El Greko, you said

"Back home (Greece), blacking one's face is used in local carnivals, remnants of pre-Christian, pagan times and customs such as the bacchanalia, to imitate not people of another race, but mythological creatures. This, in a society where until TV arrived most people had not seen a person of African or Caribean origin. A 2500+ year tradition, clearly unrelated to the 20th/21st century hangups. No songs about "niggers" there, no reference to Africa or slavery."


I believe you when you say that people in your area may not have ever seen any person of African descent including any dark skinned person from the Caribbean...

Yet for the record-least others misunderstand what you are saying regarding ancient Greece-it should be noted that ancient Greeks had ALOT of contact with Africans...even to the extent of conferring group names from the Greek language on thse people - Ethiopian {Aethiops} and Afer, Indus and Maurus [all ancient equivalents of Aethiops}.

There are numerous Internet websites that provide documented information and not speculation or hyperbole about Africa's contribution to early Greek & Roman cultures-including in the visual arts and in the area of mythology..

I also would recommend reading "Blacks In Antiquity", Frank Snowden, Jr. Here is one excerpt from that book:

"Although blacks appeared in Mediterranean art outside of African as early as Minoan times, for a detailed study of the physical characteristics of certain types of Ethiopians by Greek artist a beginning should be made in the sixth century b.C. Starting with this century we have sufficeient representations of Negroes in enough detail to permit an accurate analysis of racial features, From the sixth century onwards until late in the Empirem for a period covering a span of nearly one thousand years, artists, using the Negro as a model in almost every medium and as a favortie of many, have bequeathed us a vlauable antrhopological gallery." {p. 23; Harvard University Press, 1970}

end of quote.

Finally, isn't it possible that over time there could be many layers of reasons for these widespread blackening up customs? Could the 'guising up' explanation in all its various permutations be a more modern way of explaining customs whose purposes may be hidden in antiquity? Isn't it possible that these 'guising' explanations are newer reasons for customs that may not be socially acceptable to people-Black White or otherwise-who are trying to value multi-culturalism?