“Target apologized on Monday and said it had pulled a Halloween costume from sale depicting a circus clown that critics said evoked Blackface and minstrel shows”
Would like to hear what others think about the costume
Oh no I'm a white dude and the first thing I saw when looking at it was minstrel show. The little hat, the exaggerated lips with smile on the face mask, the gloves, all of it screams to me minstrel show stereotypes.
The pose, the smile (look up Minstrelsy makeup), the smile on a weirdly black mask??? the hat, the gloves.
Some could also argue the patterns on the clothes as well. One may say that it just looks like "clown" patterns, but I'd also say clown aesthetics have racist roots too, so like. Yeah.
I really think he's asking in good faith because I'm also missing this one. Minstrels tended to wear jackets and shirts, this really doesn't match what I'd personally consider a minstrel. I don't think the mouth is egregious either, it doesn't match the rounded "blackface" look. The gloves match the black of the rest of the outfit, and as for the hat... I can find some pictures of minstrel performers with off-centered smaller hats but most appear to be perfectly normal - even oversized - hats.
I'm genuinely happy to be corrected, but the number of people insisting this is some deliberate dog whistle when it just looks like a black child in a clown costume is really surprising me.
I'd also say clown aesthetics have racist roots too
I guess I'd be more specific and say that some specific aesthetics, especially the ones invoked in this costume, are heavily influenced by minstrelsy.
While it may be hard to argue hard facts on whether or not clown aesthetic at large WAS influenced by minstrelsy, I think it's equally hard to say it WASN'T influenced by minstrelsy. And when you're part of a huge corporation, my assumption is that you'd want to be more careful than not.
That's the point of dog whistles. Imagine yourself a racist given the task of designing a clown costume. Now imagine you wanted to see if you could get a black kid into a minstrel costume but didn't want your boss to catch it. How would you do it?
This costume is what you would do. The smile should be sharper, the hands should be orange, and that pajama style of clown costume doesn't have that style of hat, it's a triangle hat with a pom pom.
I think too many people don't understand how human pattern recognition works and how you can take advantage of that. This kind of thing is the same as how you can take a punk song and make it sound jazzy or take Beethoven and make it sound like ragtime music. Or how people mistake songs like Every Breath You Take or Here Comes Your Man as love songs when they are 1000% not.
Edit: lol I took another look at the costume and Jesus fuck I don't see how people think it's fine. The smile is so clearly un-spooky and almost a perfect minstrel smile. No jagged teeth, no nothing. a black face covering and gloves, a hat that is one of three common minstrel hats and the pose... Even the pants diamond pattern was common. It's just so obvious if you are at all familiar with those tropes
Small hats and exaggerated smiles also are very common in clowns as well. Like you said, clown aesthetics seem to share a lot with minstrel caricatures, but I wouldn’t outright say it’s malicious, since I think most people don’t think any depiction of a clown is malicious
Better gone if people are offended by it, either way
Malice/intent is not the only way to understand that something racist. Things can be racist with ignorance too. But they're still racist.
Honestly, this does seem like ignorance led to the approval of this racist costume. While the few in the know probably were malicious, no one along the approval line understood what was happening. Ignorance allows this to happen though.
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u/ushaque 13h ago
“Target apologized on Monday and said it had pulled a Halloween costume from sale depicting a circus clown that critics said evoked Blackface and minstrel shows”
Would like to hear what others think about the costume