Let's not just reckon with blackface's past, let's end its future

Funny stuff, but let this be the end of it forever.

I'm late to this but late night host Jimmy Fallon has been getting raked over the coals recently for appearing in black make-up to perform an admittedly stellar impression of Chris Rock on Saturday Night Live twenty years ago. It was in bad taste then -- although not widely remarked upon at the time -- but it certainly wasn't meant to be racist or cruel.

The same goes for Darrell Hammond, who darkened up to play Jesse Jackson once and Billy Crystal who made regular appearances in dark makeup to play Sammy Davis Jr., on the show (and he bizarrely brought it back during a recent stint as Oscars host).

These were affectionate parodies at the time, more a reflection of the show's lack of diversity rather than its inherent racism (although the show is not with out its unforgivable moments). Fallon's apology appears to be heartfelt albeit a little awkward as it's arriving now amid heightened racial tensions. But talk of 'canceling' him because of a role he played in a sketch feels wildly overdramatic to me.

If we want to go that route, the movies are in even more trouble. You have hundreds of legacy brown-face movies like West Side Story, which are beloved but should not be given a pass for casting white actors to play people of color. It's shameful but also an important marker of what Hollywood was at that time. It's not perfect now, obviously. But we've at least reached a point where there would be appropriate outrage if a white actor tried to play a black historical figure now.

The whitewashing of fictional characters is still a work in progress though.

I myself have unapologetically enjoyed comedies that have dipped a toe into blackface. Mind you, this is not the vaudeville stuff of Al Jolson, which was particularly hateful and virulently racist. These are moments like the one in Silver Streak, where Gene Wilder buffonishly tries to pass as black to Richard Pryor's chagrin, or Trading Places, where Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy pose as international students.

I totally understand why these moments would play horribly if they came out today and they should never be recreated, but I understand how they were funny in the context and period in which they came out.

Robert Downey Jr is uproariously funny in Tropic Thunder, as a white man who has dyed his skin black in a completely insane and vain act of method performing. The joke is on his character, even if he is speaking in an exaggerated stereotypically black accent throughout. The point is he is representing the height of white prestige actor pomposity -- that he can even play a black man if he just commits hard enough. Still satire and all, it's probably the last time anyone could or should go back to this well for comedic purposes. It worked in 2008. It works as a curio now. But never again.

I think its fair to say that going forward black people should be playing black people and white people can stick to the 99.9% of roles they are already getting. I think we need to be both cognizant of the history of this 'art form' -- which as Spike Lee's underrated movie Bamboozled conveyed -- was sometimes subversively used by black performers like Bert Williams -- and aware of the fact that many times its been used (particularly in comedy) without malice but still irresponsibly. It was treated the same way having a man perform as a woman in drag was -- kind of a lark.

The pain it can cause was neutralized. But now, no more. We can accept the past, without entirely excusing it, but then the question comes will we ever tolerate this again -- and will we start holding everyone -- including governors! -- to a higher standard.