Ah, Three Kings Day, that January 6 holiday when we remind everyone that yes, blackface is sadly alive and well in the 21st century.
As the following Sunday tweet from Spanish soccer legend Andrés Iniesta shows:
As expected, Iniesta is feeling the heat for this one:
I cannot believe in 2019 famous people are still doing or are around people doing “blackface” and tweeting it, where are your friends Iniesta?! Didn’t anyone say “Andres, I don’t think this is the one bro” ???♂️ https://t.co/KQ3vzWWTPE
— Nick Bright (@NickBrightDJ) January 6, 2019
Iniesta seems like a good soul and people like him tend to be upset that they’ve caused harm and discomfort, however inadvertently. It just shows how far we have to go, I guess.
— Musa Okwonga (@Okwonga) January 6, 2019
Blackface keeps happening because race is just a thing people often don’t talk about. Even now I occasionally have white friends making “big dick” jokes about black guys because they know no different. I know it sounds wild but they’ve just never had to discuss this stuff before.
— Musa Okwonga (@Okwonga) January 6, 2019
Blackface keeps happening because race is just a thing people often don’t talk about. Even now I occasionally have white friends making “big dick” jokes about black guys because they know no different. I know it sounds wild but they’ve just never had to discuss this stuff before.
— Musa Okwonga (@Okwonga) January 6, 2019
— Mahamed (@AwoweMJ) January 6, 2019
Yet as expected, the typical threads about how innocent this all is have popped up as well:
Ignorance is all over the US, so this doesn’t surprise me. It’s Dia de Los Reyes Magos. And in Iniesta’s case, has been celebrated in his home of Alcoi since 1885. What’s ironic is that, if you understood it, glorifies the race. It has absolutely 0 intent of being racist.
— Skeptic10 (@skepticmitra) January 7, 2019
Dude stop defending his ignorance, There are hundreds of thousands of people of colour presently residing in Spain today. Many people who are not racist or understand the sensitivity of these things stopped doing black face long time ago.
— Onyi (@RomeoOnyi) January 7, 2019
This is simple.
Ready?
Blackface is just not good. Not ever. Do we really have to explain why?
