5 Feet of Fury

Gavin McInnes: What’s Wrong With Blackface?

Gavin McInnes writes:

I’m from Canada, where it’s all about French v. English, so I can approach such sacrosanct racial taboos with total ambivalence. “If it’s so wrong, you should be able to explain why,” I tell people, to which the response is usually, “Aren’t you Canadian?”

All week I’ve been asking Americans to explain exactly why blackface and minstrel shows are verboten. I’m not for or against such things per se, but I think we should be able to articulate why such rules exist. If you told me that two plus two equals five or rape should be legal, I could succinctly tell you why you’re wrong. Blackface appears to be inexplicably evil. I’d say well over half the answers were not answers at all and included questions such as, “Why would you want to?” and “Don’t you have empathy?” Here are the only 15 reasons I could squeeze out of the entire country.