On the back of blackness: contemporary Canadian blackface and the consumptive production of post-racialist, white Canadian subjects

ABSTRACT

This article is based on a qualitative research project examining the phenomenon of contemporary Canadian blackface. It addresses the discursive juxtaposition of blackface with the claim to Canadian racial progressiveness that typically attends public debates about blackface. I argue that blackface and the discourses defending it are forms of racial consumption through which ostensibly progressive white subjectivities are secured. I further argue that contemporary Canadian blackface discourse is postracialist in its ability to juxtapose racist expression with claims of racial transcendence, and I identify this postracialism as a long-standing feature of Canadian national narratives that are partially constructed through revisionist understandings of the nation’s relationship to blackness, and against an ostensibly more virile racism in the US. This analysis reminds us of the symbiotic relationship between racial fetishization/fascination as found in contemporary blackface, the foundational white supremacy of the Canadian settler-colonial context, and the always uneven terms upon which blackness is included in Canada. It clarifies what is at stake for Canadians who participate in blackface and in defending it, and helps us to understand the pedagogical import of both blackface and Canadian egalitarianism for perpetuating anti-blackness in Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Blackface minstrelsy
• postracialism
• anti-black racism
• racial consumption
• Canada
• whiteness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The involvement of non-white persons in blackface is a complex phenomenon that I analyse elsewhere, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

2 On-line comments are reproduced in their original unedited form.

3 It is unclear what this commenter means by the unusual punctuation of the term ‘mor(on)s’.

4 Importantly, these dominant constructions of Canadianness are brought into by many white Canadians, but also by many racialized Canadians, who respond with just as much indignation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [430-2013-0432].