Blackface doomed Strange
Halloween has come back to haunt Mike Strange.
In 2009, former Olympian and then bar owner Mike Strange did what he always did at Halloween. He dressed up as a woman.
Gender-bending costumes were something of a tradition for Strange, so the skirts and tennis rackets he and friend Scotty Wilkes used for their outfits didn’t seem out of the ordinary to him.
The pair put on blackface and went to a Halloween party as African-American tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, Strange said.
“We were at a Halloween party, and a few people told us ‘You can’t do that’ because it was offensive,” said Strange, a Niagara Falls city councillor. “So Scotty went down to Value Village and got us some gorilla masks and we wore that for the rest of the night. We weren’t the Williamses anymore, it was Planet of the Apes.”
Photos of the pair, obtained by The Standard Friday, were posted on Facebook by Kimberly Wilkes. In a photo showing the men in blackface, she wrote “Serena and Venus Williams!” In another photo that shows them still in the tennis outfits wearing the jet black rubber masks and carrying a racket, she wrote; “Here’s the real Venus and Serena Williams …”
Scotty Wilkes could not be immediately reached for comment.
The photos resurfaced recently as part of an anonymously produced “opposition research package” on Strange, who wanted to stand for the provincial Progressive Conservative nomination for the Niagara Falls riding. Strange said the package containing several photos from the Facebook page was left on his doorstep. A copy was also sent to PC party headquarters.
Strange, saying he was the target of a political smear campaign to block his candidacy, shared the package with The Standard in mid-October. It contained pictures of him with various politicians, at Halloween parties at his bar, and photos from his days as an Olympic boxer.
The package also included one photo of him and Wilkes in the gorilla masks. Under the photo someone wrote, “A photo of different Halloween costumes including Planet of the Apes is never in good taste.”
However, the photo Strange provided The Standard was edited to remove the comments about the Williams sisters. The blackface photo was omitted entirely.
Strange admitted Friday he changed the package before showing it to a reporter.
“Yes, we edited it because it was a third-party comment,” Strange said about why he removed the comment from Kimberly Wilkes. He said once he and Scotty Wilkes were wearing the gorilla masks, they were no longer masquerading as the Williams sisters and Kimberly Wilkes’ comments on Facebook do not reflect that.
Asked why they didn’t wash their black makeup off when told blackface was offensive, Strange said “we were already out. That’s why we wore the masks.”
He said he and Wilkes were unaware that gorilla masks could also be construed as racist.
Nevertheless Strange called the costumes “a dumb thing to do.”
“I apologize,” he said Friday. “I am not a racist. I have a lot of friends of all races, and I would never intentionally set out to offend someone like that. This was almost 10 years ago, and racial tensions were not the same as today.”
Last week the PC party, based on the content of the package, decided it would not allow Strange to represent the Tories.
Party president Rick Dykstra, who declined to disclose last week what photos disqualified Strange, said Friday the blackface and gorilla mask photos weighed heavily in the party’s decision.
“If you have seen those photos, you will know why they are troublesome,” Dykstra said.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said Friday that the Mike Strange he knows would not intentionally do something to hurt anyone.
“Mike is not a racist. Absolutely not a racist. Mike has a huge heart and has made important contributions to our community,” Diodati said. “Knowing Mike as I do, I am sure he is sick over this and will have a sleepless night. This is not who he is.”
The mayor said that everyone has, in hindsight, things in their past they would change if they could.