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[ratcreature]

I don't really care much one way or the other about Epiphany caroling for charity. I mean this being a Protestant region it is not done as much, so usually I don't see any, but for some reason the Catholic church kicked of their charity campaign from my city this year. So they got a fair bit of attention. And they certainly manage to collect a lot of money for children's charity projects. But I really wish they would cut out the blackface in the Three Magi costuming.

Comments

[caiusmajor]

...holy shit, WHAT. D:

At least you don't live in the Netherlands?

[ratcreature]

I strongly suspect if you did Zwarte Piet here, few would find it problematic either. The casual racism is appalling. And it is not even a traditional "requirement" of the character costumes either (not that that would excuse anything), after all which of the Magi, if any, is depicted as black in depictions varies anyway, along with the ideas where they came from. I mean, I realize that the problems of blackface are not as high profile in the collective consciousness here as in the US, but it is not rocket science to realize that it is based on and perpetuates racist caricatures.

I guess it kind of pales in the priority lists behind racist hate crimes and police brutality and racist profiling and such, and the myriad of other more obvious instances of racism. And yet, here you have a bunch of basically well meaning people, and they are centrally organized too in the charity campaign, so how hard could it be for the church to do some sort of memo to all participating congregations, explaining that they'd prefer no black face in the costumes and why? Not that other parts of Three Magi costumes are entirely unproblematic, but it would still be better.

[kwentiel.livejournal.com]

Hello. I love your recommendations, thank you very much.
Sorry if I sound patronizing, I don't know if you knew it, but the black maggi it's a medieval tradition. They thought that there was a Wise Man to worship Jesus for every part of the world they knew; so we (catholics) usually represent an Asian man (usually from India), an European man and an African man (usually black, sometimes from Egypt) as the Three Wise Men.
Sorry if this offends you, but it is only a tradition that our children love and it isn't done as a joke or with disrespect to anyone.
Please, forgive my language mistakes, but I'm spanish and english is not my mother tongue.
Than you for your fanfic recommendations and artworks.

Almu

[ratcreature]

Hi, I'm glad you enjoy my art and recs.

I have to disagree about the blackface though. I am aware that some pictures depict one of the Wise Men as black. AFAIK there is no consistency which one that is, and also regional variations among different Christians where they speculate they might have come from. Here traditional depictions vary. And all that does not change that blackface for any kind of costuming is widely considered offensive in the present day, because of the traditions that blackface references which are not medieval magi (no matter whether artist renderings in scenes show one as black, I have yet to see a medieval painting showing a white man painted as black charicature), but racist comedies and horribly distorted depictions of Africans in colonialist tradition.

The children could easily carol and dress up without using racist costuming. There could maybe still problematic orientalism in the costumes, but it would not nearly be so bad. And actually plenty of the children go in groups without anyone wearing blackface.