re: Young Fan Blackface Nightmare Fuel Part II: Baby Balotelli

quote:

---

black face actors played the roles of blacks to make them look stupid and slow

---

What? That's not the reason they used black face... obviously they probably had many characters who were "black" in the context of the play be negative characters due to the misguided perception of them in the day, but they didn't use black face to say stupid, they used black face to remind the audience of a black person which then relies on what the audience already thinks about black people (which might in fact be stupid and slow at that time)