Harry Connick Jr SLAMS Australian Racist Skit, Host Apologizes

[HipChick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMAyGewq37w&feature=player_embedded


http://www.monstersandcritics.com/smallscreen/news/article_1505706.php/Harry-Connick-Jr-hero-or-hypocrite-Aussie-TV-show-black-face-skit

The performance of singing group, the "Jackson Jive" pushed Harry Connick Jr to speak out and reason with the host that black-faced performers were insulting in this day and age.The performance of singing group, the "Jackson Jive" pushed Harry Connick Jr to speak out and reason with the host that black-faced performers were insulting in this day and age. Connick Jr. asked host Daryl Somers to rethink airing an act that made buffoons out of blacks.
"If I knew that was going to be part of the show I definitely wouldn't have done it," he said.

[lillypaddle]

1. Good for Harry

:applause:

[anigbrowl]

2. Good move, but I'm not all that exercised about the issue

Blackface is a big deal in the US, but not so much in other countries because it was never an established tradition that fostered discrimination. When I first moved moved to the Netherlands, I discovered they celebrate differently - Dec 25th is for going to Church but Santa Claus (dressed as a bishop and called Sinterklaas) brings presents to the kids around Dec 10th (I think). Sinterklaas has an assistant called Zwart Piet (Black Pete) who's a little boy that helps him out with the present giving.

So every year they have a Sinterklaas parade and thee are lots of dutch men dressed up as Sinterklaas, and lots of Dutch boys made up in blackface dressed up as Zwart Piet - white boys, that is. There are not a lot of black people in the Netherlands, maybe 3-4%. This blew my mind the first time I saw it, for obvious reasons, and I asked one of my black friends whether he wasn't terribly offended by it, to which he said he was happy that white kids wanted to be black for a day :shrug:

Australia strikes me a rather racist country in general (you only have to look into the history of how aborigines were treated) but it's more complex than that as a lot of white Australians ended up there because they'd been transported from Britain as criminals and exiled to Australia so there's a weird sort of reverse colonialism dynamic. The minstrel thing just doesn't have the same cultural baggage that it does here in the US because it wasn't institutionalizsed over there to as it was in the US. So to me it came across as wildly insensitive/clueless rather than nasty.

What's even weirder is the video at your second link showing Harry Connick performing in a sketch with a group of black comedians...in blackface. Plus the fact that three of the guys performing in blackface aren't white - one's Indian, one's Sri Lankan, one's Arabic (-Australian in all cases). The closer you look the harder it is to draw a clear line about what is or isn't offensive, a lot of it depends on context.

[timeforpeace]

3. He's still alive? haven't heard that name in twenty or more years.