[prayer shawl] for such a communal leader.”

Many in the black community welcomed The Jazz Singer, and saw it as a vehicle to gain access to the stage. Audiences at Harlem’s Lafayette Theater cried during the film, and Harlem’s newspaper, Amsterdam News, called it “one of the greatest pictures ever produced.” For Jolson, it wrote: “Every colored performer is proud of him.”

———————————————————————————————————————-

It’s easy to just see racism when the picture’s taken out of context. Because nowadays, that’s apparently all it means, but back then it meant something else.

Also, these kinds of posts are kind of contra-productive. You want to spread the message that we SHOULD’NT think in terms of race and skin-color by grouping together events that “white people” have been responsible for.

I’m not proud to be white. But I’m not ashamed either. I don’t see me as a part of a group, but you apparently do. And that’s where racism grows.

If that was too long to read I basically want to say that Al Jolson was a kick ass singer and that I understand where you’re coming from but that there are some flaws in the way you choose to bring your arguments forth. But I know that you only mean well.