IN the last few years, it has seemed that perhaps America's long-buried history of blackface is being allowed to peek out of the closet. Bob Dylan named his most recent studio album "Love and Theft," after Eric Lott's landmark 1993 study of the form; and in his curious 2003 film, "Masked and Anonymous," Dylan even got Ed Harris to "black up" for a scene. Spike Lee also explored the subject in "Bamboozled," and competing biographies of Stepin Fetchit joined "Where Dead Voices Gather," Nick Tosches' meditation on the minstrel superstar Emmett Miller, on bookshelves. "Old Dan Tucker," the opening track...