Julianne Hough Blackface Halloween Costume: Issues Apology After Being Called Racist
Fans of Orange is the New Black will recognise Julianne Hough’s Halloween costume as one of its characters, nickname of Crazy Eyes.
This is a central-but-supporting character who easily has some of the best lines on the show–”Why do they call me crazy eyes?”–and so Julianne and her friends decided to dress up as the entire cast this Halloween.
However, there’s a huge problem in the minstrelsy of Julianne’s (second from the right) choice of costume.
She’s in blackface.
Here’s the actual Orange is the New Black character for comparison.
Almost immediately after this was posted to Gawker.com and TMZ.com and she was barraged with people on Twitter calling it racist, she issued a public apology as follows:
I am a huge fan of the show Orange is the New black, actress Uzo Aduba, and the character she has created. It certainly was never my intention to be disrespectful or demeaning to anyone in any way. I realize my costume hurt and offended people and I truly apologize.
Here’s a little context (via Tumblr) on why blackface is offensive, in any context and for any reason. And here’s further reading.
Blackface was invented by minstrel performers in the nineteenth century, and soon became the trademark of the artform. Minstrel shows were a form of entertainment that was devoted to re-packaging blackness in a way that was sufficiently degrading enough to be palatable to white audiences. Its about taking the richness of black art, music, dancing, and humor — turning it into a degrading stereotype, and then disseminating this bastardized vision of a people as far and wide as possible. Minstrelsy wasn’t just about exploiting racism, minstrel performers were on the front lines of white supremacy, they established an image in the mind of white America of who black people were — simple fools, mindless entertainers, creatures ruled by instinct and lower brain function, not by art, not by ideas, not by ideals of honor or duty.
Finally, you cannot understand the legal and political system of apartheid established by Jim Crow, without understanding minstrelsy. Because its easy, very easy, to deny full legal personhood to someone that you don’t believe to be fully human. What better way to spread the message of black inferiority than to propagandize with humor? To teach children to laugh at someone is to forever infantalize them, to forever deny the object of derision the opportunity to be seen as a complex, fully realized person — equal to themselves.
Minstrel performance was one of the main ways in which America experienced blackness, and it became the way that the rest of the world experienced Black America, because we exported blackface and minstrelsy everywhere we went.