Justin from Canada

Only a month before the 2019 Canadian federal election, Time Magazine released the first photo of the current prime minster, Justin Trudeau, in brownface while he was a teacher at the West Point Grey Academy. Trudeau was dressed as a caricature of an Arab man for an Arabian nights themed party. This isn’t the first time a politician has been outed for sporting racially degrading attire. Ralph Northam  and Mark Herring of Virginia, Michael Ertel of Florida, Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brant Tomlinson of South Carolina, Hal Patton of Illinois, Robbie Gatti Jr. of Louisiana, and Dov Hikind of New York name a few of the many white, male politicians who dress up in blackface—dressing as anything from a DJ to a Katrina Victim– only with the occasional apology.  

To understand the cultural context for blackface, we must take a deep dive into our country’s racial history of minstrelsy. Minstrelsy was a form of American entertainment that begun in the 19th century. In the 1830s, a white man named Thomas Dartmouth Rice came to fame as a minstrel performer. Known as “the negro par excellence,” Rice imitated black music to entertain white crowds, which included painting his face with burned cork and adding a deep layer of black paint to pretend to be the enslaved people he was impersonating. Blackface minstrelsy delighted the white people of this racially segregated country, allowing racism to be a blunt, overt form of entertainment. After the civil war, black performers were allowed to become blackface minstrels, playing into the established racial guidelines set by the white minstrel performers—white minstrels were showing black minstrels how white audiences want blackness to be performed. Here, white people are showing black people how to operate as a black person, as if race is a concept that can be performed through mere makeup. This was one of the few ways black performers could make money, although they almost always functioned as a last-minute replacement for white performers and were more likely to be poorly received by the white audience. 

History shows that blackface rarely slows a candidate down.

This appropriated blackness continued into the 20th century and even today through the performance of blackness from blaxploitation films to Jay Z’s The Story of O.J. Blaxploitation is a genre of film that relies on the stereotypical depiction of a black man, portraying the black character as criminal, thug, and gang affiliated. This is how white audiences wanted to see black people perform, not as an educated, law-abiding person, but fitting into a stereotype. Jay Z’s music video, The Story of O.J., focuses on the historical depiction of black people in film, from dehumanized to oversexualized, and about the accumulation and racial exclusivity of wealth. While white people have accumulated wealth, black people have historically been exploited, from slavery to modern entertainment. Black music is heard, reproduced, appropriated, and critiqued throughout the world, but appreciating black music is drastically separated from respecting black culture. By labelling blackface as equivalent to wearing makeup, one ignores the historical devaluation of black people through the white creation of blackness in American entertainment. 

American history, however, is not always parallel to Canadian history. Canada is stereotypically a figure of progressivism on issues ranging from race to sexuality to the environment. Even in the 19th century, Canada was known as a safe haven for runaway slaves escaping their hell in America. However, Canada had slavery until its abolition in 1834, only 31 years before Lincoln declared the abolition of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation. Starting in 1843, minstrelsy began in Canada and was common into the 1970s, years after this popular form of entertainment became taboo elsewhere in the world. Although Canada claims to be a post-racial society, similar to the United States after the election of Barack Obama, it has a history that it chooses not to face and in doing so, history resurfaces. 

Justin Trudeau sets himself apart from the divisive, racialized rhetoric of Donald Trump, but these photos show that this progressive divide might not be that large of a divide after all. Trudeau’s future was in the hands of the Canadian populace, and he was running with multiple accusations against him. Not only did Trudeau have three documented accounts of appearing in blackface (an occurrence so common that he is unable to produce an exact number of times he has worn blackface), but he was also facing a corruption scandal. This scandal encompassed Trudeau allegedly pressuring his former attorney general in 2018. Specifically, Trudeau was requesting the attorney general to help SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. settle corruption charges before it came to court. 

Trudeau’s fall from power questions the narrative that makes Canada and progressiveness synonymous.

