Why is blackface acceptable in Germany?

What was the reaction of the other parents? Are parents involved in the production of the play at all?

Is it also offensive to paint your face white and dress up like a Geisha?

I don't know - was painting like a geisha used by white people to mock geishas or mainly by geishas?

The Canadian mom was shocked. The Germans around me didn't seem to care - then again, one of them was actually wearing a tinfoil hat.

Like I said, I understand wanting in incorporate the Tanzanian school relationship and emphasise the connection. I actually found the barefoot bongo beating to be more of an issue than the black makeup.

I hope nobody was dressed as a pig. That could insult muslims.
Leave the PC crab in Noth America.
It's Karneval.
The only ones that could be insulted -and who could complain- are the Tanzanian hunters!
Did they?

I was just thinking about that, how weird. My friend at lunch told me that she's going as a Japanese woman for Fasching.. it's hard for me to decide. I guess it's just the whole "putting everyone in a box" thing. Japenese for Fasching means Geishas or Sumo Wrestlers, Mexicans wear ponchos and sombreros, black people have big red lips and dance and play drums... and so on. Would it bother you if another race went as a white man by dressing up like a redneck? It wouldn't necessarily bother me.. I'd just think it's weird.

Coming from Wyoming, it might

It was, I think, a bit odd for the kid who was obviously not "white" and his dad. The kids had fun and it wasn't meant to be derogatory (well, the bare feet maybe ...). I guess I'll just have to have a casual mention why (historically) that's not cool in the states.

I mean, I'm from Las Vegas. It doesn't really get any more white trash than that

I thought Negerkuesse/Mohrenkoepfe were long ago renamed Schokokuesse - or Dickmanns if you want the brand name.

I honestly don't think that people dressing up/painting their faces for Fasching have racist motives.

There might be the odd one, but I think if you are really a racist you do other things.

What about foreigners wearing tracht?

It just does not have the negative connotation in Germany that it does in the US. I doubt any of it was meant in any way derogatory, not even the being barefoot.

This is the problem I have here. It's very common to assume that since there are not many Germans of African or African-American descent, or that you don't have a history of slavery or segregation, that those few black Germans do not take offense by it. It's appaling how many Germans still throw around the word "neger" and actually defend its usage as common. As I said before, if it's "only" derrogatory in some places, why is it assumed that it is not derrogatory in all places?

Are there any real black people on this forum? Do you feel offended?

maybe as Germany does not have a history of slavery and oppression of black people, they genuinely are unaware and uneducated as to how offensive 'blackface' would/could be to some people. it is certainly in most cases, I'd say, not meant offensively.

@ MoiLV a few years ago I dressed up as a Japanese Geisha woman for Fasching and strolled down the high street Karlsplatz to Marienplatz. I was stopped and had my photo taken by two groups of Japanese tourists they were hardly offended I'd say.

Loads of people think dressing in a kilt is afunny Fasching's costume. Any offended Scots here?

I like to dress up in Nazi costumes. Are there any Germans here? Do you feel...

Oh right.

I don't know. I was at a halloween party in the Schwäbisch countryside a few years ago when a guy walked in dressed as a KluKluxKlan member. It didn't bother me, my friend was miffed, but she didn't say anything at first, her husband just shook his head but my ex husband was furious and wanted him to take it off.

I can't be bothered to read this whole thread, only wanting to contribute a historical fact: In the 17th and 18th centurie Mohren (best translated as blackamoors as both words are old and must be understood from their own context) were de rigueur at Court and even in clerical circles. While Freising itself has removed the crowned head of a Mohr from its official coat of arms, Unterföhring, formerly under the rule of the clerical territory of Freising, still incorporates it in its modern one.

These Mohren were not slaves, they were privileged servants, dressed in fancy attire and well cared for as a precious asset. If you can believe the coffee and chocolate makers Sarotti their main duty was to serve coffee or chocolate to guests reclining on silk pillows placed on the floor.

So dressing as a Mohr is recalling a historical reality without meaning any insult to the original. Much like little girls dressing in Laura Ingalls Wilder type dresses. They don't want to lead the hard life of the frontier but the role tickles their fancy.

P.S. I notice that Sarotti no longer has a Mohr but a figurine dressed in oriental attire in its logo. Wusses.

See, to me, that parellel's dressing up as Hitler. I can do an SAT analogy for you if you like:

Dressing up as Hitler is to dressing up as a Hasidic Jew as
Dressing up as a KKK member is to dressing up in black face.

All are, imo, in bad taste and offensive.

I can't find a photo of her, but suffice to say, if anyone should have been offended, she should have been.

There are plenty of Mohren in the coats of arms of towns and villages in the Landkreis Freising ... and elsewhere

There's the rub - privileged, maybe, but they were still considered as possessions.

Coat of arms chosen by His Ratzingerness

O yea my mother in law says it all the time and I can't stand it...really shocked me the first time she said it about a 'neger baby' as she called it

A totally inappropriate example of a whitey pretending to be black.
(original picture here -> www.theage.com.au/news/People/Jackson-paternity-suit/2005/01/14/1105582694574.html)

Coat of arms of Reinhard Marx ... the new archbishop of München-Freising

I guess you never heard of Rodney King... maybe you are to young... but me thinks you are just to ignorant

Very off topic but his motto is absolutely disgusting. Makes me want to nail kittens' tails to the floor.

Well, if I were black I think I would rather be in Germany right now than in Kenya, for example. Lighten up dude. No pun intended.

This is not to defend the coat of arms, but the motto is a Latin translation of something the apostle Paul writes in one of the New Testament letters:

2 Corinthians 3:17: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

I think it is a nice sentiment, as long as it's not taken out of context or abused.

Don't worry, I understood. No flies on my Latin. But Paul has always come across as a very unpleasant person anyway. I bet he would go as a Mohr in Fasching if he were alive today.

I'd love to know how anyone could take...


out of context and turn it into something evil about people with African ancestry.

Im not at all sure it *is* acceptable here. Its difficult to tell an entire town (Dietfurt) that dresses up as coolies to celebrate Fasching thats its racist, but Im sure anyone with an even slightly asian teint feels very uncomfortable. Its like being German and encountering SS-uniforms and Hitler moustaches at every fancy-dress party.

There are limits to PC and of course the Dietfurters would claim tradition but it is racist (if not intentionally insulting) and its certainly being disussed nowadays. No-one would do a "black and white minstrel" show in the UK now and to be honest, I think everyones better off for that.


I actually quite violently disagree with you on most of this. While "Black Music" may be just a clumsy and lazy way of collectively describing what the rest of the world refers to as Hip-Hop, Rap and Urban R&B, Mohrenköpfe /Negerküsse is blatantly racist and unpleasant, however traditional it may be. Theres a perfectly good alternative in "Schokoküsse" available and the sooner the word is abandoned and forgotten the better, IMNSHO.

On the blackface issue - How would you feel if your turkish neighbours wrapped themselves in a German flag, made themselves up as potatoes and made it clear they were going out dressed as Germans? (For those not in the know - "Kartoffel" is a perjorative term for white Germans used by some with immigrant backgrounds, particularly those of more swarthy skin colouring). Or even better - they put on the above-mentioned uniforms...

andy M

a black bloke with a whiteface, photographed by a nazi.

Mulier taceat in ecclesia ...

I do not actually think these are alike but to be honest I wouldn't care if someone wants to dress up as a potato and wrap themselves in a German flag. It's Fasching for God's sake.
And to be honest if you compare dressing up as an African to dressing up as a Nazi, I think as an African I would find that comparison a little offensive.
By the way I do not think that Mohrenkopf and Negerkuss were racist in origin. They date back to the 19th century and are translations from French when these words were not racist slurs as they are nowadays. I never said we should keep calling them that and I am aware of the fact that there are alternatives, all I said (a year ago) was that I do not think that calling a Schokokuss a Negerkuss or Mohrenkopf is a sign of racism.

i've often had discussions with our german friends here about saying "the N word, black music, those colored people, etc" because they are all planning to visit us when we get back to the states. i lived in mississippi for 6 years and i can't say that i ever encountered anything racist. and i didn't even know that those things existed until i moved to germany and went to an army school. i was young like 12 i think and i was just coming into contact with racial problems. i mean of course i had learned about slavery and all that in school but we didn't have the problems in my school or neighborhood or anything. i'm baffled when people here say the N word and such. At home you just don't do it. But at the same time, and i'm sure you are all going to hang me for saying this, but couldn't the "blacks" in the states be causing a reverse racism. there are all black colleges, scholorships, organizations. but there can't be such for just whites. i know, i know it is wrong to exclude, but why are there able to be those organizations that exclude whites. it's a bit of a double standard.

i really hate it when people say, "oh its because I'm black" which it's not, but it makes me want to say, well yes just to get their goat.
I had a customer one day when i was 16 and working at wal-mart (first job i know) who made a big deal because i didn't touch his entire hand to give him his change. i dropped the change into his hand just like i would have anyone else...and he said, "it won't rub off" i was baffled because i wouldn't do it any differently with anyone else.

As I understand it, 'neger' is not the same as 'nigger' (which is clearly a highly derogatory term), although they're probably both derived from the latin 'niger', which simply means 'black'. You don't see white people get all huffy about being called white, do you? Now I would never dare to call anyone a nigger in the U.S. or any other English speaking country, and even in Germany I'd probably use the word 'Neger' sparsly but I really think it's wrong to jump all over someone just because the word 'Neger' slips from his lips once if he has not given any indication of actually being a racist for real.

I dunno, I just hate it how just because somewhere in the world something happened that gave a word a bad meaning in a certain context, everyone should forever be forbidden to use it. By the same logic we should outlaw the word 'Jude' (jew), because clearly in the early 1940's few Germans used it in any other than a derogatory way.

antred, I would say the English equivalent for Neger is negro.

Yeah, I was yapping about the German version, though.

Is there even a German version of "nigger"? Other than taking the English word?

I find it fascinating that "bimbo" has such different meanings in English and German. In German it seems to be a derogatory word for an African man, in English it means a dumb blonde woman.

No, Ruthie, I don't think there is. But then racial slurs are not necessarily part of my daily vocab so there might be something I cannot think of. I had not even heard of the word Inselaffe before TT.
Also didn't know that bimbo was a derogatory word for an African. Just looked it up on Wiki and apparently there is a city in the Central African Republic with that name, maybe that's where it comes from. I only knew Bimbo as a dog's name (from Karlsson on the Roof by Astrid Lindgren) and the English meaning of it.

Bleargh, i hate Fasching. At least the Rhineland version that permeates the media nowadays.

Now, the classics of Fasnet... infinitely better.

[img]http://www.schwarzwald.com/rottweil/historischer_narrensprung.jpg[/img]

edit:

Mariposa - "Bimbo" is actually ethymologically a rather interesting term - because it has a rather specific meaning ("slave") in German (unlike in modern English, French, Italian). Makes me wonder how they deal with the conflicting meanings in Switzerland (because I know they use the German meaning when saying it in German).

Never heard the word "Bimbo" in a context where it would mean slave.

I think the word if thrown at someone with dark skin in German is meant to be an insult, like "nigger" in the English-speaking world.

The origin I think was a children's book from the the time before WWI about a monkey "Bimbo der Affe"or so, which was popular even after WWII when parents and grand parents cleaned off the dust from their own childhood books and passed them on to their children.

The monkey insult is also evident for example when a black player enters the football field and some people start throwing bananas at him and make noise such as a monkey. So I would say, it is the German equivalent to the English "nigger", and as disgusting as that.

By contrast the "Mohr" is derived from the Greek "μαῦÏ?ος" which just means black. I think before the "reconquista" Spain was dominated by what was then called "moros", a name originally just meant for Arabs, and then later on summarily for Muslims. The word lives on in Mauritania and also such unlikely places as the Philippines where the Muslim minority in the southern island of Mindanao refer to themselves as Moros and have in the past few decades managed to achieve some kind of autonomy in the creation of the "Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao" (ARMM).

Why is it that everybody seems to get so worked up on the usage of a black face like in pope's the coat of arms? The (now) French island of Corsica has always had it. And please: the German equivalent for passing the buck is "den schwarzen Peter zuschieben", which is derived from a children's card game where the loser ends up holding I think the Ace of spades end then as a mark the tip of his nose is marked black with charcoal. Pretty innocent stuff.

And then of course there is that Australian kindie where kids now sing "bah bah white sheep" instead of the original ... Ah well!

I am not sure I would equate the black faces on coats of arms with "blackface" -- the black faces on the CoA are meant to be images of actual "Moors", while "blackface" is a white person painting their face black and acting stupid. Am I missing the connection there? Seems to be two quite different things to me.

I hear you, brother, and ignore it.

What about Othello by Shakespeare? May a white actor paint his face black?
By the way last lear I dressed as a taliban, this year as a suicide bomber.
May be next year I will dress as an aboriginee.
PC?

I dont really see how painting your face black in Fasching could be racist, because there isnt anything derogatory to it. Painting your face black and acting stupid - that would be something different. But then again almost everyone acts stupid in Fasching. Referring to cultural stereotypes is stupid and proves bad taste. But what surprise: Fasching is all about bad taste. Bad jokes, awful music, ugly dresses, insulting others... (Yeah, I know - sounds like a normal day in germany )

Btw noone knows exactly where the "Mohr" in Freisings crest comes from. Some say it has something to do with bishop Ottos adventures during the crusade. (Maybe he has taken an arab prince as prisoner ...) Others assume that it is the result of some misunderstanding. Some time before 1300 the crest just showed a white face, but then over the years the color in some old book changed and when it finally was chosen as the bishops crest, they thought it depicted an african prince...

aha, I think bimbo might have been very similar to the books we had in england called 'little black sambo', so 'bimbo' in german is probably exactly the same as calling someone a 'sambo' in english, which is certainly considered pretty racist!

(my gran has still got her LBS books in her attic- I used to read them as a child and actually really liked them )

Actually, historically black colleges are open to students of other races. In fact, "nationally, white enrollment at black colleges has climbed about 30 percent in the past two decades." (source) And there are definitely scholarships and organizations exclusively for specific white ethnic groups, although true, none for whites in general that I know of.

On topic, I'm sure that 99% of people blackfacing it up at Karneval don't do it intending to be big ole racist meanies, but that doesn't automatically make the gesture itself completely racism free and a-okay. I believe I've mentioned before on these forums that I've come across depictions of Native Americans here that I find really problematic. Europeans (not just Germans) that I know seemingly tend not to see any problem with it. That doesn't make these people horrible evil racists, it makes them people who've never been face to face with a Native American, or even face to face with a local newspaper article that touches on First Nations issues, and therefore have a concept of a culture that's mostly cowboys and Indians fantasy and little to do with the reality of actual living, breathing people.

It's a tricky area though. When I was an exchange student in Thailand, my teachers once dressed me up in traditional Thai dress (and make up that was de facto white face!!!) for a school event. I felt uncomfortable as hell about it (this type of outfit looks lovely on Thai women - on lanky foreigners I would say decidedly less so), but they all seemed to think it was great. On the other hand, I guess that was their decision, not me thinking "Shiny! I want to wear it!" and deciding on my own to play dress up. I've also heard, for example, that women travelling in India who wear saris or salwaar kameez get less hassle and more respect, ethnically East Indian or not. Who knows...

I will say though, that it really pisses me off when Americans wear Canadian flags on their backpacks.

It that really factual? Is the old it was not my intent to offend defense, really a good excuse for their lack of sensitivity? I remember years ago spending time with a few Germans who were on vacation in Miami.A young German woman ask an American the question, "how do Americans view the average German?"The young man pointed to a large Billboard across the street that had two unattractive older women wearing viking helmuts singing a german song while behaving cartoonish.The young man response was an attempted at humor, but let me tell you those German women were not laughing and were very offended and immidiatedly left the table.I think anyone in 2008 in a world that is becoming more interracial and intergrated should make the effort to be abit more worldly and sensitive to what happens not just in their country but in other regions of the world.If wearing Black face is offensive in America it makes common sense to a thinking person that it would also be offensive in England,Italy or Germany to a person of African heritage.