Talk:Brownface

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 24 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lydia Bradt.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Aziz Ansari
Indian guyLydia Bradt (talk) 20:06, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Peer Review
Thought you did a great job on this, well written and quite clear. Expand more on the stub categories, but obviously this is a first draft. Also, maybe add in pictures if you can of like Paula Deen's tweet?Briandhayes (talk) 05:59, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Seth Law review - This is a great topic, especially since there is a lot of attention in the media given to blackface highlighting a black/non-black color line when people with brown skin could be overlooked. I love your content and I'm sure its all good stuff, however, and I know this will probably go too far into the subjective area, I would love to know more information on the public or studious opinion on when or where or how it is appropriate to imitate someone with a different accent, if ever. Great work, the article is looking nice and I enjoy the modern examples of fighting brownface referencing master of none. I love that show! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarah.Angela97 (talk • contribs) 23:58, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Article name and title
Is Brownface actually known as Racial Brownface or should the article be better named as: What do you think? Regards Hughesdarren (talk) 07:43, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Brownface
 * Brownface (racism)
 * Brownface (stereotype)
 * Brownface (racist sterotype)

systemic bias
I have just had to make a couple of WP:NPOV corrections in the article, as it seems that there is an on-going issue of systemic bias which judges (an opinion) brownface to be "bad". Rebroad (talk) 18:16, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Opinion piece with no credible sources
This article says many things but fails to specify the most important part. Namely: is this even real? Not one of the cited sources define this as an existing phenomenon, and even the definition given in the first paragraph is questionable. "White person dressing up as non white person, or wearing clothes associated with another culture", and the examples provided below mostly involve actors playing fictional characters, or people dressing up as fictional characters. Most sources don't have links, so as far as I can tell without doing the legwork myself and looking them up, they might not even exist, not like that's helpful, because all of the sources are referring to individual examples, and none of them indicate that there's some greater consensus that "Racial Brownface" even exists. TVTropes appears to be cited as a source, which I'm pretty sure is NOT a reliable one, considering it's standards are much worse than Wikipedia's. And by "much worse" I mean non existent. I say this as someone who used to be an active contributor to that site for several years. The definition has no citations whatsoever. There's nothing on the history of the phanomenon and it's link to racism, beyond a vague connection made with blackface, which is something completely different. All there is are a bunch of examples backed by articles that amount to celebrity gossip. Also, this line: "It is typically defined as a racist phenomenon, whether or not the offender intended to be racist". What in the world does this even mean? Even if we disregard the odd logic, this line too is uncited, to say nothing about the shameless use of weasel words. "Typically defined" by who? Where? Which one of the unlinked sources of questionable reliability support this claim? For all I know, this is something someone came up with on the spot and wrote a Wiki article for it to give it more weight. Unless someone can prove that "Racial Brownface" is a real and generally accepted racist phenomenon, this article has no reason to exist. 46.97.170.208 (talk) 09:27, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * There are 23 sources listed in this article. Books. Academic journals. Mainstream magazine articles. NBC news, CNN and many more. Which ones are not credible and why? Your wikipedia acount is also anonymous. Thank you for your post, but you have zero reputation to be lecturing anyone on credibility. Kire1975 (talk) 13:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The article is about people dressing up as characters of a different race, yet many of the sources are referring primarily to racial stereotyping, which is something compltely different. Furthermore, there are not 23 sources listed, but rather 19, as 4 of them are listed twice. One of the sources is TVTropes, as I stated before, while the first source, the CNN article is an opinion piece that's primarily using blackface and minstrel shows to support it's claims, and you added it AFTER I made the above entry (not to mention it was something you found on short notice, for damage control purposes. The rest of the sources are either unlinked, or refer to individual fake controversies of actors playing fictional characters, or just celebrities dressing up as other people. My point stands. This article seeks to create some broad criteria that was meant to conflate racial stereotyping with people dressing up as fictional characters for halloween. It's going to take more than the personal opinion of a lone journalist to back that up. Also, my words wouldn't carry more or less weight if I did create an account and waited 6 months before making this comment. 46.97.170.208 (talk) 12:33, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Talk pages are not soapboxes. Good luck. WP:SEALION WP:YOUCANSEARCH WP:SATISFY Kire1975 (talk) 13:43, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That's funny because this article itself exists to be a soapbox. And TVTropes is STILL not a reliable source.46.97.170.208 (talk) 10:20, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you 100%, there is no necessity for this article to exist. A small paragraph could possibly be added to the primary posting on blackface but as far as I am aware black face was never differentiated between shades or to different degrees anyway. An actor putting on makeup is not equivalent to a Minstrel Show and this page seemingly exists only to vilify actors with makeup on. Gimla1 (talk) 06:31, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Where does "acting" fit in?
A big part of acting is to portray somebody that an actor is not. Lowborn people can play highborn, etc. This article lists complaints of people who acted as somebody they are not. Certain kinds of such acting/casting are now criticized. There is no comment about how well people portrayed their roles, only complaints that they were not genetically the character they portrayed. Yul Brynner, a Russian, played a Thai, a Mongol, an Egyptian, and American gunfighter. He was cast in these various roles because he was a very good actor, and he could be made up to look a certain part. How narrowly should casting directors focus? In Anna and the King, Yun-Fat Chow (Chinese) played the Thai king. Is this objectionable to Thai audiences? Eugene Levy (Jew) has portrayed an Arab. How narrowly should casting match actors' skin to their roles? Not trying to start an arguement, simply asking people to ponder. Pete unseth (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

