Funny or Disgraceful?

     In American Studies today, we had a discussion on the Minstrels of the 1800's. For those of you who don't know, Minstrels were people who dressed up in different costumes, and put on shows for money. Many of these minstrels were African American people. Some of these African American Minstrels would mock themselves, putting on a skit of jokes about African American stereotypes. Since it was so profitable, white people began to doing the same kinds of shows. To make matters even worse, the white person would cake their face in charcoal, to give the impression that they were actually black, these people were called black faces. I saw a recreated version of such a skit on an informative website about these black faces. I urge you to check out this link to watch this video. It gave me chills and filled me with disgust that someone could mock such an innocent class.
To make matters EVEN worse, sometimes the blacks would also paint their faces black, so they could make even more fun of themselves. It seemed so weird to me that people would do such a thing. Go on stage and make fun of themselves, and dehumanize their own race and culture.
My research was cut short because I had to go with my advisory to see our schools "Lagniappe" show. Every year, my school puts on a play called Lagniappe. In this show, written by students with no teacher input allowed, skits are put together making fun of our school and community. Immediately my mind went back to the Minstrels. Never before have I really questioned why we do this show at our school, but always just enjoyed the hilarious skits making fun of everything from our teachers to stereotypical "north shore moms". But there was an unmissable connection between the two. Both were satirical shows pointing out the flaws of a certain culture. I began to wonder if a really these types of shows were a bad thing? I never thought of Lagniappe as rude demoralizing our culture. But since learning about the Minstrel shows, my old favorite Lagniappe show seemed like a disrespectful practice. Knowing that the two different events were on much different scales (Lagniappe not being none to anyone really outside of our New Trier community) made me feel better. But I still wonder if the roots of these satirical shows really make them wrong to see.