FEBRUARY 9, 2019

NEWS AND VIEWS

THE AMAZING ALBERT FINNEY HAS PASSED ON. HE WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE ACTORS WHEN I WAS YOUNG. I WAS IN MY EARLY TWENTIES WHEN THE MOVIE TOM JONES WAS MADE, AND I THOUGHT FINNEY WAS A BEAUTIFUL SPECIMEN OF MANHOOD. OF COURSE, THE NATURE OF THE STORY WAS PART OF THE REASON WHY HE SEEMED SO RAZZLE DAZZLE TO ME.

https://www.voanews.com/a/british-actor-albert-finney-dies-at-82/4778866.html
ARTS & CULTURE
British Actor Albert Finney Dies at 82
February 08, 2019 1:31 PM
Associated Press

FILE - In this 1970 file photo, British actor Albert Finney embraces his bride, French Actress Anouk Aimee, after their registry office wedding in London. AP.

LONDON —
Albert Finney, one of the most respected and versatile actors of his generation and the star of films as diverse as “Tom Jones” and “Skyfall,” has died. He was 82.

From his early days as a strikingly handsome and magnetic screen presence to his closing acts as a brilliant character actor, Finney was a British treasure known for charismatic work on both stage and screen.

Finney’s family said Friday that he “passed away peacefully after a short illness with those closest to him by his side.” He died Thursday from a chest infection at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, a cancer treatment center.

Finney burst to international fame in 1963 in the title role of “Tom Jones,” playing a lusty, humorous rogue who captivated audience with his charming, devil-may-care antics.

He excelled in many other roles, including “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”, a 1960 drama that was part of the “angry young man” film trend.

Finney was a rare star who managed to avoid the Hollywood limelight despite more than five decades of worldwide fame. He was known for skipping awards ceremonies, even when he was nominated for an Oscar.

“Tom Jones” gained him the first of five Oscar nominations. Other nominations followed for “Murder on the Orient Express,” ″The Dresser,” ″Under the Volcano” and “Erin Brockovich.” Each time he fell short.

In later years he brought authority to bid-budget and high-grossing action movies, including the James Bond thriller “Skyfall” and two of the Bourne films. He also won hearts as Daddy Warbucks in “Annie.”

He played an array of roles, including Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II, a southern American lawyer, and an Irish gangster. There was no “Albert Finney”-type character that he returned to again and again.

In one of his final roles, as the gruff Scotsman, Kincade, in “Skyfall,” he shared significant screen time with Daniel Craig as Bond and Judi Dench as M, turning the film’s final scenes into a master class of character acting.

“The world has lost a giant,” Craig said.

Although Finney rarely discussed his personal life, he said in 2012 that he had been treated for kidney cancer for five years.

He also explained why he had not attended the Academy Awards in Los Angeles even when he was nominated for the film world’s top prize.

“It seems silly to go over there and beg for an award,” he said.

The son of a bookmaker, Finney was born May 9, 1936, and grew up in northern England on the outskirts of Manchester. He took to the stage at an early age, doing a number of school plays and — despite his lack of connections and his working-class roots — earning a place at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

He credited the headmaster of his local school, Eric Simms, for recommending that he attend the renowned drama school.

“He’s the reason I am an actor,” Finney said in 2012.

Finney made his first professional turn at 19 and appeared in several TV movies.

Soon, some critics were hailing him as “the next Laurence Olivier” — a commanding presence who would light up the British stage. In London, Finney excelled both in Shakespeare’s plays and in more contemporary offerings.

Still, the young man seemed determined not to pursue conventional Hollywood stardom. After an extensive screen test, he turned down the chance to play the title role in director David Lean’s epic “Lawrence of Arabia,” clearing the way for fellow RADA graduate Peter O’Toole to take what became a career-defining role.

But stardom came to Finney anyway in “Tom Jones”.

That was the role that introduced Finney to American audiences, and few would forget the sensual, blue-eyed leading man who helped the film win a Best Picture Oscar. Finney also earned his first Best Actor nomination for his efforts and the smash hit turned him into a Hollywood leading man.

Finney had the good fortune to receive a healthy percentage of the profits from the surprise hit, giving him financial security while he was still in his 20s.

“This is a man from very humble origins who became rich when he was very young,” said Quentin Falk, author of an unauthorized biography of Finney. “It brought him a lot of side benefits. He’s a man who likes to live as well as to act. He enjoys his fine wine and cigars. He’s his own man. I find that rather admirable.”

The actor maintained a healthy skepticism about the British establishment and turned down a knighthood when it was offered, declining to become Sir Albert.

“Maybe people in America think being a ‘Sir’ is a big deal,” he said. “But I think we should all be misters together. I think the ‘Sir’ thing slightly perpetuates one of our diseases in England, which is snobbery.”

He told The Associated Press in 2000 that he would rather be a “mister” than a “Sir.”

Instead of cashing in by taking lucrative film roles after “Tom Jones,” Finney took a long sabbatical, traveling slowly through the United States, Mexico and the Pacific islands, then returned to the London stage to act in Shakespeare productions and other plays. He won wide acclaim before returning to film in 1967 to co-star with Audrey Hepburn in “Two for the Road.”

This was to be a familiar pattern, with Finney alternating between film work and stage productions in London and New York.

