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Blacking-up whilst Morris Dancing… that’s a bit dodgy, right?
May 10th, 2009 at 01:55
At risk of sounding like I’ve either got a vendetta against morris dancers, or am a big fan of them, due to how frequently I seem to write about them, I saw some more Morris Dancing today.
My friend Eve and I were passing through Trafalgar Square today when we stumbled upon literally hundreds of Morris Dancers – it was all because of this. We hung around for a few minutes to take in what can loosely be described as “culture” (ie: old men prancing around), and to enjoy the amusing juxtaposition with some Falun Gong dancers who were also on the square waving their traditional hankies around too (theirs were red) – it was almost like a dance battle were taking place.
One thing that stunned us though were that one troop of Morris Dancers had blacked up. It’s just not something you’d expect to see in this century, let alone in a city as diverse and cosmopolitan as London. Clearly these country bumpkins who’d been bussed in for the day were as familiar with social progress as I imagine they are with modern technological wonders like the wheelbarrow or not marrying their cousins.
As we moved closer, to try to verify that yes, there really were blacked up men dancing on Trafalgar Square, a couple heard Eve saying “Well this isn’t very politically correct, is it?”
“Ah, but how do you know they’ve ‘blacked up’? They could have blackened their faces to be like miners, as they’re from rural England, and Morris Dancing was around before they knew about black people”, they said quite smugly, having shown us young people who’s boss.
It was at this point that we had to make a decision: how to respond? Obviously, the route I’d usually take in such a situation would be to troll them, and try and wind them up – but unlike most people who I’ll try to wind up, they were on the older side of middle-aged, so my genetic programming to be polite to old strangers kicked in and prevented me from jumping on my high-horse.
In the end, I responded with a rather tepid “Well, it doesn’t reflect terribly well on them, does it?” followed by explaining that Eve and I were members of the “PC Brigade”.
Seizing the moment, the wife of this couple delivered a knock-out blow in the tête-à-tête, by wryly wondering aloud if that by presuming that it was racist, when it might not be, that makes Eve and I the racists? The logic was pretty sound – after all, if I were to speculate that Robert Mugabe were a nasty, totalitarian bastard, when it turns out that he’s actually a lovely old man, that makes me the nasty, totalitarian bastard. The couple walked off, smugly, with their metaphorical copies of the Daily Express under their arms.
However, what makes this interesting that having since done some research – it turns out that the blacked-up Morris dancers was almost certainly playing on racial stereotypes. Here and here explain that blacking-up is something to do with North African origins of the practice. And as if this isn’t explicit enough, one Morris Dancing group based in the North West are called the ‘Britannia Coco-nut Dancers’ and you can see from their photos that they look like they enjoy blacking up.
So in a way, we were sort of right – they were blacking-up, and I guess the ethical question of “blacking up isn’t really on, is it?” remains for you to decide.
But take THAT old couple who I’ll never speak to ever again. I win at Morris Dancing factual accuracy.
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