1
00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:07,040
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

2
00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:11,399
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. It's eighteen eighty nine. Missouri newspaper editor

3
00:00:11,480 --> 00:00:14,320
Speaker 1: Chris Rutt and his friend Charles Underwood have created the

4
00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:17,440
Speaker 1: world's first pancake ready mix, but they need a scheme

5
00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:20,239
Speaker 1: to sell it. Rutt has seen a minstrel show that

6
00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:24,360
Speaker 1: featured the popular song Old Aunt Jemima. Inspired by the character,

7
00:00:24,440 --> 00:00:26,479
Speaker 1: who was often portrayed by a white man in black

8
00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:29,160
Speaker 1: face and drag, he decides to name their new breakfast

9
00:00:29,160 --> 00:00:33,280
Speaker 1: concoction Aunt Jemima and attached her stereotypical mammy image, a

10
00:00:33,560 --> 00:00:35,920
Speaker 1: genial and submissive black woman who worked as a nanny

11
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,479
Speaker 1: or housekeeper for white families to the product. But the

12
00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:41,960
Speaker 1: two fail in marketing the business and they sell the

13
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,680
Speaker 1: company to the RT. Davis Milling Company. In eight RT

14
00:00:45,880 --> 00:00:49,239
Speaker 1: Davis Company not only fine tunes the pancake recipe, but

15
00:00:49,360 --> 00:00:52,800
Speaker 1: also the Antjemima marketing ploy. The company decides to turn

16
00:00:52,840 --> 00:00:55,400
Speaker 1: Aunt Jemima into a real black woman, and they put

17
00:00:55,480 --> 00:00:58,800
Speaker 1: former slave Nancy Green on display at the eight three

18
00:00:58,840 --> 00:01:02,880
Speaker 1: World Exposition in Chicago, where she sings songs, cook's pancakes,

19
00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:06,800
Speaker 1: and tells euphemistic stories about the old South Fast Board

20
00:01:06,840 --> 00:01:09,960
Speaker 1: more than one years to today, many iterations of an

21
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,839
Speaker 1: Jemima and tons of boxes of pancake mix have been sold,

22
00:01:13,200 --> 00:01:16,960
Speaker 1: and vestiges of the company's racist roots remain. And so

23
00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:20,600
Speaker 1: does black face, as is evident from the news. Black face,

24
00:01:20,720 --> 00:01:23,800
Speaker 1: the centuries old practice of using makeup to transform into

25
00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:26,960
Speaker 1: a caricature of a black person, usually with googly white eyes,

26
00:01:27,160 --> 00:01:30,400
Speaker 1: ink colored skin, and big red lips, is still alive

27
00:01:30,440 --> 00:01:34,000
Speaker 1: and well college students across the world, where costumes and

28
00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:37,039
Speaker 1: black face at Halloween parties, performers appear on stage in

29
00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:40,640
Speaker 1: television in black face. Businesses and homes still proudly display

30
00:01:40,680 --> 00:01:44,839
Speaker 1: the iconography and racist memorabilia without addressing their complicated history,

31
00:01:45,920 --> 00:01:49,480
Speaker 1: because that complicated history stretches so back into our cultural history.

32
00:01:49,720 --> 00:01:52,080
Speaker 1: It's not a surprise that some people are still strolling

33
00:01:52,080 --> 00:01:54,800
Speaker 1: into shindigs and black face. But the reason that current

34
00:01:54,840 --> 00:01:56,920
Speaker 1: instances of black face blow up in the news and

35
00:01:56,920 --> 00:01:59,960
Speaker 1: in social media conversation, like, for example, the old photo

36
00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:02,800
Speaker 1: of Rapper Drake in black face that surfaced, is because

37
00:02:02,840 --> 00:02:05,480
Speaker 1: the practice has long been deemed harmful to the popular

38
00:02:05,520 --> 00:02:09,880
Speaker 1: perception of black people. Take abolitionist Frederick Douglas's comments on

39
00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:13,080
Speaker 1: musical performers wearing black face called minstrels. He wrote in

40
00:02:13,080 --> 00:02:15,720
Speaker 1: the newspaper The North Star in eighteen forty eight that

41
00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:19,040
Speaker 1: there quote the filthy scum of white society who have

42
00:02:19,120 --> 00:02:21,519
Speaker 1: stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature,

43
00:02:21,840 --> 00:02:24,360
Speaker 1: in which to make money and pander to the corrupt

44
00:02:24,480 --> 00:02:28,480
Speaker 1: taste of their white fellow citizens. Black people have been

45
00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:30,920
Speaker 1: paraded for the enjoyment of white people and imitated by

46
00:02:30,919 --> 00:02:33,760
Speaker 1: white actors for centuries. In the book Black Like You,

47
00:02:34,120 --> 00:02:37,600
Speaker 1: black Face, white Face, Insult and Imitation in American popular culture,

48
00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:41,799
Speaker 1: journalist and cultural commentator John Strasbaugh argues that these seeds

49
00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:44,560
Speaker 1: of black face were planted quote with the first organized

50
00:02:44,600 --> 00:02:48,160
Speaker 1: contacts between Europeans and Africans. But black face as we

51
00:02:48,200 --> 00:02:52,840
Speaker 1: know it today, a cultural practice meant to mock, exoticize, disparage, pity,

52
00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:56,200
Speaker 1: and generalize African American people in culture, can be traced

53
00:02:56,240 --> 00:03:00,359
Speaker 1: back to nineteenth century theater. Let's talk about minstrel shows.

54
00:03:00,880 --> 00:03:04,240
Speaker 1: These shows started out as performances by white male minstrels,

55
00:03:04,280 --> 00:03:08,359
Speaker 1: traveling musicians who wore black face and caricatured slaves. The

56
00:03:08,400 --> 00:03:12,880
Speaker 1: shows were basically an absurd blend of stereotyping, racism, and capitalism.