Finney tackled Charles Dickens in “Scrooge” in 1970, then played Agatha Christie’s sophisticated sleuth Hercule Poirot in “Murder on the Orient Express” — earning his second Best Actor nomination— and even played a werewolf hunter in the cult film “Wolfen” in 1981.

In 1983, he was reunited with his peer from the “angry young man” movement, Tom Courtenay, in “The Dresser,” a film that garnered both Academy Award nominations.

Finney was nominated again for his role as a self-destructive alcoholic in director John Huston’s 1984 film “Under the Volcano.”

Even during this extraordinary run of great roles, Finney’s life was not chronicled in People or other magazines, although the British press was fascinated with his marriage to the sultry French film star Anouk Aimee.

He played in a series of smaller, independent films for a number of years before returning to prominence in 2000 as a southern lawyer in the film “Erin Brockovich,” which starred Julia Roberts. The film helped introduce Finney to a new generation of moviegoers, and the chemistry between the aging lawyer and his young, aggressive assistant earned him yet another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actor.

His work also helped propel Roberts to her first Best Actress Oscar. Still, Finney declined to attend the Academy Awards ceremony — possibly damaging his chances at future wins by snubbing Hollywood’s elite.

Finney also tried his hand at directing and producing and played a vital role in sustaining British theater.

The Old Vic theater said his “performances in plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov and other iconic playwrights throughout the ’60s, ‘70s and ’80s stand apart as some of the greatest in our 200-year history.”

Finney is survived by his third wife, Pene Delmage, son Simon and two grandchildren. Funeral arrangements weren’t immediately known.



https://www.vox.com/2019/2/8/18216851/mueller-manafort-trump-russia-transcript-hearing
Mueller’s team discusses pardons and the Trump administration in a new Manafort transcript
What the new document tells us about the Mueller investigation.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Feb 8, 2019, 2:10pm EST

PHOTOGRAPH -- Paul Manafort AFP/Getty Images

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team thinks Paul Manafort lied to them while he was supposedly cooperating with prosecutors in the Trump-Russia probe — and that Manafort may well have been trying to get Trump to pardon him.

Mueller’s prosecutors made these arguments during a sealed hearing on Monday, February 4. A partially redacted transcript of that hearing has now been posted by CNN, and it reveals new details on the special counsel’s thinking.

For instance: While chairing the Trump campaign, Manafort secretly met with his longtime Russian associate, Konstantin Kilimnik. Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said the FBI thinks Kilimnik “has a relationship with Russian intelligence.” So, he said, the meeting goes “very much to the heart of what the Special Counsel’s Office is investigating” — namely, the Trump campaign’s potential connections to the Russian government.

Why would Manafort lie after agreeing to cooperate? Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann even brought up the elephant in the room — and said Manafort could be motivated to try and “augment his chances for a pardon.”

Manafort’s attorneys argued that he didn’t deliberately lie, but rather there was a combination of memory failures and mix-ups from Manafort, and misunderstandings from the special counsel’s team.

But the special counsel’s office didn’t buy it. “Probably most important was the number of instances” that this problem came up, Weissmann said. “What are the odds that all of this was a mistake?”

How we got here

To recap: Manafort was indicted by Mueller in two venues, Virginia and Washington, DC. He was charged with tax violations, bank fraud, lobbying, and false statements — but he was not charged with any crimes related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. Last August, Manafort was convicted at his first trial, in Virginia. Then, he struck a plea deal in DC to avert the second trial — and committed to cooperate with the government.

Weissmann revealed in court that, though the government went into the deal “with good faith,” he could not say at that point whether Manafort “was being truthful” in his proffer or whether he’d be able to substantially assist the investigation.

He added that there were two “unusual” factors in Manafort’s plea deal. First, Weissmann said, there was “enormous interest” in “the intelligence that could be gathered from having a cooperating witness in this particular investigation” — meaning the Trump-Russia probe. That is one reason why, he said, they agreed to let Manafort cooperate after one of his trials had already concluded. The second “unusual factor” is redacted:

Here, Weissmann likely mentioned the possibility of Trump pardoning Manafort — something that could indeed greatly affect “the normal motives and incentives that are build into a cooperation agreement.”

And in fact, later in the transcript, there is an unredacted reference to “a pardon” as one potential motivation Manafort could have.

Manafort had three proffer sessions with Mueller’s team before he agreed to his plea deal, and nine further questioning sessions as well as two grand jury sessions afterward. But in November, the special counsel brought all this to a halt and told the court he believed Manafort had breached his cooperation commitment by lying.

Now, both Mueller’s and Manafort’s lawyers already agree that the government has reason to believe Manafort breached his plea agreement. But now, Judge Amy Berman Jackson is considering whether to take these purported lies into account when she sentences Manafort. That was the reason for Monday’s hearing: to weigh the government’s case that the lies were deliberate, against the defense’s case that they were unintentional.

In the dueling filings leading up to the new hearing, we’ve gradually learned more and more details on what, exactly, Mueller has accused Manafort of lying about. There are five different topics.

1) A $125,000 payment made toward Manafort’s legal bills

In 2016, Manafort helped set up the pro-Trump super PAC, Rebuilding America Now, and installed a longtime friend to run it. That super PAC paid millions to a political ad-buying firm — and that firm then used $125,000 to help pay Manafort’s legal bills in 2017.

