#minstrelsy — Public Fediverse posts

“Ever heard of the Savannah Bananas? They're a baseball team with millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram — known as much for their dance routines and shenanigans as their actual baseball. Now their league, Banana Ball, has resurrected the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro League team with a contentious history of racial minstrelsy. We chop it up with journalist Josh Levin, who followed the Clowns through their Banana Ball debut.” #Baseball #race #NegroLeague #Minstrelsy
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/13/nx-s1-5814745/what-the-savannah-bananas-have-to-do-with-race-and-baseball

When I was a child in the late 50s through early 60s, "I'm not racist!", white people still claimed we were too sensitive if we reacted to racist remarks and their collecting racist memorabilia from pickaninny dolls, salt and pepper shakers, piggy banks to celebratory lynching postcards with smiling white families dressed in their Sunday best beside the hanging body were also NOT racist.

The Ugliest Trope in Modern Horror
GoldFro aka Scrapple Roan
@goldfro.bsky.social
#BlackMastodon #RacialHierarchy #Blackface #Minstrelsy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK_jVFslcsA

Watching David Harewood's documentary on #Minstrelsy & #Blackface contained the (oddly) shocking seldom seen footage of Judy Garland, Bing Crosby & Fred Astaire in blackface.... now edited out when the respective films are shown....

fascinating stuff....

Fellow academics:

Strongly consider changing your syllabi now, and designing assignments that can't be fulfilled by #AI chatbots. Even better, consider only assigning work that students will actually be excited to do themselves (for instance, autobiographical essays).

I just got OpenAI to write a better essay on #minstrelsy & US #popmusic than most of my UG students could muster, in about 1 second.