57
00:03:12,919 --> 00:03:16,680
Speaker 1: At its finest, minstrel's parodied black song and dance, burned

58
00:03:16,680 --> 00:03:19,960
Speaker 1: cork to blacken their faces, and acted like fools on stage,

59
00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:23,880
Speaker 1: touring the United States and sometimes Britain to amuse white audiences.

60
00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:27,440
Speaker 1: Most black face minstrel cy was performed by non blacks,

61
00:03:27,680 --> 00:03:31,560
Speaker 1: but black people did perform in these shows. Two Billy Cursands,

62
00:03:31,639 --> 00:03:34,040
Speaker 1: the composer of the song Old Aunt Jemima, was a

63
00:03:34,040 --> 00:03:37,800
Speaker 1: black comedian known for his black face minstrel cy. At first,

64
00:03:37,920 --> 00:03:42,040
Speaker 1: minstrels performed solo, perpetuating stereotypical narratives like that of the mammy,

65
00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:46,040
Speaker 1: the uneducated world slave, and the clumsily sophisticated black man.

66
00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:49,200
Speaker 1: By the mid eighteen hundreds, the prevalence of minstrel shows

67
00:03:49,200 --> 00:03:52,680
Speaker 1: had grown so tremendously that minstrel ensembles were popping up everywhere,

68
00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:55,960
Speaker 1: and a show formula had developed. There were jokes, ballads,

69
00:03:55,960 --> 00:03:58,480
Speaker 1: one act plays, dancing, burlesque, and a bunch of other

70
00:03:58,520 --> 00:04:02,680
Speaker 1: acts that generally make a show entertaining. Minstrel shows were

71
00:04:02,720 --> 00:04:05,520
Speaker 1: a hit for years to come. They even gained traction

72
00:04:05,560 --> 00:04:08,280
Speaker 1: in the last decades of the nineteenth century after emancipation

73
00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:10,960
Speaker 1: and in cities where white people didn't interact much with

74
00:04:11,040 --> 00:04:15,440
Speaker 1: black people. Famous performers like Al Jolson, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan,

75
00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:18,240
Speaker 1: and Judy Garland contributed to the popularity of black face

76
00:04:18,279 --> 00:04:21,560
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, and amateur minstrel shows persisted

77
00:04:21,560 --> 00:04:24,719
Speaker 1: in small local venues until the mid nineteen hundreds, But

78
00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:28,400
Speaker 1: by the late eighteen hundreds, minstrel shows were dwindling of

79
00:04:28,480 --> 00:04:32,200
Speaker 1: vaudeville performances and movies were on the rise, and eventually

80
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:35,440
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights earra rendered black face minstrel see unacceptable,

81
00:04:35,920 --> 00:04:40,040
Speaker 1: but the disparaging portrayals, belittling stereotypes and prejudices toward black

82
00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:42,960
Speaker 1: people that the shows imparted were already deeply entrenched in

83
00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:47,520
Speaker 1: the American cultural consciousness. Black Face minstrel see perpetuated messages

84
00:04:47,560 --> 00:04:51,880
Speaker 1: that black people are buffoonish, dimwitted, exotic, and enigmatic, among

85
00:04:51,920 --> 00:04:56,080
Speaker 1: other negative characterizations. Studies show that media portrayals can affect

86
00:04:56,080 --> 00:04:58,400
Speaker 1: the way people perceive blacks in real life, and that

87
00:04:58,480 --> 00:05:01,520
Speaker 1: stereotypes can affect the way people interact with others, and

88
00:05:01,640 --> 00:05:05,000
Speaker 1: there's strong evidence that implicit bias the tendency for people

89
00:05:05,040 --> 00:05:08,840
Speaker 1: to attribute certain characteristics to different demographics based on stereotypes

90
00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:12,640
Speaker 1: can affect how people treat blacks. For instance, metro areas

91
00:05:12,640 --> 00:05:15,880
Speaker 1: with greater average implicit bias have more racial disparities in

92
00:05:15,920 --> 00:05:18,960
Speaker 1: police shootings. To this day, the perception of blackmails as

93
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:21,520
Speaker 1: aggressive in criminal remains and is used to justify the

94
00:05:21,600 --> 00:05:24,360
Speaker 1: use of violence against them, as research and time have

95
00:05:24,440 --> 00:05:27,720
Speaker 1: shown their long lasting implications of assigning negative stereotypes to

96
00:05:27,760 --> 00:05:30,800
Speaker 1: black people. So when the Internet erupts in an uproar

97
00:05:30,839 --> 00:05:33,240
Speaker 1: against a person wearing black face, the problem is not

98
00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:37,640
Speaker 1: political correctness, and it's not generational sensitivity. Black Face's legacy

99
00:05:37,720 --> 00:05:40,720
Speaker 1: is one of white suprevacy and exploitation of black identity,

100
00:05:41,040 --> 00:05:43,279
Speaker 1: and the weight and consequences of that history cannot be

101
00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:45,720
Speaker 1: divorced from it, no matter how great someone might think

102
00:05:45,760 --> 00:05:49,400
Speaker 1: their costume is. As Strasbaugh put it, the problem, of course,

103
00:05:49,640 --> 00:05:56,839
Speaker 1: is that so few of us know our history. Today's

104
00:05:56,839 --> 00:05:59,040
Speaker 1: episode was written by Eve's Jeff Cote and produced by

105
00:05:59,040 --> 00:06:01,240
Speaker 1: Tyler Playing. For more on this and lots of other

106
00:06:01,320 --> 00:06:15,719
Speaker 1: historical topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.

107
00:06:15,279 --> 00:06:15,320
Speaker 1: M