Prosecutors say that, while trying to assess Manafort’s financial assets and whether people were “holding money” for him, they asked him about this payment, and he gave three different stories about it.

First, Manafort said it was the repayment of a loan he’d given to the super PAC chief.
Second, he said it was a repayment for work he’d helped the head of the ad-buying firm get.
Third, Manafort said it was a loan from the head of the ad-buying firm to him.

So, what actually happened here?

Weissmann explained his “educated guess” about what Manafort was trying to hide. The details are redacted, but he seems to be saying that the super PAC head and the ad-buying firm had a kickback “scheme” — and that the super PAC head “may have” had a similar arrangement with Manafort. But Weissmann said he wasn’t certain of this.

Weissmann elaborated that Manafort worked for the Trump campaign unpaid, at the same time he seemed to have a “liquidity issue.” And that he might have had this as “a way of getting cash.”

The translation is that prosecutors seem to think Manafort may have been skimming money from a supposedly independent, donor-funded super PAC he helped set up to support Trump. But they are not saying they’re certain this happened (and it’s also not clear it necessarily would have been criminal).

In response, defense lawyer Richard Westling said he didn’t think Manafort’s story about the payment changed all that much, and that he doesn’t “think” the hypothetical kickback scheme actually occurred.

2) Conspiring with Kilimnik to witness tamper
Back in June of last year, after Manafort had already been indicted twice by Mueller’s team, they piled on two more charges against him — and against a longtime business associate of his, Konstantin Kilimnik, who Mueller says has ties to Russian intelligence.

One charge accused Manafort and Kilimnik of conspiring to obstruct justice, by encouraging witnesses to give a false story regarding their work for the former government of Ukraine. And when Manafort agreed to his plea deal with Mueller a few months later, he admitted this charge was true.

However, Mueller’s team says that after the deal was struck, Manafort backtracked on this story and told them that Kilimnik did not knowingly commit a crime. After a discussion with his lawyers, though, Manafort reverted to the story he told during his plea deal.

The motivation, Weissmann suggests, is that Manafort “went out of his way” to “not want to provide any evidence that could be used with respect to Mr. Kilimnik.”

Defense lawyers claimed that there was a misunderstanding, that Manafort didn’t actually change his story, and that even if he did he corrected it in the very same cooperation session.

3) Manafort’s interactions with Kilimnik between 2016 and 2018
Mueller’s team also says Manafort repeatedly lied to them about a series of interactions he had with Kilimnik.

Many of these details are hidden, but we know from a previous redaction error that much of this involves a supposed “peace plan” for Ukraine that Kilimnik was apparently pushing. This plan was aimed, it seems, at settling the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on terms that would be favorable to Russia.

Manafort originally told Mueller’s team that the peace plan only came up once between him and Kilimnik — at a meeting they had in New York City on August 2, 2016, while Manafort was chairing Trump’s campaign. Manafort said he rejected the idea.

Weissmann argued that Manafort lied about his continuing contacts with Kilimnik. Far from dismissing the peace plan as a bad idea, he asserts, the evidence shows Manafort was in favor of it and continued to work with Kilimnik on it all the way up to early 2018.

In a tantalizing statement, Weissmann told the judge the August 2016 meeting in particular “goes to the larger view of what we think is going on” and “goes to the heart of what the Special Counsel’s Office is investigating” — namely, the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. It’s a meeting of the sitting Trump campaign chair “at an unusual time” with someone who the FBI thinks has “a relationship with Russian intelligence,” he said. And he thinks Manafort lied about it.

Following this is a discussion about another redacted topic that appears to be about the accusation that Manafort shared presidential campaign polling data with Kilimnik, data that Kilimnik was then going to share elsewhere. Manafort’s lawyers responded by suggesting this claim came from Rick Gates and attacking Gates’s credibility.

4) Another Justice Department investigation
The fourth topic Mueller claims Manafort lied about is not about the special counsel probe, but rather a Justice Department investigation in another district.

Once again, the details of this investigation are redacted. But there’s enough in this transcript to make clear that it relates in some way to the Trump campaign or administration.

The topic, Weissmann says, arose during Manafort’s proffer, when they asked him about an email from someone “about a potential way of saving the candidate.” So Manafort told a story to explain that email.

A previous filing from Mueller’s team makes clear that this relates to something that happened “prior to” Manafort leaving the Trump campaign:

The story Manafort told during his proffer, Weissmann says, suggested “a path that we thought was potentially optimistic in terms of providing information” for this separate investigation.

So after Manafort agreed to the plea deal, Mueller’s team brought in the other DOJ prosecutors involved. But then, they say, Manafort changed his story to offer a “very watered-down version,” omitting “everything, basically” about one relevant person.

However, once defense lawyers reminded Manafort what he had already said about this during his proffer, he reverted back to the more incriminating version of events.

Late in Monday’s hearing, Mueller prosecutor Greg Andres referred back to this topic (“No. 4”) and said Manafort was “changing his story so as not to implicate” certain redacted people. He then said, on a separate topic, Manafort was “again” trying “to distance himself from the administration.”


So, it’s clear this investigation involves Trumpworld. We don’t know what it is, but one possibility is the probe into Trump-related hush money payments being run by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. It could also be a new probe.