we need an image for this article
can we PLEASE get a pic of brownface to help with the article's content. article is useless without a picture--2607:FEA8:BDA0:1A8F:B1DC:830D:DE5:3A58 (talk) 00:34, 10 June 2021 (UTC)


 * What about the one of Justin Trudeau? 2605:B100:741:271D:4CAF:F744:73A5:4CEE (talk) 20:52, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Necessity
Does this page necessarily have to exist as its own entity? The idea of blacking up your face in any regard has always been deemed Blackface with little to no differentiation between the shade of black or brown.

I really think this article should be removed or otherwise become a small addition to the main article on Blackface, it seems unnecessary to have an entire article highlighting a lesser shade of Blackface instead of having this as a small addition to the main article. Gimla1 (talk) 06:28, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 28 October 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Lennart97 (talk) 09:11, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Racial brownface → Brownface – The WP:COMMONNAME of "Racial brownface" is clearly "brownface". Almost every source on this page uses the term "brownface". In fact, the term "racial brownface" is so uncommon that it does not even appear in this ngram.

Currently, Brownface is a disambiguation page - there is one other "brownface" topic, a model of Fender amplifier. However, racial brownface is the clear primary topic of brownface, so the disambiguation page is unnecessary and should be removed. If this discussion ends in a consensus to move, a hatnote should be placed at the top of the brownface article to offer a link to the amplifier model.   Mysteryman blue  08:51, 28 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Support move as per nomination and also to keep consistency with naming convention of the similar blackface article. If the current DAB is anything to go by, it's clearly the primary topic and I agree a hatnote to the other entry would be sufficient on the moved article. Bungle (talk • contribs) 10:35, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nom. Use a hatnote per WP:ONEOTHER.  —  AjaxSmack  04:36, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Antonio Banderas brownface?
Dear americans: let's decide, or Spaniards are white or don't put it in the 'brownface' category. Spain was almost one thousand years with muslim people living there until the expulsion. A lot of people there look tan and is hard to distinguish a lot of them from arabic people. Actually, ill double my bet: don't brownwash latinos. Not every spanish speaking person looks like the average illegal migrant. 190.134.224.252 (talk) 21:56, 28 October 2022 (UTC)