When I started playing for my local border side the musicians were expected to wear blackface, even though the dancers wore black and white. I wasn't happy with that, and felt extremely uncomfortable doing so.
It may have taken more faffing around to do black and white brushwork, rather than a quick wipe over with a black sponge, but I felt a lot more comfortable about doing it. At the time I thought to myself "How would I attempt to justify this if i cam face-to-face with a black guy in the pub afterwards and he asked me why I blacked up?". I couldn't, in all honesty, not mention the connection with minstrelsy among the other connotations of blacking up.
There you go, Eric the Orange, you can now empathise with me, a white man who was not happy about putting on a black face. Oh, and hats off to a side that was prepared, horror of horrors, to change a 20-year-old 'tradition'.