5) Manafort’s alleged indirect Trump administration contacts
Judge Amy Berman Jackson seemed to find prosecutors’ arguments at least somewhat persuasive on the first four topics (which, of course, doesn’t predict how she’ll rule).

But she indicated she was skeptical of their arguments on the fifth and final topic: contacts Manafort allegedly had with the Trump administration.

The special counsel’s argument is: Manafort told them he had no direct or indirect communications with the Trump administration while they were serving. But in fact, they claim, Manafort had at least some indirect communications.

It’s difficult to know what to make of this section. The names and specifics are redacted, ao it’s very unclear what’s going on. But the defense lawyers claimed that the two examples the special counsel is using of “indirect” administration contacts are stretches.

“Of all of [the five topics], this is the one where I have the most difficulty figuring out where the real contradiction is of moment to the investigation,” Judge Berman Jackson said.

Manafort’s sentencing in DC is currently scheduled for March 13, and the judge is expected to issue a ruling on whether Manafort lied during cooperation before then. Manafort also has to be sentenced in Virginia, and he currently has no set date for that. He remains incarcerated, as he has been since last June.

For more on the Mueller probe, follow Andrew Prokop on Twitter and check out Vox’s guide to the Trump-Russia investigation.


WE NEED TO CONSIDER, AS A PEOPLE, WHAT EVIL CONSISTS OF. THEN THE CITIZENS WHO, THOUGH THEY ARE NOT BLACK OR BROWN-SKINNED, DO NOT APPROVE OF SUCH CRUDENESS, AND NEED TO STAND UP OPENLY AGAINST GROUP ABUSIVENESS. IT IS SIMPLEMINDED AND DANGEROUS.

I WOULD LIKE TO SEE A LARGE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS OPEN UP THEIR LITTLE SUBGROUPS IN OUR SOCIETY TO THOSE WHO ARE OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE – GO TO CHURCH TOGETHER, EAT TOGETHER, PLAY GAMES TOGETHER, GO SHOPPING TOGETHER, STUDY TOGETHER, SIT IN THE PARK TOGETHER, SWIM TOGETHER, ATTEND MOVIES AND CONCERTS TOGETHER, ETC.

WE TEND TO DO SO LITTLE IN THE SAME COMPANY THAT WE NEVER LEARN TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER AND GET ALONG, SO THESE THINGS KEEP POPPING UP. THEN THERE ARE THE WEALTH-CENTERED GROUPS THAT MILITATE AGAINST SOCIETAL CHANGE. THEY SENSE THAT IF PEOPLE OF COLOR AND PEOPLE OF A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT COLOR COME TOGETHER TO MAKE FRIENDSHIPS, WE WILL WORK POLITICALLY TOGETHER AS WELL, AND THAT ENDANGERS THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS SERIOUSLY.

I KNOW NOW THAT I, PERSONALLY, WILL NEVER SEE THE END OF THIS PROBLEM, BUT I WILL KEEP WORKING TO BRING ABOUT AS A REALITY THAT GOOD OLD PROTESTANT HYMN, “RED AND YELLOW BLACK AND WHITE, THEY ARE PRECIOUS IN HIS SIGHT. JESUS LOVES THE LITTLE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD.” P.S. THAT ISN’T JUST A NICE THING TO SAY ABOUT JESUS, BUT A COMMAND TO ALL CHRISTIANS. IN OTHER WORDS, DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/2/9/18216038/blackface-history-virginia-northam-racism-culture
Blackface isn’t just about the racism in America’s past. It’s also about the racism in America’s present.
A bigger conversation about blackface’s history and its continued use is finally beginning to unfold.
By P.R. Lockhart Feb 9, 2019, 8:00am EST

In the past few years, most high-profile blackface incidents have largely been confined to college campuses, ill-advised Halloween costumes, and bizarre television sketches. But over the past week in Virginia, several officials have come under increasing scrutiny for blackface scandals.

It’s sparked a full-on crisis over the state’s leadership — and fueled a larger debate over a racist practice that has long existed and continues to occur.

Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, came under fire in early February after a conservative outlet reported that a photo of two men, one in blackface, the other wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit, was prominently featured on Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook page. Northam initially apologized and said that he was one of the people in the photo, only to reverse course and deny any involvement a day later. He then bizarrely acknowledged another incident in 1984 where he wore blackface, putting shoe polish on his face to portray Michael Jackson in a dance contest.

On Friday, Northam reportedly told top staffers that he will not resign, and Buzzfeed reports that the governor is considering shifting his legislative agenda to focus on race and equity in order to ride out the scandal and attempt to rebuild lost trust among Virginians.

PHOTOGRAPH -- Governor Ralph Northam addresses the media at the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond, Virgina, on February 2, 2019. Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Unfortunately, Northam was just the beginning of controversies over blackface in the state.

As calls for Northam’s resignation mounted this week, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (who is third in line for the governorship) admitted that he also wore blackface, explaining that he dressed as rap icon Kurtis Blow for a University of Virginia party in 1980. This second revelation dealt a heavy blow to Virginia Democrats, who are also grappling with sexual assault allegations against the state’s lieutenant governor.

