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Why is there such a negative connotation with minstrelsy? Is there a reason “Mr. Bojangles” is tragic, moreso than other aging, washed-up, drunken, criminal showmen? Or, more to the point, more than your average oppressed black person? A particular sort—the same ones known to harp on Uncle Tomism—speak of minstrel shows as if I’m supposed to automatically perceive something pathetic and sinister about them. I don’t get it.

We’re supposed to shed tears, I gather, because black people made fools of themselves for our amusement. Reminds me of how they speak of certain 70s B movies as “blaxploitation.” To which I might respond, who’s being exploited? The audience? They’re enjoying themselves, and if that’s “exploitation,” were Burt Reynolds’ Southern anti-hero hillybilly romps “whitesploitation”?

But I digress. The point is, Bill Robinson was a song and dance man, people liked him, and also he was black. Since everything from the past looks fuddy-duddy to us, when we see his black face in a straw hat dancing with Shirley Temple, we cringe. But it has little to do with race, exploitation, or whatever, actually. There’s no reason to believe he was exploited, degraded, or whatever, more than white tap dancers nowadays considered lame. Or any more exploited than Sammy Davis was relative to Dean Martin. Or Steve Urkel relative to Screech.

This whole “minstel show” thing is PC nonsense. It’s the same thing with how “negro” or “colored” suddenly became insulting. Things that were once acceptable must be made unacceptable. Otherwise, we eventually wouldn’t need cultural commissars to guide us to the promised land of milk, honey, diversity, and tolerance. If unsuspecting white people were allowed to tune into a movie from 1935 and not be shocked by the portrayal of black people, they might stop trusting that contemporary PC is necessary.

I’m sure black minstrels had as gay a time as medieval (white) minstrels, other things being equal.