Editing Blackface (section)

== Early history ==
[[File:1923 “FLIT” ad - Seuss-cartoon-racist (cropped).jpg|thumb|[[FLIT]] advertisement by [[Dr. Seuss]] depicting blackface-styled caricatures of Black people]]
There is no consensus about a single moment that constitutes the origin of blackface. [[Arizona State University]] professor [[Ayanna Thompson]] links the beginning of blackface to stage practices within the [[Medieval Europe]] [[Mystery play|miracle or mystery plays]]. It was common practice in medieval Europe to use bitumen and soot from coal to darken skin to depict corrupted souls, demons, and devils in blackface. [[Louisiana State University]] professor Anthony Barthelemy stated, "“In many medieval miracle plays, the souls of the damned were represented by actors painted black or in black costumes.... In [many versions], Lucifer and his confederate rebels, after having sinned, turn black.”<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/blackface-older-you-think-180977618/|title=Blackface Is Older Than You Might Think: From medieval European theater troupes to American minstrelsy, the harmful tradition has a surprisingly long history|author=[[Ayanna Thompson]]|journal=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]]|date=April 29, 2021}}</ref> 

The journalist and cultural commentator [[John Strausbaugh]] places it as part of a tradition of "displaying Blackness for the enjoyment and edification of white viewers" that dates back at least to 1441, when captive West Africans were displayed in Portugal.<ref name="autogenerated2">{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|pp=35–36}}</ref> [[White people]] routinely portrayed the black characters in the [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethan]] and [[Jacobean era|Jacobean]] theater (see [[English Renaissance theatre]]), most famously in ''[[Othello]]'' (1604).<ref name="Black_and_white_minstrel" /> However, ''Othello'' and other plays of this era did not involve the emulation and caricature of "such supposed innate qualities of Blackness as inherent musicality, natural athleticism", etc. that Strausbaugh sees as crucial to blackface.<ref name="autogenerated2" />

A 2023 article appearing on the [[National Museum of African American History and Culture]] website, asserts that the birth of blackface is attributable to class warfare: <blockquote>Historian Dale Cockrell once noted that poor and working-class whites who felt “squeezed politically, economically, and socially from the top, but also from the bottom, invented minstrelsy” as a way of expressing the oppression that marked being members of the majority, but outside of the white norm.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Blackface: The Birth of An American Stereotype |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/blackface-birth-american-stereotype |access-date=2023-09-30 |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>By objectifying formerly enslaved people through demeaning, humor-inducing stock caricatures, "comedic performances of 'blackness' by whites in exaggerated costumes and make-up, [could not] be separated fully from the racial derision and stereotyping at its core".<ref name=":2" /> This process of "thingification" has been written about by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, "The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify",<ref name=":2" /> and by [[Aimé Césaire]], "Césaire revealed over and over again the colonizers’ sense of superiority and their sense of mission as the world’s civilizers, a mission that depended on turning the Other into barbarians".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kelley |first1=Robin D. G. |title=Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination |date=2003 |publisher=Beacon Press |isbn=978-0-8070-0977-2 |page=174 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QqxOqALcSZoC&pg=PA174 }}</ref>