Over the past few days, more revelations about other politicians have begun to trickle out. Tommy Norment, Virginia’s Senate majority leader, was the managing editor of a 1968 yearbook that included pictures of students in blackface and mentions of racial slurs, and showed people with Confederate flags. The first Republican to be caught up in the widening scandal, Norment argues that recent complaints over the yearbook are the result of politics.

“I am not surprised that those wanting to engulf Republican leaders in the current situations involving the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general would highlight the yearbook from my graduation a half century ago,” he said in a Thursday statement.

This spate of recent scandals has called renewed attention to blackface, a deeply racist practice that’s been used over decades to dehumanize black people. In Virginia, Northam and Herring have argued that their actions reflect a youthful stupidity, and some observers say they should not be punished for what they did decades ago, saying that it was a different time in American culture when men painted their skin to imitate racist caricatures or prominent African Americans.

PHOTOGRAPH -- Protesters rally against Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam outside of the governor’s mansion in downtown Richmond on February 4, 2019. Logan Cyrus/AFP/Getty Images

But framing controversies over blackface simply as a reaction to a form of older, long-gone racism is a mistake. As multiple examples from the past few years indicate, it has never really gone away. The outrage over what is happening in Virginia and the controversies that continue to crop up around blackface portrayals suggest that a bigger conversation about blackface’s history and impact is finally beginning to unfold. And this conversation shouldn’t just focus on past incidents; it must also examine exactly why blackface keeps happening now.

Blackface has been controversial for decades. That hasn’t stopped it from happening.

Blackface, which most often occurs when a white person covers themselves in dark makeup or black paint to imitate a black person, has been around for close to two centuries. Blackface was certainly not confined to just the South, and its lengthy history and decades-long prominence in popular entertainment reflects just how deeply the practice is interwoven into American culture and history.

As Jenée Desmond-Harris explained for Vox in 2014, blackface dates back to minstrel shows in the mid to late 19th century. White actors (who used items like burnt cork, greasepaint, and shoe polish to darken their skin) performed exaggerated and highly racist caricatures of black people, presenting white audiences with a dehumanized image of African Americans, who at the time were disenfranchised and denied basic rights under racial caste systems like Jim Crow laws (in fact, the name “Jim Crow” came from a minstrel character). Black actors also performed in blackface, often because it was the only way white audiences were willing to see black performers.

These portrayals were part of a system that painted African Americans as deviant and therefore deserving of subpar treatment. The same attitudes that rationalized blackface minstrelsy rationalized poll taxes, lynchings, and segregation — issues that have shaped black life in America to this day.

Still, blackface was quite common, appearing not just on stages and TV and radio programs like Amos ’n’ Andy (where white radio actors portrayed black characters) but also at public events, and on predominantly white college campuses across the country. Judy Garland did blackface. So did Shirley Temple. For seven decades at the University of Vermont, students participated in an annual “Kake Walk*” where fraternities—in a contest that mimicked dances performed by enslaved people before the Civil War—wore blackface and Afro wigs as they danced for prizes. The school finally ended the practice in 1969.

“Blackface is as American as the ruling class,” Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes recently wrote at the Washington Post. “Throughout the 20th century, all-male fraternal orders, schools, federal agencies and the U.S. military collectively institutionalized the practice.” In Virginia, blackface minstrel shows continued to receive support well into the 1970s, Northam’s and Herring’s teenage years.

And in recent days, a number of photos posted to social media show how blackface in school yearbooks wasn’t limited to Northam’s or Norment’s Virginia alma maters:

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Colin Campbell
✔
@RaleighReporter
Randomly flipped through the 1979 UNC-Chapel Hill yearbook today just to kill some time, and found this photo on one of the fraternities' pages. Holy shit.

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Of course, that blackface was so common does not negate the fact that it was racist and offensive, even if American culture as a whole did not acknowledge it as such. Frederick Douglass spoke out against blackface, arguing in 1848 that minstrel performers “have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens.” Barnes notes that black women led protests and legal actions against the use of blackface in schools during the civil rights movement. Black students who attended medical school with Northam say they would have been offended to find out their classmates dressed in blackface.

“The usage of blackface was deeply and inherently racist,” Vox’s Jane Coaston notes. “It played on stereotypes both old and new of black people, and, more perniciously, showed a reticence to engage with actual, real-life black people, and a preference to engage with white people dressed as black people instead.”

While blackface has become taboo and its practitioners have faced heightened scrutiny in recent decades, especially after the passage of the Civil Rights Act helped further the decline of blackface’s prominence in popular culture in the 1960s and ’70s, that hasn’t ended the practice — or its influence on American culture — in its entirety. Blackface still appears in movies and on television, whether on sitcoms, in sketch comedy, or at the Oscars. And every year, new controversies involving blackface, be they celebrity Halloween costumes, photos from college parties, or videos recorded on Snapchat, still occur.

Here’s just one example: In late January, before the controversy in Virginia, Florida Secretary of State Mike Ertel resigned from office after a news outlet published a 2005 photo from a Halloween party that showed the state official posed in blackface as a survivor of Hurricane Katrina.

Many have responded to these incidents with the argument that these acts occurred in the past, implying or openly stating that the men in question have grown and overcome their youthful actions. It’s a claim that gets applied even when the people in question weren’t actually all that young. Ertel, for example, was in his 30s when the 2005 picture was taken.

