RE: The performances were intended to be funny to white audiences. But to the black community, they were demeaning and hurtful.
The obvious next question is WHY?
But to ask is to be condemned as racist already. Ask Megyn Kelly.
They were demeaning and hurtful because they mocked blacks, who were a hated underclass, as stupid fools. There were intended to be demeaning and hurtful. That was the whole joke from start to finish.
I saw, recently, some B movie made on the 1940s. It was about a series of murders at a radio station. Along the way a white bellboy in blackface and a black porter do a comedy bit together. The bellboy was the clown and the black guy was the straight man. Didn’t look too demeaning to me.
The nastiest white hating, race baiting person in Congress is Maxine Waters......she wears white womens hair. I will never understand why she would hide an African American genetic trait under a hair hat, especially with all the rage she has towards white people.
Yet it’s quite alright to offend whites, males, Southerners, farmers, small towners. Liberal use of “evil white Christians,” “rednecks” (Gee, have you ever seen a non white “Redneck”?) And of course, Hollyweird with movie after movie after TV show of bad or stupid Southern people, et al
You’d be offended too if your boss made a point of demeaning you just for cheap laughs.
Because they depicted black people as, not to put too fi an edge on it, sub human.
I get it. I never thought it was the least bit entertaining—even when Pryor and Gene Wilder did it.
Even back in the late 70’s and early 80’s I cannot recall seeing anyone dressed up like that “in real life.”