Is it acceptable to black up your child for a fancy dress parade as Tiger Woods?

[nevergoogle]

Town parade today. One group of children (about 6-8 years old) called the tigers, all dressed as little furry tigers and one dressed as a blacked up golfer. Actual black face paint not brown.

Discuss...

(also, do i need to move?)

Ooh, no.

FGS no.

lordy

Move.

Quickly.

only been here a year, it's not too late!

Good grief. Where do you live?

I live in the UK. I think it's 2010.

i don't think i want to say where i live.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Please don't give me a pasting for asking this question, but how would you explain to a child why this is unacceptable, particularly if that child emulated and admired Tiger Woods, and really wanted to dress up as him?

How would you articulate it?

Good god - am stunned

I wonder if you're anywhere near me, nevergoogle. I can imagine something similar happening here. In fact, the touristy shop down the road still sells golliwogs, which made me the first time I saw them. (Well, and subsequent times too tbh.)

It's no defence, but historically it's a monocultural area, though slowly becoming more diverse. There are (gasp) three non-white children in dd2's class of 30.

i doubt very much this was about hero-worshipping on the child's part. this was obviously the work of the parents.

well, that may well be the case, I agree, nevergoogle. But assuming for the sake of argument that this was an innocent scenario, how do you explain why? I'm not surprised in the slightest at the general consensus, I just wondered if, after the initial "gosh no!" reaction, whether people agreed on the reasons behind this general opinion?

wouldn't it have been sweet and humorous to have a golfer amongst the group without the black paint though? we would still have got the gag.

Because the whole "black and white minstrel" thing was much more problematic than ever donning a red wig has been.

wow. That's appalling.

Maryz, because of the history. Horrible Black 'n' White minstrels stuff.

I doubt very much any child is going to ask to wear black face paint to look like a Black person - it's not the same colour, anyway. But if they did, I'd explain that in the olden days nasty people used to wear face paint to make fun of Black people, because the nasty ones thought having white skin made them special. And isn't that silly? But that means wearing black face paint to imitate a Black person might hurt someone's feelings. (And have the whole blue eyes/brown eyes conversation.)

Hmm, I'm a little ambivalent about this too. Because it's not a matter of blacking your face to portray a generic 'black person', it's about putting on a costume to be a specific person you don't look like. How would everyone feel about a black kid painting his/her face white to be David Beckham?

Poor kid, I bet none of the others wanted to parade with him and the other parents were v sniffy with him. Parents must be tonto!

But wearing black face paint wouldn't make them look anything like Tiger Woods.

If Barack Obama ever visits, would your town ask all the children to don the black paint then?

Or have we moved on a bit now?