Other incidents further undermine the claim that blackface is just a relic of a past, more racist America.

A few days before Ertel’s January resignation, two students at the University of Oklahoma made national headlines after a video circulated showing one of the students, a white woman, covering her face in black paint and uttering a racial slur while laughing at the camera. Shortly after that incident, a man reportedly wandered around the University of Oklahoma in blackface, drawing outraged responses from the university’s students of color.

Last April, a fraternity at California Polytechnic State University was suspended after the group partied while dressed as gang members — and one member of the group decided to go in blackface. In 2016, students at Pennsylvania’s Albright College were suspended after a video of a white student in blackface criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement spread online.

And in 2002, more than 20 years after Herring went to that 1980 University of Virginia party in blackface, two fraternities at the school were suspended after students did it again, when two guests attended a Halloween party dressed as Venus and Serena Williams (a third man darkened his skin for an Uncle Sam costume). Supporters of the students argued that the costumes were nothing but harmless fun.

A list of every blackface incident in the past few years would be too long to compile here, but it belies the point that these are not isolated incidents — and they are in no way relegated to the past.

Blackface is built on a deeply racist history — one that many people dismiss
At this point, debates about the appropriateness of blackface are practically an annual tradition, with defenders arguing that the practice is not offensive. This argument assumes that intent and impact are the same thing, and ignores the fact that blackface is deeply rooted in a history of casting African Americans as inferior.

In recent years, there’s been an attempt — perhaps most recently in the Today show segment that got then-host Megyn Kelly fired last year — to position the historical, offensive use of blackface or costumes depicting stereotypes of other ethnicities as distinct from simply dressing up as celebrities. But this ignores that the costumes still serve as a vehicle for racial dress-up, and that the stereotypes and anti-black attitudes that blackface relied on in the past are still present today. In both cases, blackness, however inappropriately defined by its performers, is used as decoration, something that is painted on and then taken off after the fun is over. And it’s worth noting that the fun is often isolated in private, predominantly white spaces.

In theory, the history and clearly visual nature of blackface should make it more of a taboo than it is. Instead, polling shows that despite blackface’s clearly racist origins, there are plenty of people who don’t see a problem with it.

A recent poll from the Washington Post found that just 58 percent of Americans believe blackface is wrong. Breaking down those numbers by race, 73 percent of black Americans disapprove of blackface, while 57 percent of whites said the same. The biggest gaps came on political lines, with 81 percent of Democrats disapproving of blackface compared to 50 percent of independents and 44 percent of Republicans.

These are large gaps, and they fit into a larger discussion about racism and intent. Racist actions in America are so often defined as highly visible acts committed maliciously by obviously “bad” individuals. Those who don’t see blackface as a problem debate that the act doesn’t fall into this category because people in blackface don’t mean to be offensive, despite the practice long being used to dehumanize black Americans and position them as inferior to whites.

It’s a framing that not only makes it practically impossible to have frank discussions of the racism intricately tied to blackface, it also sidesteps the concerns of black people angered over its use.

The Virginia controversy has called new attention to the ways this debate remains unsettled. But even among critics of the Virginia politicians, there’s been an argument that while blackface is troubling and clearly racist, national controversies over it can obscure far more impactful issues, particularly those rooted in less obvious forms of systemic racism. As Jamelle Bouie wrote in the New York Times recently, “it treats expressions of racist contempt or mockery as the most egregious forms of racism, when that distinction should belong to the promotion of racist policies and ideas.”

There’s a truth to this, and scholars like White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo note that white Americans in particular have long relied on exaggerated definitions of racism that focus on things that can be clearly seen and heard, over entrenched systemic issues that affect the daily lives of people of color. But it’s also true that blackface is rooted in a deeply racist history, one that should not be used for the enjoyment of college students, partygoers, or television audiences. That public opinion can’t fully agree on that points to a deeper problem with how even these exaggerated acts — the stuff that is so often presented as “clearly racist” — can be quickly explained away and defined out of existence.

This presents a challenge when it comes to addressing racism in general, and particularly the systemic racism — seen in issues like mass incarceration, voter suppression, and wealth inequities — that has received increased attention in recent years. After all, if even things like blackface can be dismissed as not racist or not racist enough to warrant consequences or condemnation, it makes more subtle forms of racism and discrimination that much harder to address. It highlights one of the biggest problems with blackface’s continued persistence, especially as it’s raised in controversies on college campuses and, more recently, in state governments.

It is true that on its own, eradicating blackface will not end racism in America. Still, even if its practitioners disagree, blackface is part of a long history of the dehumanization of black Americans, serving as a highly visible representation of a much deeper injustice. That even this practice has been so difficult to curtail points to just how deeply racism is embedded in American culture, and how much work will need to be done to address it.


“KakeWalk*” :


KAKEWALK. EVERY DAY THAT I DO THE NEWS, EVEN IN THIS LIMITED FASHION, I LEARN SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLETELY NEW TO ME, AND AS LIKELY AS NOT IT WILL BE DISCOURAGING OR EMBARRASSING. I’M NOW EMBARRASSED BY THE COLLEGES, WHERE PEOPLE ARE SUPPOSED TO GO TO LEARN SOMETHING USEFUL AND HIGH-MINDED. I ACKNOWLEDGE AND EXPECT THAT A TWENTY-YEAR OLD WON’T BE FULLY MATURE, BUT THE LAPSES INTO WILD TEENAGER LIKE BEHAVIOR IN THE FRATERNITIES AND SORORITIES, AND THE UNWILLINGNESS TO FOLLOW RULES OF BEHAVIOR AROUND RESPECT FOR A WHOLE GROUP OF PEOPLE IS NOT IN MY VIEW ACCEPTABLE.

