Show notes
Target pulled a kids’ Halloween costume after people said it looked like blackface. Malcolm and Simone use that controversy as a jumping-off point for a much larger argument: that systematically scrubbing minstrel shows, cakewalks, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Song of the South, Splash Mountain, Aunt Jemima, and similar “tainted” material didn’t just remove racism — it severed Black Americans from large parts of their own cultural history and from the credit for innovations that built American popular music, comedy, and theater.They walk through:* What Uncle Tom actually does in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel vs. what “Uncle Tom” means now* Cakewalk as plantation satire of white ballroom dance — and the line from that rhythm into ragtime, jazz, R&B, and rock* Minstrel structure as the ancestor of standup, the sitcom, and a lot of classic American slapstick* Brer Rabbit / Uncle Remus as West African trickster tradition (Anansi/hare) fused with Jack tales — and why replacing Splash Mountain with The Princess and the Frog trades one set of problems for another* Banjo origins, tap’s African + Irish fusion, “tar baby,” family-barbecue “caricatures,” and how labeling ordinary Black life as a racist stereotype pushed later generations toward the opposite* Why they think groups that treated every racially adjacent artifact as radioactive helped create a cultural vacuum later filled by gangster/rap identityProvocative, heavily historical, and not YouTube-algorithm-friendly. Watch at your own risk.RFab (editing, research, companions): https://rfab.ai/Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins [0:00]:Hello, Simone. Recently, Target has been in hot water because they decided to release blackface as a Halloween costume.Simone Collins [0:08]:Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.Malcolm Collins [0:09]:They’d say this was by accident, but it is it’s hilarious. But I wanted to take this opportunity. So we’ll go into this incident. But what’s more interesting is I wanna take this opportunity to explore how erasing blackface and mistrial shows from America’s memory and cultural identity was the tool that was used to erase most of black culture. And when I say this, people will think, oh, he’s exaggerating.Simone Collins [0:48]:No. They’ll think, oh, he’s speedrunning a YouTube ban, I guess.Malcolm Collins [0:54]:What are you doing? So I we I guess we’ll call it the uncle Tom effect is what I’ll call this. So when you hear No.Simone Collins [1:02]:Let’s call it the Aunt Jemima effect. Come on. She was our woman. She was our lady.Malcolm Collins [1:06]:Uncle Tom’s a much better example. When you hear the term uncle Tom, what do you think? Somebody calls someone an uncle Tom. Okay. What they are saying is that they are not a good black person. They are somebody who kowtows to white people. They are somebody who is obsequious to white people and tries to fit in with white society. Okay?Simone Collins [1:30]:Okay. I’m looking up uncle Tom’s cat.Malcolm Collins [1:31]:So uncle Tom in the book is a character who dies protecting black people attempting to escape slavery.Simone Collins [1:41]:Okay. Great way to go. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s an antislavery Yes. Oh, yeah. The antislavery novel it’s by Harriet Beecher Stowe.Malcolm Collins [1:47]:She was a But it’s not like the character is poorly written or anything. The book became one of the most popular books in American history. The character is introduced. He saves a white girl from drowning. He is then, sold to a very mean slave driver.Simone Collins [2:02]:Yeah. Away from his wife and children.Malcolm Collins [2:04]:So Away from his wife and children. And then he ends up being beaten to death, saving two other black women who were attempting to escape. And his last words are wishing to protect the the for for mercy on the people person who’s beating him to death. And it’s very clearly like a Jesus analogy. Right? Now this is not a figure that should be shamed in black culture. This is not a figure whose name should be associated with shame.Simone Collins [2:33]:No. I mean, it’s it’s a figure who was clearly mistreated by white slave owners. SoMalcolm Collins [2:38]:He’s one of the most important figures, literary figures in blacks being freed from slavery to begin with. I and soSimone Collins [2:47]:why would he say why yeah. How?Malcolm Collins [2:48]:His name becomes synonymous if you talk to a black teen todaySimone Collins [2:53]:Okay.Malcolm Collins [2:54]:With turning on black people.Simone Collins [2:56]:Right? Real? Oh, yeah. Know Victor Stowe was white. Okay. Sorry. Anyway, maybe that’s the problem.Malcolm Collins [3:00]:This is what we are going to continue to see, this particular effect around all of these critical moments of black history, if you remove the minstrel shows, you remove cakewalking. If you remove cakewalking, then you remove theSimone Collins [3:17]:link. Cakewalking? It’s a cakewalking. Is it is it an expression meaning that it’s easy?Malcolm Collins [3:24]:No. Cakewalking was a style of dancing that African slaves did. Now today, it’s considered very offensive, and no one does it because the very name of it came from the concept of, we will have the slaves come and dance against each other for a piece of cake that the master would give them.Simone Collins [3:41]:Oh, yeah. A a cakewalk is a nineteenth century African American partner dance that originated on Southern plantations, which also evolved into a modern idiom and a digital music software name. Okay. I okay. I just didn’t know.Speaker 3 [3:53]:I’m gonna get fancy now. Keep on swinging.Simone Collins [4:19]:I just heard cakewalk. Like, oh, it would be so easy.Malcolm Collins [4:21]:To be a cakewalk. Well, yeah, the the that that also the modern idiom is easy as a cakewalk became, like, what the slave owners said because they they’d looked too derisively at these. They would, you know, it was, like, entertainment for them to have the blacks do the cakewalk. But, anyway, so you Oh, it’s a cute dance. If you remove cakewalking from the cultural history, you remove the descendant forms of music that came from cake walkingSimone Collins [4:46]:Oh.Malcolm Collins [4:47]:Which include ragtime, jazz Oh, ragtime’s great. Rock and roll. No. Basically, form of American music evolved from the cakewalk dances that were constructed. And so blacks can say, wait. Why did we erase this? It’s like, well, because clearly a racist derogatory thing they were doing. And it’s the same thing that happened with uncle Tom’s Cabin. So with uncle Tom’s Cabin, they began to hold Tom shows. Right? And this was the stage play production of uncle Tom’s cabin.Simone Collins [5:22]:Oh, okay. In the stage to Broadway. That’s great.Malcolm Collins [5:25]:Productions of uncle Tom’s cabin, you ended up having the the the characters would begin to act more comedically or more in ways that represented normal black tropes. And so they would act obsequiously. They would act in a way that where the uncle Tom moniker might make sense. And so black culture began to use the evoked set, what they had seen more recently, the stage play, instead of the critical character that sparked a huge part of the abolition movement. Wow. And they then denigrated the entire line because of this one connection to actual racism. Take something like the Mistral Show. If you take people are familiar with the Mistral Show where black people were well, first, it began with whites doing in blackface sort of caricatures that were derogatory of black people on stage. And then these evolved into often not necessarily derogatory, but endearing caricatures and caricatures which were the ancestor of huge amounts of what we today think of as the three stooges, for example. Most comedy of this period was done in the style that was pioneered by the minstrel show.Simone Collins [6:57]:And hold on. If I I’ll check this, but weren’t minstrel shows originally things that took place in England and Europe that, you know, there would be traveling minstrels, and they wo… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe
