Racial Impersonation In America

Racial impersonation has played a major role in the development of representation in major minority groups, such as Native Americans and Blacks. Author, Jill Lane, writes an article, “Impersonation: Toward a Theory of Black-, Red-, and Yellowface in the Americas,” in which she speaks of the theory of racial impersonation and the way in which it has been played out throughout history. Red face has been primarily demonstrated in the United States and blackface was extremely popular throughout Cuba during the eighteen hundreds. Besides the derogatory act of blackface there are also other forms of discursive violence when it comes to racial impersonation in more modern times, such as a white actor playing the role meant for a person of color.

In different countries it is not as explicitly portrayed, such as the United States. An example of a country that recently had used blackface is Puerto Rico in many comedic late night television shows. An example would be El Show de Raymond Arrieta, where they portrayed a dancing character in blackface(Betancourt). This occurred in 2014, only three years ago. If the show was to be aired in the United States it would have been very controversial news especially in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Of course it is still very offensive no matter in what country blackface is done, but some countries develop differently in which they have different problems at different levels. For instance, in the United States we have major movements defending the lives of colored people, finally showing how morally incorrect it is to belittle people of color. On the contrary, Puerto Rico may not have all these social movements to prove how incorrect what they are doing is. Even then in the United States there is still some sort of discursive violence happening. Although it is not actually the use of blackface, Hollywood is using white people to play the roles meant for people of color. In 2010 Jake Gyllenhall, a white actor, played the lead role of Dastan in The Prince of Persia(Moreno). Luckily, this has been noticed by many and are speaking up about the

Visible violence would be the simple act of seeing something. On the other hand, visual violence is the importance we add to what we see based on the representation it is given. With racial impersonation specifically black and redface, it is visual violence to those people of color. To whites who participated in black or redface, it is visible violence. People of color see it as visual because it directly affects them and the way they are treated by others. It has a greater impact on their lives, they are seen as a joke and mistreated by others. People who have participated in black and red face will see it as visible because they are oblivious to the damage they are doing. They are blinded by their privilege or their desire to make a “comedic” sketch for their television show. It may start as an innocent sketch for television, but the media has a huge impact on spectators. To participants, the act of blackface is just painting themselves with dark paint rather than seeing the hurt it is causing to