Week #4 Blog Post.

 

This week in in the readings there was a lot of talk about the start of "blackface" and minstrelsy. Snyder says in his article, "Taming the Bower Boys," that, "minstrels affirmed the worth and dignity of ordinary white Americans by creating inferior blacks to whom whites--no matter how down or confused they were--could always feel superior" (p. 6). I think it's extremely sad that men in our society at that time felt the need to do that. By dressing up in costumes and wearing black make-up painted on their faces they were able to use comedy, dance, and show to make fun of black culture in order to essentially make themselves feel better about their own social status. Today I think we may do a little bit of the same in hip/hop and rap music, but in a different way. Rap and Hip Hop artists today use the word "nigger" as a form of endearment to say to each other as African-Americans. In a sense I think it makes them feel better about themselves because "nigger" used to be such a derogatory word. It still is considered derogatory today, but if African-Americans use it in a new way it almost seems acceptable, and shows how far they have come from slavery and what that word meant in the past. Either way, when white American's used to use blackface, and now when African-Americans changed the meaning of the word "nigger", through image and language both are a means of using a mask to make each other feel better in the society we live in.