So today I saw this.
It’s hard to find much from the originator of “The Chocolate Challenge” now that she’s left Instagram and deleted most of her social media posts. She did eek out this apology, though:
“I wasn’t aware of the whole black-face concept before people began commenting it on the photo. I would like to apologize to people that were hurt or offended by my post, and it won’t happen again.”
Okay, I’m going to share something with my white readers. It’s going to hurt a little bit, I think. Please know that I love you all.
BEING IGNORANT ISN’T AN EXCUSE.
IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT PAINTING YOUR FACE BLACK IS A PROBLEM, YOU DIDN’T LEARN ENOUGH IN SCHOOL.
Also, if you want to be sincere when you apologize to someone, you don’t refer to it as “the whole black-face concept.” Because once someone tells you about black face, all you have to do is Google it and you’d find something like this.
And you can get to about the 20th word of that before you get a creepy feeling unless you’re dense like concrete.
This, however, is America’s problem. Look at our President and his son right now. We claim ignorance as a shield. We claim we didn’t know. Sometimes, sure, people don’t know things. I, myself, made a really silly Netflix and Chill joke mistake one because I teach a number of students who watch Netflix in their rooms alone. We don’t expect perfection from each other. But you don’t accidentally do something like this.
Allow me to propose a thought experiment. Imagine you’re a make-up blogger and YouTuber. I know someone who is, and her friends who are. Imagine you’re trying to think of an idea for a “challenge” and eating a tablespoon of Cinnamon or dumping a bucket of ice water on your head seems a little outside your domain.
So you think about what challenges exist in make-up.
How do you come to the idea of painting half of your face brown? Is it because:
- you realize that dark skinned people, particularly African Americans, have very real and very different make-up challenges due not just to color theory but due to the fact that most products are made for white people?
- you don’t know of any people who are that color, so a good “alien creature” color to try is brown?
- You really do wonder how it would feel to do makeup on the green M&M, but only if she was stripped naked?
Of course unless you’re completely culturally inept, the reason is #1. Right?
And if it’s not… why did she just happen to make the eyes on the “chocolate” sides of the two faces brown? It also seems like there might be some hair texture stuff going on, but that might just be me. For someone who didn’t see what she was doing, she sure did it accurately.
So, then, let’s say you come to this with good intentions. I know that Julie and I often talk about issues that people with different skin tones than the norm have (she’s more pale than most, and we have friends who run the gamut who talk to her about make-up). It’s good to be aware, and it’s also, below all of the race implications, a powerful lesson in color theory. I often teach my students to look at flowers and animals (birds and reptiles work best) to see how nature matches and mixes colors. When we start thinking about adorning ourselves, there’s so much to learn about what works. Pale pinks might not be such a popular make-up trend if makeup wasn’t made for white girls.
But you always run right back into the fact that the elite who control the means of production are white. And then you see racist things happening. An aside: my mother collected Holiday Barbie dolls at one point. Did you know that while the price rises on them every year, the price on the African-American ones often drops to below retail. You know why? Because she’s black. That’s fair, right? Oh, wait, no. That’s the exact opposite of fair. That’s the institutional racism that is baked into the foundation of America flaking out of the pan. That’s ridiculous. But people are so used to it in the collecting community that they don’t realize it’s racist at all. They don’t scrutinize, because that’s not something we’re good at in America. We don’t want to focus our eyes, as the blurry red white and blue makes us feel safe.
I don’t doubt that on some level this woman with her make-up challenge had good intentions, and wanted to try to show people the challenges that people with darker complexions have with make-up colors. Based on her preview picture, she did a bad job, though (the colors don’t really seem to work very well, IMHO). It looks like, no offense, two ignorant white girls tried to do makeup over black face. Which I guess isn’t offensive, since that’s exactly what it is.
But there are nagging questions. Assume for a moment you’re good-hearted and want to try to bring to light the issues that women with darker skin face. Imagine you don’t know what the rhetorical force of blackface is. Imagine you’re really, honestly, a good person.
Two questions remain. Two questions that it might hurt to try to answer, but the two questions you simply MUST answer:
- Why not ASK a person of color to work with you and literally help a person figure out how to do some cool things with make-up? And…
- If you’re a good person, and you want to do something that is helpful and right… why use the word “chocolate?” Why try to make it funny? It’s NOT funny. Being reductive about the skin tone of a person who might get shot because they are that color isn’t funny at all. It’s a sign that you don’t get it. It’s a sign that you’re a part of the problem.
Stupid people have a great deal of power, but as one of the people charged with teaching people for a living, I want to remind you that your stupidity is not an excuse. You just need to try harder and do better. Really, that’s your whole reason to be alive right now. If you think ignorance protects you, or you’ve ever dismissed something as “social justice warrior” talk or “political correctness,” the most valuable thing you can do is LEARN THINGS.
I won’t forgive your stupidity. We’ve done that for years, and now we have a lunatic in charge of our country.
Do better.