However, even with other political candidates to choose from in an election year, history shows that blackface rarely slows a candidate down. Take Ralph Northam, for example. The Virginian Governor was faced with a blackface scandal, but the media uproar did not affect voters enough to ask for his resignation, even amongst black voters. While 47% of white Virginians thought Northam should resign, only 37% of black Virginians agreed according to The Guardian. This hesitancy for black voters to suggest Northam resigns could be attributed to the aftermath that might follow a resignation, the election of a Republican governor. This is particularly nerve-wracking since Virginia’s neighboring state, North Carolina, recently elected a Republican governor who repealed the Racial Justice Act. Many in the black community were upset with this repeal since the act protected people of color; this act prohibited seeking the death penalty for a person on the basis of race. Faced with a mixed bag of picking a progressive person with a nasty past compared to a racist replacement, the public is boxed in to a lesser-of-two-evils corner, wherein resignation may not be the best option. In the case of Trudeau, however, there were other options.  

The 43rd Canadian General Election took place on October 21, 2019. One of the candidates, Jagmeet Singh of the New Democratic party, born to Indian immigrants and a turban-wearing Sikh man, went directly against Trudeau’s brownface costume. Singh stood for more progressive policies than Trudeau, as the New Democratic party has populist, agrarian and socialist roots, whereas Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party took on more middle-of-the-road policies, at least from Canada’s political perspective. While some claim not voting for Trudeau was a vote for the more conservative party (which was less interested in the needs of communities of color), the political system encourages multiple party representation so it was not a binary choice of right and left; Canada’s Parliament is more on a political spectrum than reduced two sides like in the United States. Singh, a human rights activist, planned to help underrepresented communities by installing dedicated hate crime units within local police forces, keep assault weapons and handguns illegal, fund anti-gang projects, and prioritize the survivor as a way to address anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, gender-based violence, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and transphobia. 

With Trudeau, however, apathy seemed to rule amongst voters, black and white alike. At first, voters were shocked by the photos of Trudeau in blackface, but with more press attention, the scandal became normalized. Voters did not condemn Trudeau himself, but rather said he should be more mindful of behavior and that people make mistakes. Mistakes, however, are not affordable for all candidates. It seems that good-looking white men tend to get away with bad behavior from their past—Brett Kavanaugh, Bill Clinton, and, for less violent acts, Ralph Northam and Justin Trudeau. 

There is no need to continue to cram our political options into a white, male spaces that thrives on appropriating black culture.

Although Trudeau has apologized for his brown and blackface scandals, we have seen through American political history that blackface tends to not set back political candidates. On October 21st, Trudeau was re-elected as Prime Minister. Trudeau’s slight fall from power (he won with a small majority) challenges the narrative that positions Canada and progressiveness as synonymous. Trudeau, constantly consciously living in the public eye, was born into national attention through his father, the beloved, progressive prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He has thus consciously calculated every move of his political career. This career was shaping up well, from his popular boxing match in 2012 with senator Patrick Brazeau to his well-practiced handshake, unleashing first from Donald Trump’s grasp, until his career, like anything perfectly crafted, began to crack. After a poorly planned trip to India and an accusation of groping a reporter in 2000, it was only a matter of time before a big breakthrough against his image gained traction. Trudeau has taken in more refugees than his predecessors by the tens of thousands, lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, helped aid Canada’s economy, and focused policy on the environment, but still, his ignorance of Canada’s racial past does not excuse his past actions that do not shine so brightly in the limelight. 

There is no need to continue to cram our political options into a white, male spaces that thrives on appropriating black culture. There is a white male privilege in politics, and the world at large, that goes beyond Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Progressive, liberal white men are entitled to having no limit to what they can get away with, from sexual assault accusations to blackface scandals. Women, from emails and DNA tests, are held to a far different standard when it comes to making mistakes. People of color run into a similar, unequal playing field, carefully analyzed for anything from the way they talk to providing proof of a birth certificate. Men, especially white, upper class, and heterosexual, have expectations to go into politics or business. It is time we broaden these expectations by holding everyone equally accountable and actually acknowledge harmful, racist behavior like blackface.