IT WOULD BE INTERESTING AND HELPFUL TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE, IF TWO OR THREE RACIAL RELATIONS AND HUMAN RELATIONS COURSES WERE TO BE A REQUIRED AS PART OF THEIR BACHELORS OF SCIENCE OR ARTS DEGREES; FINISHING IT OFF WITH A 15 TO 20 PAGE TERM PAPER ON THE SUBJECT OF RACISM OR BLACK HISTORY MIGHT HELP, ALSO. THE PARENTS AREN’T TEACHING THIS, NOR IS THE SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. SO, THE COUNTRY IS RAPIDLY MOVING BACKWARD, AND THAT REALLY DOES NEED TO STOP.

GO TO THE FOLLOWING SITE AND WATCH THE VIDEO. SINCE THIS IS BERNIE SANDERS’ ADOPTED STATE, I WOULD LIKE TO SEE WHAT IF ANYTHING HE HAS HAD TO SAY ABOUT THIS. IT IS A SPECTACLE RATHER THAN ART, FOR SURE, AND I’VE NEVER HEARD OF ANYTHING LIKE IT.

THIS PIECE OF WRITING HAS NO PARAGRAPHS AT ALL, AND IT IS SEVERAL PAGES LONG. I HAVE INSERTED A NUMBER OF PARAGRAPHS, HOPEFULLY AT PROPER LOGICAL SEQUENCES, AMOUNTING TO ABOUT EVERY 12 LINES OF TYPE. OTHER THAN THAT, IT’S A GREAT ARTICLE, IN MY OPINION. I DID SEARCH FOR INTERNET LINKS BETWEEN BERNIE SANDERS AND KAKE WALK AND FOUND NONE. I DIDN’T EXPECT TO, BUT THOUGHT I’D LOOK IN ORDER TO SAY WITH A REASONABLE ACCURACY THAT THIS IS A SUBJECT WHICH NO HOSTILE POLITICIAN HAS ASKED HIM ABOUT.

WATCH THIS RECENT RUNDOWN OF WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THIS ECCENTRIC IF SOMEWHAT PLEASING STAGE SHOW IS ABOUT. THIS VIDEO IS AN INFORMATIONAL LOOK AT THE RACISM OF THE TIMES.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSaMiWc11XI. THE LEGACY OF KAKEWALK AT UVM - 2-4-15 - African American History Month;
UVM College of Medicine Office of Diversity & Inclusion
Published on Feb 5, 2015

Pat Brown, Director of Student Life and the Dudley Davis Center shares the history of Kakewalk, a former University of Vermont event that is for some a hallowed tradition and for others overt racism. The terminated competition, which was the highlight of the campus social calendar for over eighty years, featured fraternity brothers in blackface and kinky wigs dancing to the tune of "Cotton Babes." Director Brown’s brief talk is followed by a clip of the dance itself.


https://www.rutlandherald.com/news/kake-walk-tradition-died-with-the-times/article_631f3e11-0d4c-58cf-8fd0-aa30542aac88.html
'Kake Walk' tradition died with the times
Mark Bushnell May 8, 2005
Saturday, February 9, 2019

The footage is stark. Shot in black and white, the scene starts in blackness. A spotlight suddenly splashes an oval of white light across a wooden floor, illuminating a pair of dancers, both men. They stand side by side, an arm wrapped around the other's waist. They are dressed identically in satin black and white tuxedos, white shoes and gloves. Their getup is clown-like, even their faces, which are painted black, except for their mouths and eyes, which are painted white. On their heads are curly black wigs. After the briefest of moments, the band starts into a pounding rhythm and the dancers are off. In syncopated motion, they tear through a frenetic dance full of high, prancing steps punctuated by impossibly high leg kicks as an unseen audience claps along with the beat. The footage, shot in the 1960s for a documentary, captures a slice of what was known at the University of Vermont as Kake Walk.

These strange, strutting performances, of which this was one of the last, were once the highlight of the school's social calendar. Over time they became the most controversial aspect of university life. Kake Walk traces its roots at UVM back to the 1880s, when students put on so-called "nigger shows," modeled after the minstrel shows of the day. The first organized Kake Walk party was held in 1893, when a group of male students arranged a masquerade ball on campus. From the start, the event had racist overtones. Partygoers dressed themselves as "colored men and women, cannibals, dudes and ballet girls," according to a history of the event written in the 1920s. That first party ended with the Kake Walk, in which a pair of men painted in black face – one dressed as a woman – tried to outdo the others in performing the most outlandish dance. The winners were to be awarded a cake. The idea for this type of competition didn't start at UVM. Its roots are much older. It dates back to the days of slavery when, in search for entertainment, a plantation owner would have his slaves perform in an impromptu dance competition. The winner, the one who came up with the most elaborate, enthusiastic dance, as judged by the white audience, would receive a lump of sugar or some cake. In addition to providing entertainment, this "cakewalk" was intended to remind slaves who was in charge. The image of slaves grinning and dancing for their masters was part of what scholars now call the "magnolia myth," the myth that blacks were happy to be enslaved and incapable of living on their own. Kake Walk was also reminiscent of minstrel shows, which not coincidentally were among the most popular form of entertainment in the country at the time Kake Walk started at UVM.

