“Learn the words.”
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That was totally worth the click. 
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Well some idiots thought there was nothing wrong with blackface even after the 70s. This is one of the worst offenders i can think of:
Must be Megyn Kelly’s fave movie. People should mail her copies of it
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Even that movie owned up to why it’s wrong;
James Earl Jones:
So I guess you learned what it’s like to be a Black man, then?C Thomas Howell:
No sir, because I still always had the choice to stop being Black.
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But in the case of Soul Man there was an actual existential and moral story there. One in which James Earl Jones’ character delivered a great line at the end only to by rebutted by C. Thomas Howell’s character line.
The movie knew what it was doing and went in with eyes open.
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Beat ya to it.
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oh god, i remember that movie. never saw it, but yeesh.
Four white people can’t figure out what’s racist about blackface? Go figure.
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Errm, Friday nights on BBC1?
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Some theater parents in my high school wanted us to put on Finnean’s Rainbow. Nixed by the level-headed music director due to blackface. This was in the mid-70s.
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Despite the movie’s good intentions and message i still found it tone deaf, it’s been years since i saw it (saw it as a kid) but i distinctly remember the playing up the blackness as groan worthy.
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Megyn Kelly is definitely a gross dope, but none of the nitwits on that panel had a clue.
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ok, so maybe i was exaggerating a little. but still, i was 11 years old in 1978, and we didn’t get the BBC in denver, so there’s no way i would’ve known about this.
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Wow, the most current are a huge batch of clips of ST:TOS episode “Spock’s Brain” where they just switch “brain” to “dick.”
I have to say: puerile but brilliant.
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Yeah… in the US, that shit hasn’t been socially acceptable for some time, due to our long ugly history. But of course just because it’s not socially acceptable, that doesn’t mean some self-absorbed asshat won’t still attempt it…
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No, it’s an incentive for antisocial assholes.
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Yes. But I advise against judging someone (or in this case an era) for not evolving as quickly as you did.
Asking a film from the 80’s to be more in tune and culturally or racially sensitive is like slamming your head against the wall. It can’t change what it was. And point of fact…they weren’t trying to hide from it entirely either.
Don’t get me wrong…it’s not like Soul Man was some amazing social critique in disguise…it’s not. It’s just that it also wasn’t the horrible monster that it would be if it was made today.
The thing about “tone deaf” is it means it is ignoring the current music playing. The song being played today around racial sensitivity is much different than the one from the 80’s.
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One of my favorite Japanese TV shows (Gaki no Tsukai’s Batsu series) did an American Police episode, they started off nearly right off the bat with one of their main talents in black face pretending to be Eddie Murphy. It was… not great. From their perspective it was likely not intended to be racist but honestly they should’ve known better, especially being in the TV business. Let me see if i can find a screen cap of it…
Edit:
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It’s better now (though still far from perfect), but Britain was pretty retrograde in that department for a long time. Well into the 1980s we had white comedians doing “humorous” Caribbean accents on TV.
ETA: and as late as 2006, Halle Berry had to slap down a BBC radio presenter for doing a “funny” impression of an American black man while he was interviewing her.
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In Japan, people do not think blackface is offensive. There is no history of african slavery there, and no awareness of how blackface was used in the West. One music group who sings classic R&B in blackface says it makes them feel “strong”.
It fails to give you an idea of your hypothetical America, but it is an interesting example of a different relationship to blackface. Some more reading here:
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