Megyn Kelly and Redface

Megyn Kelly is now in trouble, and has chosen to publicly apologize, for arguing on air that she saw nothing wrong with wearing blackface for Hallowe'en. Rumours are that she will be fired.

Here is another example of the clear and present danger to our democracy from arbitrary restrictions on speech. It is, surely, at a minimum perfectly reasonable to make such an argument. It must not be ruled intolerable without being addressed. Or we will never know whether it is wrong.

If it is intolerably racist for a European-American to dress as a black celebrity for Hallowe'en, is it then intolerable to dress as Mulan, because she is Chinese and your are not? Like Princess Jasmine, if you are not Middle Eastern? Like Santa Claus, then, if you are not Greek? Black dancers in New Orleans' Mardi Gras traditionally dress as American Indians. Are they being intolerably racist? Dutch Christmas festivities traditionally feature a blackface character, Black Pete. Is the Dutch nation so racist? 

I expect the response will be that blackface has a unique history of mocking and making fun of black culture. If true, this need not be obviously relevant to one's Hallowe'en blackface; it seems hypersensitive. But even this much is not obviously true, as this blog has pointed out in the past. The American tradition of minstrel shows in blackface can be at least as readily explained by a popular belief that black music and black musicianship was superior to white, as by any intent to mock blacks. Historially, minstrel shows were at least as popular among black as among white audiences. They were banned in much of the antebellum South as anti-slavery propaganda.

True, the minstrel shows featured comic characters, who appeared in blackface. But if you are going to put on a variety show, and the musicians are all blackface, and many of them also do comic routines, this is more or less inevitable, and would be awkward to avoid. To do so would seem instead to be deliberately saying something racist about either blacks or whites.

And when it comes to the tradition of comic characters on the stage, whiteface is far more common than blackface. The classic clown makeup demands both whiteface and red hair. Ethnically, whom does that suggest? Probably Irish folks, like Megyn Kelly. 

Why then are we not at least equally up in arms about this appalling racism towards historically oppressed northern Europeans? Why this black privilege?