Hmmm. I'd like to know more about this celebration and the way people react to it. I don't think people would dare go blackface in the U.S. nowadays. Since the 1960's, it's been considered socially unacceptable. It was common in the 1950's and earlier. When I was a kid in Detroit in the 1950's, we'd blacken our faces with burnt cork and go trick-or-treating on Halloween as "bums." I was under ten at the time, and didn't think blackface had anything to do with black people - I thought it was from not shaving.
-Joe Offer-