The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160478 Message #3807144
Posted By: Jack Campin
27-Aug-16 - 09:14 PM
Thread Name: Shrewsbury FF to ban 'blacked up' Morris
Subject: RE: Shrewsbury FF to ban 'blacked up' Morris
We haven't heard from the festival organizers yet. Maybe their motives are not quite as they might seem.
From other threads here about "blacking up", it is clear that some of the people who do it (though only a small minority) are in fact fascists who see it as a calculated insult to people of African origin. Whether the insult actually gets through is beside the point: it's what the racists intend. And a much larger group of racists will be cheering from the sidelines while not dancing themselves; we have already had people in this thread using Daily-Mail-speak cliches about "political correctness".
So, putting a stop to the practice has nothing to do with its actual offensiveness to people of African origin. It's to do with its status as a shibboleth among white supremacists. The festival organizers could well not be trying to be inoffensive - they could equally well have the conscious intention of being as offensive as possible to those racists who want to hijack English folk culture to serve their agenda. In which case, more power to their elbow. Racist cunts deserve to be pissed on. Though it would be better if the festival were explicit about what they were doing and if they named and shamed the specific people whose party they were trying to spoil.