And there it was, the icing on the cake of racial stereotypes and defamation.

Fashion designers at the Milan Halloween fest in Italy Europe, otherwise spectacles of originality, joined the global peasantry and closed their ranks in what I call the Blackface-polonaise of the year 2013.

Blue eyes staring defiantly into camera-lenses with ecstatic red lipped grins, fixed on faces covered with tar-black paint.

I got caught up in feelings ranging from dejavu to disgust. While believing we have been co-builders of our respective post-racial societies, the persistant come-back of blackface witnessed in HD forces us to re-asses our position.

Are we co-builders or did we conform to their blueprint for this post-racial society? It felt like stepping back in time into the era of minstrelshows and Vaudeville, lynchings and segregation, aided by ultra modern technology.

The era’s of terror and oppression lived through by our Grandparents and our parents, all packaged within the only symbol of oppression still very much alive today.

Blackface lifts the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow, from the shadows of history and lands it forcefully in the booming stagelight of our present.

In trying to understand the use of this degrading and insulting image I came to the conclusion that blackface is not just an insult to us, Africans, but actually an outlet for white folks. Kind of like a comfort blanket, or the boxingbag you hit and kick when you need to blow of steam.

Blackface The Psychological War And Silent Agression
No words are spoken and the images appear in a split second. Image is everything. As if the curtain of race-relations suddenly and swiftly drops, with the truth in all it’s facets captured in imagery, before smoke covers our eyesight and senses again. We see a distorted reality, our vision is deformed and we were told that deformity, that mockery is us. They tell us, this is how we see you, are you mad? The black paint is washed off and the Fashion Designer re-emerges and the game begins anew, his name-brand-signature-dresses covering the frames of the Lupita’s, Beyoncé’s and Rihanna’s of our world, while he tells you “I’m not racist”. Which is the face you should believe?

Blackface The Comfort Blanket To White People
White people have not come to terms with the ending of the institute “slavery” which validated their superiority and propagated African inferiority. The comforting image of an incapable, castrated African through which they reassured themselves of their own benevolence. That image excused their own inhumanity and offered reassurance. The stereotype served and still serves as a comfort blanket to the white superiority complex. Even their incapacity to see the African as a humanbeing becomes feasable to themselves. The body and soul of the African is diminished and confined, being less of a threat, accessible and available to their manipulations.

Blackface a Powertrip
They have no problem publicizing themselves, their faces painted black dressed in a 20s prison suit, a 30s minstrel costume, or mocking the slain teenager Trayvon Martin. An abuser needs his victim to understand he is in control. Fear is the tool the White supremacy system uses to excert power and to control mind and psyche of the Enslaved African. The inbalance of power becomes clear when one party is defaming your name and insulting your character without fear of reprisals.

Looking at this from a relational stance point, there is enough evidence to conclude that the relationship between Enslaved Africans and Europeans engaging in white supremacy and who use white privilige is toxic and debilitating to the Enslaved African.

When someone mocks you to your face, defames and dehumanizes you, doesn’t that tell you this person will never accept you as his or her equal and does see no value in you?

Blackface is to be understood within the context of white supremacy and genetic survival (Dr.

Frances Cress Welsing), rather then a historic-cultural trend. So, then the question rises, what would it take to forever rid ourselves of Blackface?