Hey, hey, blackface comedy

The TV show Oz shows in fictional form the fate of so many African Americans for whom there are very few options: too often a life of violent crime, followed by jail and a violent death. It is these life patterns that Barack Obama has taken pains to identify by attempting to show men and women of colour the need to support their families; and for children to do their homework and respect their teachers.

Blackface comedy took stereotypes of blacks and exaggerated them. Blacks were portrayed as buffoons, constantly seeking sex, especially from white women. They were gross and stupid. What kind of mentality would this appeal to? The answer has to be stupid white people who are using art to keep blacks in servitude.

The Black and White Minstrel Shows used art to put blacks down by racist ridicule. Art can be, among other things, an instrument of social policy. We can see this in Nazi art, with handsome blonde Aryan soldiers defeating ugly snarling Jews and other races. There are innumerable examples from Soviet art. And early paintings of Australian Aborigines depict strange, perhaps comical, savages.

Art also needs to explore humour. But it is not funny to see people suffer, nor to find their suffering a subject for light-hearted attempts at humour. The movie Bruno mocked American thinking about race, but it did so with a bit of finesse and a glimpse of compassion.

Today the US is struggling to break free of its racist past, with a black President and some forward progress in education. Does anyone want to take us back to those evil days?

And so we come back to the blackface sketch, approved by Channel 9 in gross ignorance of the servitude and suffering of so many people of colour. No wonder Harry Connick Jr. was horrified.

We don’t want Soviet-style censorship of the press. I can hear the howls of indignation already at the mere mention of the idea. But surely there should be some controls on the jackals of the press who hold all of us up to ridicule. The ABC is publicly accountable, perhaps not as accountable as some would like. There should be better procedures for community attitudes to prevail on so-called free-to-air TV. Free to show us all up to be racist and idiotic, I suppose.

Senator Stephen Conroy and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, please take note