Blackface controversy highlights Quebec’s media diversity issue

Defenders of the practice don’t seem to get why it’s so deeply offensive

It’s disturbing how during this, the first week of Black History Month, some Quebec media personalities are mounting vigorous defences in support of blackface or, as they frame it, freedom: the freedom to continue excluding minorities from a star system that is disproportionally white and FrancoCatholic.

Irritated by the insistence of Radio- Canada bosses that a black actor be used to portray discredited journalist François Bugingo in the year- ending Bye Bye sketch show, actor and producer Louis Morissette penned a rather uninspired thinkpiece.

“I don’t understand why we had to cede to threats from a handful of people who would give us a hard time if we dared to use blackface,” he wrote ( seriously — Morissette wrote that in the latest issue of Véro, now on newsstands), presumably suggesting that a member of his entirely white, pure laine cast should have played Bugingo, wearing black makeup. In the end, Quebec’s most prolific black actor, Normand Braithwaite, was brought in specially for the role.

The perception among some Quebec media figures that using blackface is akin to, as Morissette wrote, mocking a public figure who is obese or disabled is rooted in extreme ignorance. This is not a debate about political correctness, government censorship or comedic licence. The practice of putting black makeup on white actors is perceived as a specific reference; a trigger, for members of black communities, to North America’s shameful history of minstrel theatre. The shows were intrinsically racist; blacks were portrayed in demeaning, stereotypical ways for whites’ amusement.

“Blackface may have started in the United States,” explained political commentator Rachel Décoste, a strong critic of Morissette, “but there were shows in Sherbrooke, Montreal and Quebec City. Calixa Lavallée, who wrote our national anthem, O Canada, actually worked as a blackface theatre person for 12 years.”

So it’s difficult for Quebecers and other Canadians to take the moral high ground on racial insensitivity. Décoste’s argument is practically bulletproof, but she and other critics were labelled by Morissette as “mosquitos.”

That group of mosquitosturned- petitioners includes prominent journalists, actors, politicians, lawyers, academics and other high- profile leaders who are the furthest thing from the pests or social media trolls that Morissette made them out to be.

While he and others who have defended the use of blackface in recent years are typically not purposefully racist, the effect is similar. The semantic debate over whether or not these portrayals are indeed blackface or simply white actors wearing black makeup is irrelevant because, whatever it is, it’s tacky, cheap and eerily resembles minstrel theatre. A critical mass of community members are hurt by these displays, and that is sufficient reason for creators to end the practice once and for all.

The use of blackface also keeps already underemployed black actors out of work, hearkening back to a time where blacks were commonly denied employment opportunities, including as actors.

In mismanaging her own blackface controversy last year, Théâtre du Rideau Vert director Denise Filiatrault seemed offended at the offence taken by black Quebecers after her white actor played Canadiens defenceman P. K. Subban.

Her response: “There will be no more black characters. It’s finished.”

The insensitivity is hardly surprising when Filiatrault and her media defenders like Journal de Montréal columnist Sophie Durocher have very few colleagues of colour. In political commentary at Le Journal, there are virtually no minorities at all and no members of black communities among the newspaper’s 68 commentators.

There is one line in Morissette’s piece that I can wholeheartedly endorse. It would be a shame, he wrote, to live in a society that is “boring, sterilized, beige and flavourless.” Perhaps he should take his own advice the next time he decides to produce television that is almost exclusively for and by white, Franco- Catholic Quebecers.

Diversity is not boring. If media institutions continue to be so ethnically monotonous, creators like Morissette shouldn’t be the least bit surprised that some confuse productions for modern minstrel theatre.