Historical background
Yellow/brown/red/black-face are terms for the act of racial impersonation, usually in film and television but also during other times like for Halloween. Blackface has its roots in minstrelsy in the United States which began sometime in the early 1800’s, when white performers would darken their skin with makeup and perform exaggerated and racialized songs and dances based on Black Americans that perpetuated stereotypes and mocked African American vernacular. ”Blackface popularized inaccurate representations of blacks while preventing blacks from representing themselves” (University of South Florida Libraries, 2012). The act was and still is dehumanizing, and it both introduced and reinforced harmful stereotypes. Long after the abolition of slavery, these views continued to shape America’s perception of Black Americans.
As with slavery, Blackface is simply another form of Black exploitation, but instead of Black labour, it is Blackness itself that is taken out of context to serve and consolidate the white supremacist identity of the nation (Lane, 2008).
Yellowface, like Blackface, is an act that centers whiteness, disregarding real Asian people’s experiences and realities. By controlling Asian representation through impersonating them, this is a way to maintain the status quo and “contain” Asianness” (Vats and Nishime, 2013). It is no consequence that Yellowface in the United States rose in popularity during waves of high Asian immigration, reflecting the nation’s anxieties about globalization, outside threat, and fear of the other and the Yellow Peril. This also helped to justify discriminatory policies (Vats and Nishime, 2013).
The breakdown! Who benefits and loses?
The film Crazy Rich Asians, based on the bestselling novel of the same name, comes out August 2018. It is the first mainstream Hollywood film featuring an entirely Asian cast since the Joy Luck Club, which was released 25 years prior. The 25 years in between was a quiet period in mainstream film for Asian actors to find meaningful work or represent themselves. Film is a powerful medium for storytelling, and when minorities are left out, gaps are missing from history. Although the term 'whitewashing' is used instead of 'yellowface' today, these forms of erasure still reflect the fears towards the other that white society has.
The verdict:
Basically, any type of racial impersonation is always a bad idea. Just don’t do it. Race is not a costume. We placed yellow/black/red/brown face high on the exploitation scale and high on the offensive scale. The long history of deliberate erasure and control towards racial groups are still felt today when characters who are clearly written to be x race are played by a white actor. Influential people have the responsibility to speak out against these practices and make space for racialized actors to represent themselves.
