I don't see anything surprising about people in previous centuries putting burnt cork or lampblack on their faces as a 'disguise', or wrong with people doing it now as part of a real or invented tradition.

I do wonder though, given that soap and washing machines were in short supply back then, if they put in on their necks. Is that needed as a disguise? It is more dramatic, but also more likely to be mistaken as imitating a black person, as with the minstrels.

I don't see anything embarassing in the spectacle. I do find it embarassing when people from one group take it on themselves to speak for another that is quite capable of talking for itself. And don't seem to be.