Frontpage Mag by
Can a man’s face be racist?
Last year, for Black History Month, Franck Sylvestre was canceled for racial stereotypes even though he’s black. Now he’s suing the Red Coalition which claims to fight “systemic racism”.
Sylvestre was born in France to parents from the French West Indies, he moved to Montreal and began putting on his own productions which combined music, slam poetry, dance and, this is where he got into trouble, puppetry.
While Sylvestre’s previous black history month shows had gone without a hitch, he began presenting ‘L’incroyable secret de Barbe Noire’ or ‘The Incredible Secret of Blackbeard’, meant for children, in which he acts out the part of a boy from his island home who on hearing a story from his grandfather discovers a treasure chest with gold from Cortez, of the famed pirate himself (while wearing a pink mask and wielding a wooden pirate sword), and a puppet.
The puppet is black.
Sylvestre’s family had originated from Martinique, once the haunt of Blackbeard, and his shows had incorporated stories and legends from the West Indies. The puppet, named Max, is supposed to be a caricature of himself who steps into the story. Making lookalike and caricature puppets is common enough in puppetry, but the rules are different for Sylvestre and his face.
After a decade of performing the award-winning play for kids, suddenly there were complaints and demands that the Blackbeard show be canceled.
The Red Coalition, an “anti-racism group”, held a press conference attacking a Montreal city for its “tolerance of a clearly racist children’s play featuring a grotesque blackface puppet.”
“I hope that the artist knows that in North America, the climate that we are in now, a blackface puppet, is totally not acceptable,” another professional anti-racist declared. “It’s not about being censored … it’s time for a change.”
Allison Saunders, a BLM rally organizer and school commissioner, claimed that she felt “disrespected” when she saw the puppet.
Can a man’s face be racist? According to professional anti-racists, it can and it is…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (frontpagemag.com)
Home | Caravan to Midnight (zutalk.com)
Be First to Comment