A black-faced sweep -- so from his work, no connection whatever to race -- has long been regarded as a bringer of good luck -

I placed especial emphasis on deliberately blacking-up, Michael. The last coalman we had was when we lived a few years back in a village in rural country Durham; I'd known this guy for four years and didn't recognise him one night I saw him washed and clean in the pub. I've said here before that whilst there are many & various historical, traditional, folkloric & occupational precedents for blacking up, my argument is that to do so in a Modern Context for Purposes of Revival and Recreation is just plain wrong.

Interesting that our chimney sweep at that time supplemented his dwindling income by doing weddings as well. Blacked-up, of course, as one expects a chimney-sweep to be black because of his trade, not because it is a matter of folklore or custom, which is less clear. So - even there might well be non-racist reasons for the village morris-dancers of old blacking-up of old (as I allow there might be) to do so in today's society, at some remove culturally & historically from the context in which practises traditionally took place, is a racist act regardless.

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So what about the question posed earlier then Jack, are Aboriginal dancers with white faces racist, or is that just their tradition?

Your precious custom only dates from the 60s and 70s - and even then takes a while to catch-on in morris fashion. I remember a Morris Ring meeting in Durham around 1985 or so and only one side (the admittedly astonishing Silurians) were blacked-up. Now everywhere you look you see black-faced dancers in a variety of modern styles & tastes. How can you compare such slap-dash make-it-up-as-you-go-along revivalism of a few hearty middle-class hobbyists to the aeons old culture of a severely oppressed & harshly victimised depressed ethnic minority whose only pride comes from the vestiges of their living culture?

The men smear their faces and bodies with white clay and move onto the sand in a large group, carrying ceremonial spears. They stand before a specially constructed cloth-walled tent in which the body lies. Older men provide the music—a rhythmic crack of clapsticks, a trilling chant, the thrumming drone of the didgeridoo. Then the dancers, like the ancestral beings of the Dreamtime, seem to shift shape before my eyes, contorting their bodies, elongating their necks, stomping their feet and thrusting spears, all moving together, a many-legged creature, sand flying, sweat streaming.

Each dance, mimicking an animal or a natural event, is short and intense. There's the white seagull dance, the octopus dance, the north wind dance, the cockatoo dance. Some are performed only by women. The dances last all day, and another, and another—the funeral carries on for ten days—as people stream in from communities across the bush to pay respect, to dance some more, to set the soul on its journey with the grandest possible send-off.

(from HERE

Where, I wonder, is the comparison?