Ethiopian Skits and Sketches: Contents and Contexts of Blackface Minstrelsy, 1840–1890

Abstract

Blackface minstrelsy is a troublesome topic in popular culture studies. Because burn-cork comedy originated and thrived in a racist society, many scholars and most nonscholars believe that minstrelsy's primary purpose was the creation and perpetuation of demeaning caricatures or untruthful portraits of African-Americans. Most studies published since the early 1960s emphasize the negative effects of blackface comedy or focus on the development of the principal stereotypes (the urban dandy and the shiftless plantation hand) rather than on the interpretive significance of blackface comedy within the broader context of American ethnic humor. While it is essential that minstrelsy's negative characteristics be explored and explained as overt manifestations of the racist attitudes many Americans shared, the narrow focus on race and/or racism as the primary feature of blackface entertainment limits the application of the interdisciplinary methods and interpretive strategies needed to understand the content and context of one of the most popular forms of American comedy. The limitations imposed by restrictive methodologies can be removed, however, if historians reconsider a few of the issues that have been bypassed in most recent studies of American minstrelsy, namely, (1) the nonracial contents of blackface comedy; (2) the treatment of nonblack ethnic groups; (3) the socializing and class-defining functions of minstrel show humor; (4) the importance of minstrel shows as evidence of American ideas about politics, work, gender differences, domestic life, courtship, and marriage; (5) the use of the burnt-cork “mask” as a vehicle for reflexive, self-deprecating humor among various social, ethnic, and economic groups; and (6) the relationships between minstrel shows and other forms of American and English theater.