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Blackface In Africa Essay

Decent Essays

Throughout history African American people can be seen as one of the most oppressed and discriminated against group of people. Even to this day there are issues that black people face everyday. Throughout this course this idea has been explored a lot and discussed the most naturally. African Americans have been depicted as a lot of things throughout history. Most of these perceptions are negative views of black people. There are a large number of examples. The first example in history of the depiction of African Americans would be blackface. According to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences blackface is a practice that has been used since Shakespearean times to depict evil characters, the black was to show they are the opposite of white which represented good. This is done by white actors by applying substances to their skin which would make them appear black. As Europeans “broadened their horizons” they used this to represent people they encountered in the world, Africans. The use of blackface then changed to be the depiction of black people. Naturally this spilled over into the United States where there were African slaves here. This portrayal of black people went into film and other forms of media and communication. Blackface was used to create and perpetuate stereotypes of blacks in general. (International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, 326-327) . This blackface or depiction of blacks were on many of the postcards I found in the Pop Culture Library. The

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