Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Blackface |
BlackfaceNoun1. The makeup (usually burnt cork) used by a performer in order to imitate a Negro. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Blackface was invented by a white comedian, Thomas D. Rice, who introduced the song "Jump Jim Crow" and an accompanying dance in his act in 1828. The song had a syncopated rhythm and purportedly recreated the dancing of a crippled black man Rice had seen in Cincinnati, Ohio:
The name became attached to the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the post-Civil-War period.
While most commonly blackface denoted a white performer who would thus stereotype a black person, by 1840 African-American performers were also performing in blackface makeup. At the time, the stage also featured comic stereotypes of conniving Jews, cheap Scotsmen, drunken Irishmen, ignorant Southerners, gullible rural folk, and the like.
Certainly, white performers have continued to emulate black performers, but without the makeup. Frankie Laine, Johnny Ray, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and his Comets, Mick Jagger, and many many more emulate a black style, both out of genuine admiration and out of recognition of the performance power of that style.
Indeed, allusions to black style are virtually standard for rock and roll and pop music, not only at its beginnings, but up to the present day. From Led Zeppelin's blues appropriations in the 1970s, which developed into heavy metal, through the careful emulation of the New Edition by the New Kids on the Block in the 1980s which spawned the boy bands, to such white rappers as Eminem, Kid Rock, and Vanilla Ice, the black style is a constant presence.
Cartoons from the 1930s and later often feature characters in blackface as well as other racial caricatures. Such films were still being shown on television as late as the 1970s but have rarely appeared since.
Blackface and minstrelsy form the theme of Spike Lee's film Bamboozled. It tells of a black television executive who reintroduces the old blackface style and is horrified by its success. The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British musical variety show that featured blackface performers, and remained on British television until 1978.
Related types of performances are yellowface, in which performers adopt Asian identities, brownface, for Latino or East Indian, and redface, for Native Americans. Whiteface is sometimes used to describe non-white actors performing white parts, although more commonly describes the clown or mime traditions of white makeup.
Related Articles / See also
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Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Blackface."
Crosswords: Blackface |
| English words defined with "blackface": minstrel show. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Montgomery and Stone comedy team, full-length portrait, facing front, wearing blackface paint.Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Man in blackface as minstrel.Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| "Blackface" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 87.50% of the time. "Blackface" is used about 8 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 87.5% | 7 | 133,076 |
| Noun (proper) | 12.5% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 8 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "blackface": in blackface. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "blackface": blackface-'n-white-gloved. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
blackface | 118 |
blackface scottish sheep | 4 |
blackface minstrelsy | 3 |
bassman blackface fender | 2 |
blackface picture | 2 |
blackface scottish | 2 |
blackface minstrel | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "blackface"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | in vette letter gedrukt (boldface, shown in fat type, shown in heavy type), in vetjes gedrukt (boldface, shown in fat type, shown in heavy type). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
French | imprime en caracteres gras, gros caracteres. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
German | fette Schrift (boldface, large type, shown in fat type, shown in heavy type). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | neretto (boldface, shown in fat type, shown in heavy type), grassetto (boldface, shown in fat type, shown in heavy type). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | ackfaceblay aldin. (various references) negrita (bold face, bold type, boldface, bold-faced type, Darkie Charlie, kitefin shark). (various references) siyah baskı. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "blackface": blackfaces. (additional references) | |
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"Blackface" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Blackfaced, blackfarce, blackfoss, Blacklake. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-b-c-c-e-f-k-l" | |
-3 letters: baccae, cackle, caecal, faecal. | |
-4 letters: aback, akela, alack, bacca, black, bleak, cabal, cable, caeca, cecal, clack, fable, fecal, flack, flake, fleck. | |
-5 letters: able, alae, alba, alec, alef, alfa, baal, back, bake, bale, balk, beak, beck, blae, caca, cafe, cake, calf, calk, ceca, clef, face, fake, feal, feck, flab, flak, flea, kale, lace, lack. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-b-c-c-e-f-k-l" | |
+1 letter: blackfaces. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)42 6C 61 63 6B 66 61 63 65 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-... .-.. .- -.-. -.- ..-. .- -.-. . |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000010 01101100 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100110 01100001 01100011 01100101 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)B l a c k f a c e |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0042 006C 0061 0063 006B 0066 0061 0063 0065 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)367867697772676971 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Derivations 11. Anagrams 12. Orthography | 13. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