Minstrel shows usually featured white performers made up in blackface, who spoke in an imagined black dialect that was meant to amuse the audience with its mispronunciations and malapropos. Though some early minstrel shows depicted the harsh realities of slavery, they soon began to feature performers singing of how much blacks missed their happier days on the plantation. Touring minstrel shows brought their acts to Vermont, which is perhaps where UVM students got the idea for Kake Walk. Whatever the inspiration, the event became a fixture on the UVM scene. A poem in the 1895 yearbook, penned in a supposed black dialect, described the scene: Now, ther upon a table stood a cak Which by the Hash-hous Mastre was y- bak And to the mon and mayde who wakked the beste The cake was to be given for a feste… In 1897, the event was advertised as "Kulled Koon's Kake Walk." The three K-words in the title were quite deliberate. The Ku Klux Klan was surging nationally and lynchings of blacks were shockingly common events. Kake Walk, which was organized by UVM's fraternities, quickly became the centerpiece of a winter carnival.

Equally popular were the satirical skits that students soon began performing during the festival. Most poked fun at the university administration or referred to events on campus. Others took on a more sinister air, at least from the perspective of modern race consciousness. One early skit was titled "Up in Nigger Heaven," and featured a cast of actors in blackface. Another slightly more sympathetic sketch depicted an attempted lynching in which the black characters eventually get the better of their Klan tormentors. Though the blacks become the heroes in the skit, they are still depicted as comical characters and are portrayed by actors in grotesque caricatures. Over the years, Kake Walk eventually came under attack. Its defenders routinely protested that the event was never intended to be racist. In hindsight, perhaps the best that can be said about the performers is that they lived in such racist times that their actions didn't particularly stand out.

A history of Kake Walk written in the late 1920s for the UVM yearbook includes words that have since become taboo. "The posters (for the Kake Walk) have always had darkey characteristics and words such as 'Koonville,' 'Coonlet Quartette.' together with darkey pictures," the writer reports matter-of-factly. "This is because, when the entertainment was originated, coon-songs, coon costumes, coon-everything was the rage, and the idea has been retained." White audiences were eager to the see the performances and Kake Walk tickets were much coveted. Townspeople lucky enough to land a ticket mingled with students at the shows. Women were largely excluded from the event, and only on five occasions were women permitted to dance in Kake Walk. They were usually restricted to more limited roles – like serving (in blackface) as "pickaninny ushers," who were also referred to as "nigger babies." Kake Walk became an accepted and much-anticipated part of life in Burlington, with Kake Walkers performing special shows at the Baird Children's Center.

When the annual show came around, Boy Scouts were admitted for free. As the civil rights movement evolved in the 1950s, Kake Walk started to become controversial. A few UVM alumni began to question the appropriateness of the event. The student newspaper, the Cynic, ran an editorial in its Kake Walk edition in 1954, stating: "Please Look at the Front Page Again Look at the 'Blackface' This is the Tradition We Want to see Ended" The editorial was poorly received. Instead of targeting the Kake Walk, many readers set their sights on the Cynic, notes James Loewen, professor emeritus in sociology from UVM, in his essay "Black Image in White Vermont: The Origin, Meaning and Abolition of the Kake Walk." But attitudes were changing. The university suggested that the local chamber of commerce not publicize the event nationally, for fear it would be "misinterpreted."

During the early 1960s, the fraternities that sponsored the event tried to address the controversy by having performers paint their faces green instead of black. They voted, however, to keep the pidgin English associated with the shows and still advertised it as "walkin' fo' de kake." The decision to drop the blackface drew swift criticism from the state's newspapers. The Brattleboro Reformer complained that the "American heritage of blackface show business" had been damaged due to "an understandable, but unfortunate hyper-sensitivity" on campus. The Rutland Herald struck a similar chord. In an editorial, it wrote: "(W)e cannot help wondering if this is a case of over-sensitivity."

UVM President Lyman Rowell defended the tradition, saying he did "not feel that we have any reason for abandoning Kake Walk." But organizers were unable to find a way of maintaining the tradition while eliminating its racist aspects – they were integral to the event. In December 1969, they announced the death of the Kake Walk: "In these sensitive times it is possible to interpret this tradition as being racist in nature, and humiliating to the Black people of this nation. We feel that no amount of tradition and longevity can be used as a defense for the continuation of Kake Walk." Supporters of Kake Walk unsuccessfully tried to resurrect the event, arguing that it was a cherished tradition. After WCAX-TV aired a commentary suggesting that Kake Walk be reinstated, UVM Professor Larry McCrorey, who had helped lead opposition to the event, responded in his own commentary that "black progress in this country has been delayed continually on the grounds of tradition. Lynching, I might add, has a very long tradition in America. So what?" Mark Bushnell's column on Vermont history is a regular feature in Vermont Sunday Magazine.