Blackface ‘not racist’
The chairwoman of Ha¯ wera Mt View Lions Club has defended its decision to wear blackface at the Taranaki town’s A&P parade on Friday, saying it was not racist.
Joy Babington said afterward: ‘‘It’s a shame we have to apologise for something we were out in the community doing that had nothing to do with racism and all the rest of it.
‘‘For goodness sake, we’re a Lions club, we put a float in every year, we didn’t have a theme this year, so we decided to go black and white, and they had face paint because they were painting kids’ faces and the rest of it, so we painted our faces.
‘‘What’s wrong with that? Some small-minded, bigoted person has called us racist, threatened to bash us up; it’s not worth replying to,’’ Babington said.
There has been a lot of outrage at the club’s decision to wear blackface.
Six people, including a child, painted their faces black and sat among black and white balloons on its float.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, of Nga¯ ti Ruanui, posted a photo of the float on Facebook: ‘‘Tonight’s Hawera parade . . . showed BLACKFACED RACISTS are well & truly alive!’’
The club defended its decision in a post on Facebook, saying it was ‘‘by no means meant to be derogatory as a racist commentary [sic] rather a celebration of all cultures.
‘‘What if these person [sic] had been dressed up representing Maori [sic] wabine [sic] and warriors. Would that have been offensive too?’’
It later deleted its Facebook page altogether, but not before Ngarewa-Packer shared the post.
She said the club’s statement was weak. ‘‘They truly don’t believe what they’ve done is offensive. It shows poor judgment and takes no responsibility. Total disregard to a race that was ridiculed and marginalised by the whole culture of black minstrels.
‘‘To sit and say it was multicultural didn’t make any sense, because it was clearly targeted at one race.’’
She said the real disappointment was that they were community leaders who do good but no sausage sizzle could excuse their behaviour on Friday.
Ngarewa-Packer said there was an uneasy silence in her group when they first spotted the float. But it was the public calling them out, not iwi, she said.
‘‘One colleague spoke about her young son even saying, ‘Mum, that’s racist’. There was just a total sense of disbelief.
‘‘The disappointing part of this is there were checkpoints all the way through. There was the float, there were the organisers of the parade and it is just astounding that in 2018, that nobody took any ownership and said, ‘This is wrong’. It shouldn’t be up to us to call out an event so public.’’
Former New Plymouth district mayor Andrew Judd, who has referred to himself as a recovering racist and has campaigned for Ma¯ ori wards in Parliament, took to Facebook to share his outrage at the float, calling it ‘‘absolutely disgusting’’.
In one of its posts, the Lions Club said: ‘‘Let’s not be too precious or PC.
‘‘This group of ladies work very hard for you the community and support all the diverse cultures within it.
‘‘Next parade let’s see you participate and join in the celebration that is the Agricultural
‘‘It was never our intention to offend anyone. We got this wrong. We were naive. We are really disappointed in ourselves.’’
Ha¯ wera Lions Club president Stephanie Jordan
and Pastural [sic] heritage of our district.’’
Blackface is a form of makeup used predominantly by non-black performers to represent a caricature or stereotype of a black person. Originating in the United States in the early 19th century, blackface was used in minstrel shows, which featured comic skits, music and dancing to mock people of African descent.
After Stuff spoke to Ha¯wera Lions Club, president Stephanie Jordan issued a statement.
‘‘We sincerely apologise for our choice of float,’’ she said. ‘‘It was never our intention to offend anyone. We got this wrong. We were naive. We are really disappointed in ourselves.
‘‘We are a voluntary organisation that is involved in many projects that help people make our community better.
‘‘We have learnt a big lesson from this and will be more aware of these sorts of things going forward.’’